Cash sent abroad not drug money, Telford trial told
A woman who sent thousands of pounds to relatives and friends in Jamaica has denied the cash was from drug dealing at her home in Shropshire.
Sharon Anne-Marie Campbell told a jury she had earned the money as an escort, as a care worker or taken out bank loans.
Giving evidence at Birmingham Crown Court yesterday Campbell denied knowing that her boyfriend Garfield Patterson and his friend Courtney Hamilton were selling heroin and crack cocaine from her house in Telford.
She said none of the money in her bank accounts or the cash transferred to Jamaica was from drug dealing. "I was not involved in supplying drugs or money laundering," she told the jury.
Campbell, 42, of Burford, Brookside, denies two charges of conspiring with Patterson, Hamilton, Garry Warren, Nicola Firth and others, to supply crack cocaine and heroin between October 2005 and September 2013.
She also denies conspiring with Patterson, Hamilton, Sukesh Shemar and Gemma Buxton to transfer cash out of the country over the same period. The jury has been told that all the other defendants have pleaded guilty to the charges they faced and await sentence.
Footage has been shown to the court from CCTV installed by Campbell at her address showing incidents of drug dealing. The jury has heard that financial inquiries revealed £269,000 was transferred by Campbell and others to more than two dozen people in Jamaica over an eight-year period.
Bank records show no legitimate source could be found for £158,000 that passed through Campbell's accounts.
Under cross-examination by Mr Michael Duck, prosecuting, Campbell denied she had "fabricated the story of being paid by men for sex" to account for the monies going out to the Caribbean.
She said she had been an escort since 2001 but Patterson knew nothing about it. Questioned by Mr Duck the defendant said she met clients at her home or at hotels, but was unable to identify the hotels.
Campbell said she did not tell police about the escort work when she was arrested in September 2013, but she told her solicitor.
Mr Duck pointed out that mention of the escort work was not put forward until November when Campbell's trial had initially started.
The trial continues.
