Drugs courier caught at M4 services is jailed (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Drugs courier caught at M4 services is jailed

9:46am Monday 24th September 2012 in News By Staff reporter

Police intercepted a haul of more than £100,000 worth of drugs at the Leigh Delamere service station.

Officers concerned about the insurance of a taxi driver at the westbound motorway stop spotted what they believed were drugs paraphernalia in the car.

When they took a closer look they found ten large packages of former legal high mephedrone hidden under the seats.

Hannah Squire, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court how police spotted 43-year-old Vazrik Nazarian’s car on Thursday May 10.

She said they found two packages, each weighing one kilogram, and eight half kilo bags making a total weight just short of six kilos.

They also found a tin containing not only a small amount of a white crystalline substance but Nazarian’s library card as well.

Miss Squire said mephedrone, also known by the street name miaow miaow, retailed at £20 a gram making the haul worth £119,000.

She said the wholesale price would be between £12,000 and £30,000 meaning the profit margin for it was higher than heroin, cocaine or crack.

When the driver was questioned he said he had been given £400 by a man in London called Louis to take the drugs to a town on the edge of Cardiff.

He told officers he had made the trip on four or five previous occasions getting details from a second mobile phone seized from him.

Nazarian, of Shepherd’s Bush, west London, pleaded guilty to possessing a class B drug with intent to supply.

Ashley Hendron, defending, said his client was simply acting as a courier trying to earn a bit more money and as a taxi driver was used to ferrying packages about.

Although he admitted doing it before he said it was after the police pointed out the cameras on the Severn Bridge would have spotted his car.

He said he was a family man who had been a cabby for 22 years,until he suffered a back injury.

Jailing him for two years Judge Douglas Field said: “You were carrying the drug to Wales: you were doing so for a fee.

“You knew the amount that had been stowed underneath the seat, you knew it was drugs, you knew it was wrong, you had done it before: on each occasion you had been paid £400.”