Drug smuggler driver jailed
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• Marypurt owner-driver Carl Gainford has been jailed for eight years after admitting smuggling £1.5m worth of cannabis.
At Beverley Crown Court, judge Alan Simpson said that the case provided a message to all lorry drivers not to resort to drug smuggling to make money.
Margaret Bickford-Smith, prosecuting, said that Gainford and an accomplice, Roy Brooke, of Eccles, Manchester, had travelled to Belgium to strike a deal with dealers and hide the drugs in Gainford's artic. The drugs were discovered when Customs officers at Hull Docks carried out a routine search of the vehicle. They found 344kg of cannabis resin in the semi-trailer behind the bulkhead, and another 49.98kg of the drug underneath the bunk in the tractor.
For Gainford, Geoffrey Marson said he had received a number of threats to both himself and his family so that he would keep quiet about the other people involved.
Judge Simpson said that Gainford had clearly played a subordinate role. Ile warned lorry drivers not to regard drug running as a way out of financial difficulties, saying that any driver who accepted such an offer made two things certain: one was that he would be caught, and the other was that he would face a long prison sentence. Brooke, who had pleaded not guilty, was found guilty and was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment.