A drug dealer jailed after his arrest at a handover of a consignment of cocaine in County Durham has now been ordered to pay more than £224,000 as proceeds of crime.
The order was made at Durham Crown Court against 45-year-old Bradley Mark Sinclair, from South Shields, following crime proceeds inquiries into to his means and assets.
He has also been deprived of a Volkswagen Touran car seized from him upon arrest.
Sinclair received a prison sentence of five years and three months at the court last June, more than a year after admitting a charge of being concerned in the supply of a class A drug.
But he received a further 24 months for being in possession of criminal property, £238,000 in drug money, in an unrelated incident, when stopped in the Cambridgeshire area.
He appeared via video link at the court yesterday (Wednesday April 24) from Holme House Prison, in Stockton, where he is serving his sentence.
The court was told the estimated benefit figure from the defendant’s illicit activities was £336,062, but the available amount to be seized from him was put at £224,620.
Judge Jo Kidd, therefore, ordered the payment of the £224,620 in the next three months with a further 18 months’ prison sentence in default.
She also made the deprivation order for the VW Touran.
Laura Miller, representing Sinclair, said all of the money is in the police’s hands, so the default period would make little difference.
Sinclair’s co-accused, Christopher Chambers, received a 15-year sentence after being convicted of being concerned in the supply of a class A drug, in his absence, having gone on the run and failed to attend his trial, last June.
The 32-year-old defendant, of Greenhalgh, near Preston, in Lancashire, formally received the sentence after being re-arrested and brought before the court, in October.
He also appeared for today’s crime proceeds hearing via video link, in his case from HMP Berwyn, in North Wales.
But the court heard he has “sacked” his legal team and is in the throes of appointing a new firm of solicitors in Chester to represent him.
Judge Jo Kidd agreed to adjourn the crime proceeds hearing against Chambers for four weeks, to allow him to meet with his new legal representatives to discuss his position.
She said the case would be back before the court on May 22 when she hopes some progress can be made with the proceeds of crime application in his case.
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Both defendants were caught when Chambers was returning a kilogram of cocaine to Sinclair as he was not happy with the quality of the drug consignment.
The handover was near a convenience store, in Tantobie, near Stanley, on May 20, 2020, and was captured on CCTV.
Police inquiries into the pair’s activities were part of an ongoing investigation into Chambers dealings, which included the use of encrypted messages on the EncroChat network.
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