Two cocaine dealers caught when police stopped the van they were dealing from have been ordered to hand over the profits of their business - but while one must cough up almost £11,000 his co-accused only has £91 to his name.
Swansea men Ashley Fulford and Kallum Owen were caught red-handed selling the Class A drug to a user on a Swansea street, and a search of the pair's vehicle found another two-dozen ready-to-sell deals in the glovebox. The defendants' homes were then searched.
The Townhill pair were each jailed for 34 months in June this year, and the case came back to court this week for a confiscation hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Swansea Crown Court heard police calculated that Fulford had benefited from his dealing activity to the tune of £14,465 and Owen by some £3,781. Financial investigators could find no realisable assets belonging to the pair save for the money recovered by police - for Fulford that is a bag found in his house containing £10,775 in cash, and for Owen it's the £91 he had in his pocket when arrested. A judge made confiscation orders in the available amounts.
READ MORE: Plasterer who turned to selling cocaine called himself 'the boss'
Fulford, 27, of Townhill Road, Townhill, Swansea, and 23-year-old Kallum Owen, of Gwynedd Avenue, Townhill, Swansea, were arrested on August 29 last year when police in the Mount Pleasant area of Swansea saw a van driving slowly along Cromwell Street before pulling up alongside a man standing on the pavement. As the officers watched, an "exchange" took place through the open window of the vehicle. The officers moved in and stopped the van, and found Fulford at the wheel with Owen in the passenger seat beside him. In the glovebox of the vehicle police found 23 separate 3.5g deals of cocaine worth around £4,600. Police seized the men's phones and found messages relating to drug dealing.
A subsequent search of Fulford's house uncovered scales, a quantity of small zip-lock plastic bags, and a bag in the kitchen containing almost £11,000 cash. Nothing of any evidential value was found in a search of Owen's house. Read about a teenager involved with a "professional and sophisticated" gang which stole cars from across south Wales who went on the run from police for 15 months.
Barrister James Hartson, for Fulford, told June's sentencing hearing that his client's "downward spiral into the world of drugs" began when a car crash left him unable to work. With time on his hands the defendant began going out with friends more than he should and started using cocaine. The barrister said the dad-of-two's use of the drug quickly became an addiction which he could only fund by dealing the substance, and he added young men like the two in the dock "have no idea how seriously dealing in cocaine can be".
Lucas Edwards, for Owen, said prior to lockdown his client had been working full-time in highways maintenance but after that employment ceased he started using cocaine and needed a way to fund that habit - he said in the defendant's own words dealing in coke had been a way of making "quick, easy money". He said Owen was remorseful and ashamed of what he had done, and now worked as a trainer in his dad's gym in Fforestfach. He said letters from Owen's dad and from the Gwent Boxing Club in Townhill had been submitted to the court.
Judge Huw Rees told the defendants neither of them had been brought up to behave in the way they had, and that they had both been foolish to get involved in the world of drugs. With credits for their guilty pleas to possession of cocaine with intent to supply and to being concerned in the supply of cocaine, the defendants were each sentenced to 34 months in prison. They will serve up to half those periods in custody before being released on licence to serve the remainder in the community.
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