A Border Force officer has shared his experience of capturing a notorious smuggler of endangered bird species, known as the 'Pablo Escobar of eggs'.

Jeffrey Lendrum, 63, was intercepted in 2018 with 19 hawk, eagle, and vulture eggs strapped to his chest, two of which had already hatched.

The former Rhodesian SAS member had illegally gathered the eggs in South Africa, and a year later, he was sentenced to three years in prison for wildlife crimes.

Lee Grigg, a senior officer at Border Force who now specializes in animal and plant smuggling, was on duty at Terminal 2 when Lendrum landed on June 27, 2018.

He recounted to MailOnline the role he played in catching the prolific smuggler, describing the moment he removed Lendrum's clothes to reveal the sling of eggs as 'the most surreal strip search ever'.

Some of the eggshells from the 2018 seizure are now displayed at a Border Force building in Heathrow.

Border Force had been aware that Lendrum was about to land in the country, so he was promptly taken aside by officers.

Mr.

Grigg and his colleagues recovered £100,000 worth of vulture, eagle, and sparrowhawk eggs that Lendrum, who holds both Zimbabwean and Irish passports, had illegally gathered.

The eggs were successfully raised into chicks at a rescue center in Gloucestershire, and Lendrum was jailed in 2019 for three years and one month.

Lendrum was also caught in Brazil with four albino falcon eggs stolen from Patagonia and was sentenced to four and a half years in prison in October 2015.

He has always insisted that he was motivated by compassion and once told author Joshua Hammer, 'The whole media has portrayed me as the Pablo Escobar of the falcon-egg trade.

' However, prosecutors have argued that Lendrum was driven by greed and hoped to make a fortune selling the hatched birds.

Peregrine falcon chicks, which hatched from eggs discovered strapped to Lendrum's chest during an earlier incident in 2010, are part of the evidence against him.

Mr.

Grigg spoke to MailOnline during an exclusive tour of a storeroom near Heathrow where illegally imported wildlife products are housed.

The items were seized by Border Force under CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

This 1975 treaty covers 35,000 animals and plants, some of which cannot be traded at all, while others require specific permits.