Drug dealer ran his global trade from prison cell
A CONVICTED drugs dealer who ran an international gang of traffickers from behind bars was yesterday jailed for six years and four months. Paul Bulman used hidden mobile phones to direct operations f rom Saughton j ail in Edinburgh.
His gang peddled pentedrone, with £500,000 of the Ecstasy-type drug shipped in from Holland on his instructions.
But members of his clan were snared by watching detectives.
At the High Court in Glasgow, Bulman, 26, from Knightswood, Glasgow, pleaded guilty to dealing from September 2012 to January 2013.
His girlfriend, Sara Walker, admitted banking £90,000 of dirty money to pay for the drugs.
While Bulman was jailed Walker, who is pregnant with his child, was placed under supervision for two
‘You have caused much anguish’
years and ordered to carry out 100 hours of community work.
Judge Lord Turnbull told Bulman: ‘Your previous custodial sentence had no effect on you. You reoffended and the entire sophisticated operation was conducted from within prison.
‘You have caused much anguish in the life of Miss Walker and added to her burden by leaving the burden of parenthood to her.’
The court heard that Walker, a former accounts worker, met Bulman when she visited a friend in prison. The pair fell in love and he persuaded her to launder the money for her. The £90,000 in cash was delivered to her by an associate of Bulman’s and she then banked it.
Bulman instructed Walker to bank the dirty money, which went to accounts in Portugal and Malta to pay for pentedrone. Walker, 22, of Glasgow, admitted a charge under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
The court heard that detectives set up the Operation Eris probe to catch an organised drug trafficking mob.
It soon emerged that Bulman was a leading member. He was serving four-and-a-half years for drugs charges at the time.
Prosecutor Bill McVicar said: ‘He was directing others in connection with the movement and payment for drugs using mobile phones from prison.’
Bulman organised for 70 kilos (154lbs) of pentedrone to be sent to Aberdeen from the Netherlands.
Telephone records showed he set up drug handovers in Dundee and Forfar that led to two of his gang getting jailed last year.
Defence QC Gordon Jackson, representing Bulman, said his client had not re-offended since being released in January last year.
Defence counsel Paul Brown, representing Walker, said: ‘She was wilfully blind to what she was doing.’