Drug smuggler loses house (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Drug smuggler loses house

9:17am Friday 1st February 2008 in Swindon

A FORMER truck driver from Ashton Keynes who used massive profits from drug smuggling to get himself on the property ladder has failed to get an £839,000 confiscation order overturned on appeal.

Reginald Tottman, 67, was supposed to be living on a £6,000-a-year pension after being made redundant in 1991.

But prosecutors said he had managed to buy his first home after making £1.7m between May 2002 and February 2003 by importing cannabis. Tottman, of Birch Glade, Park Place, was jailed for five-and-a-half years at Reading Crown Court in February 2004 after admitting conspiracy to import cannabis.

On December 14 the same year, an £839,000 confiscation order was imposed in an attempt by the authorities to claw back some of Tottman's ill-gotten gains.

But yesterday, Tottman asked top judges Mr Justice Davis and Mr Justice David Clarke, sitting at London's Criminal Appeal Court to reduce the figure.

Tottman's lawyers argued the whole of his house should not have been counted as coming from the proceeds of drug trafficking as half of the cost had been contributed by his wife. But Mr Justice Davis refused his application for permission to appeal, saying the argument was "without merit" and his application was also made "unacceptably" late