Cocaine user in debt looked after £50k of cannabis

Suspended sentence for car buyer who owed £5,000 to drugs dealer

A COCAINE user who agreed to store £50,000 worth of cannabis and £5,000 in cash at home has been spared jail.

Portsmouth Crown Court heard Jack Darcy got into around £5,000 worth of debt to his cocaine dealer.

Just a week later on March 15 last year Darcy, 28, was visited at home in Waterlooville by police on an unrelated matter.

‘Whilst searching the address (officers) found some five kilos of cannabis in the loft,’ prosecutor Jane Terry said.

‘It was separated into kilo bags that had been vacuum packaged, four in a Sports Direct large holdall and a fifth in a separate location but also in the loft area.

‘In excess of £5,000 was also rolled up in a hoodie in a cupboard in the kitchen, a number of mobile phones and a rucksack containing coins (were found).’

A Hampshire police drugs expert estimated the wholesale value was between £20,000-£25,000, while the cannabis would have been worth around £50,000 on the street.

When he was arrested Darcy claimed the cash had been given to him by his girlfriend Jorja Johnson’s father.

But when he was spoken to, he confirmed this was not the case.

Russell Pyne, mitigating, said: ‘He had built up a drug debt of £5,000 or so and was offered the chance to work that debt off.

‘But of course...the chance is rather loaded in these circumstances of a drug user and a drug dealer,’ he added.

‘And so it was the defendant agreed to store both drugs and money in his property.’

Darcy, who has eight convictions for 10 offences, has stopped taking cocaine and is working earning £600 a month as a car buyer.

Sentencing, judge David Melville QC imposed a sixmonth term suspended for two years with 150 hours’ unpaid work.

Darcy admitted being concerned in the supply of a class B drug and to the possession of criminal property.