Kentish Express Ashford & District
Dealer caught with £115,000 in cash locked up for two years
A drug dealer has been jailed after he was spotted handing over a package containing more than £100,000 in cash at a pub car park.
Officers from the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate had been following 56-year-old Brian Daniels when he turned up off the A20 in Hothfield near Ashford in April 2016.
Daniels, of Anchor Road in Rochester, handed over a package to Edilson Struett who then placed it into the top box of his red Honda motorbike during the brief exchange but officers watching them arrested the duo immediately, and found bundles of cash worth £115,000 inside.
Struett, 49, of Brenthouse Road in Hackney, London, told police he knew nothing about the package and was just a courier.
He had been told by a friend to go to a London cafe, and met a man who gave him a mobile phone and pieces of paper with telephone numbers and postcodes.
The first was the car park where he met Daniels, who also claimed he did not know what was in the package but forensic tests showed that Daniels had, in fact, handled the cash inside.
The money was forfeited under the Proceeds of Crime Act, and neither of the two men came forward to claim legitimate ownership.
The duo were charged with possessing criminal property and admitted the offence in court earlier this month.
Det Insp James Derham, the case’s senior investigating officer, said: “Law-abiding members of the public do not exchange such high quantities of cash without knowing who it belongs to or where it has come from.
“Brian Daniels handled the money found in the package and clearly knows a lot more about how it came to be in his possession then he is letting on.
“While Edilson Struett claims to have only been the courier, ignorance is no excuse when you are playing such a key role in the exchange of criminal property.
“The cash in this case was most certainly not earned through legitimate means and I am pleased the jury saw fit to convict both men for their actions.”
The duo appeared at Canterbury Crown Court on Friday, January 12. Struett was ordered to carry out 160 hours of unpaid work and received a six-month suspended prison sentence.
Daniels was jailed for two years after admitting the possession of criminal property, and to possessing cannabis with the intent to supply in a separate case.