An Ecclefechan drug dealer who was part of a county lines cocaine gang that made £1.8million has been ordered to repay £8,500 at a Proceeds of Crime hearing.
Richard Anderson (right) was in an 18-strong criminal network
whose members were jailed for a
total of 146 years and nine months in 2020.
The 49-year-old, of Glebe Place, appeared at Caernarfon Crown Court from prison on Friday for the Proceeds of Crime Act hearing.
A judge heard the gang made more than £1.8 m but Anderson only had just over £8,000 available.
He has three months to pay the sum or face more time in custody.
In September 2020, the same court heard how police launched Operation Tide to catch members of a gang plotting to bring £2m worth of hard drugs into north east Wales and the UK. The gang was targeted by the serious and organised crime unit due to their propensity for violence. Detectives gathered surveillance using various intelligence methods.
Eventually, the surveillance led to a wave of arrests across North Wales and the UK.
Anderson would travel from Scotland to Liverpool and told co-conspirators how to pack drugs in a “forensically safe way”, the court heard in 2020.
But he was jailed for seven years for conspiring to supply a controlled Class A drug, cocaine, in Scotland.
It had been a lucrative enterprise which was on an industrial scale in North Wales and the UK.
The hearing on Friday was held in Caernarfon to claw back some of the money from Anderson.
Prosecutor Ieuan Rees said Anderson had benefited in the sum of £1,821,829 but the available amount to repay in his case was £8,540.
Andrew Gurney, defending Anderson, told the court that that sum was in the form of a car.
Her Honour Judge Saffman said he had three months to pay or face a default sentence of imprisonment of four months.
