Dealer jailed after ‘treasure hunt’ find

A DRUG dealer whose forgotten stash hidden in a dry stone wall was accidentally found by fans of a treasure hunt game has been jailed.

Two geocaching enthusiasts were hunting ‘treasures’ hidden on a rural route in Angus using GPS technology when they found a black rucksack stuffed inside a wall.

Thinking it was the object they had been looking for in the game – in which players use GPS co-ordinates to hunt ‘caches’ hidden and logged online – they opened it.

But instead of the usual notebook and pen to record their find along with a trinket, they found heroin worth up to £24,000. They took the bag to Broughty Ferry police station, where forensic analysis linked DNA on the knotted bags of the drug to Albert Ramsay, from Dundee.

On being arrested the stunned 50-yearold protested to officers he ‘hadn’t sold heroin for years’.

But yesterday he was given a three-year prison term after admitting a charge of being concerned in the supply of the drug on August 27, 2016, at a farm in Kingennie, Angus. Fiscal depute Saima Rasheed told Dundee Sheriff Court: ‘The exact location was within a stone dyke within a farming field.

‘The witnesses are geocaching enthusiasts, which is a treasure-hunting game.

‘Items are hidden in particular locations for users to find using co-ordinates from the internet.’

Miss Rasheed said the witnesses were following co-ordinates to a cache close to the area shown, near a tree, and saw a black rucksack in the nearby dyke.

She added: ‘They found it contained a set of digital scales and bags containing a rocklike substance.

‘They immediately realised they had not found the cache and thought they may be illicit drugs.’

Miss Rasheed said the accused’s DNA was found within a knot on one of the bags, adding: ‘When he was interviewed he stated he had never been to the unregistered track where the bag was found. He said he had no knowledge of the contents.’

Jailing Ramsay, Sheriff Lorna Drummond, QC, reduced his sentence from four to three years for his early guilty plea.