By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 11:26, Saturday, 20 October 2012

A west Cumbrian criminal who made more than £26,000 from selling illegal drugs will have to pay back less than £4,000 because that’s as much money as he can raise, a court heard.

Paul Barcock

Paul Gregory Barcock was due to appear at Carlisle Crown Court for a hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act – the procedure designed to prevent criminals profiting from the crimes they have committed.

But the 51-year-old refused to get on the bus taking him the 70 miles from Haverigg Prison to Carlisle, so the case went ahead without him yesterday.

His barrister Greg Hoare said Barcock, from Short Acres, Maryport, admitted that he had made £26,581 from drug dealing.

But since he could only hope to raise a total of £3,872 – including his car and £122 he has in a bank account - that was as much as he could pay.

Barcock will go to prison for an extra two months if he fails to sign the necessary forms and pay the money within eight weeks.

In June Barcock was jailed for 16 months after he pleaded guilty to possessing 942 grams of mephedrone with intent to supply it.

The court heard he had taken up drug dealing to help cover the costs of his “heavy gambling problem”.

He laughed and said “It’s a fair cop” when a police sniffer dog found he had hidden £19,000-worth of illegal drugs in the bumper of his car when he was stopped for driving “at fairly high speed” on the A596 at Birkby.

Even though he would normally be released on licence in February after completing half that sentence, he in fact will not be out of jail until November next year because as soon as he was arrested for the drugs offences he was recalled to prison to complete the remaining two years of a six-year sentence from which he was out on licence at the time.

That was imposed for his part in a botched ram raid on a petrol station in 2007.

First published at 11:23, Saturday, 20 October 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk