By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 11:22, Saturday, 21 July 2012

A drug dealer caught with nearly £25,000 of heroin stuffed into a cornflakes packet has been ordered to pay back just £79 under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Carlisle Crown Court heard that that was all 36-year-old Simon Gilmour had to his name.

So although he admitted benefiting to the tune of £24,949 from his drug-dealing activities, that was as much as he could be ordered to hand back.

Gilmour was brought to court from the prison where he is serving a six-year sentence imposed on him in January after he pleaded guilty to possessing the heroin with intent to supply it.

The sentence was especially long because it was the third major drug dealing offence of which he had been convicted in just eight years.

He had already served two previous prison sentences for drug dealing.

Gilmour, of Birch Close, Moorclose, Workington, was arrested last November after police stopped a car in which he was a passenger on the A595 at Holmrook.

The driver and his woman front seat passenger were innocent but when police searched the car they found, in the footwell of the rear seat where Gilmour had been sitting, a cornflakes packet full of the heroin.

He initially claimed to have been merely a courier, transporting the drug for someone else, but the prosecution refused to accept that, and he eventually agreed to be dealt with on the basis that he was “further up the drug supply chain”.

First published at 10:49, Saturday, 21 July 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk