Drugs plot ringleader denies pocketing £1m from deals, court hears

Scott Dodd, 36, who was jailed last year for his part in the plot, is challenging the prosecution claim in a Proceeds of Crime Act application.

At Birmingham Crown Court yesterday Dodd, who is serving a 10-year sentence, said that he has no money and has no realisable assets.

Judge Michael Chambers QC is hearing evidence to determine the amount of benefit Dodd had from his drug dealing before making a confiscation order.

The court has heard that police calculations reveal that substantial sums of money passed through Dodd's hands between July, 2011, and May, 2012.

The Phoenix Car Centre in Shrewsbury - set up by another of the ringleaders, Jonathan Rochford - became the hub of the drugs conspiracy.

Covert video surveillance set up at the company's offices police, recorded numerous conversations, involving Dodd, Rochford and other conspirators, in which the wholesale supply of heroin, cocaine and cannabis to street dealers in Telford and Shrewsbury, was regularly discussed.

At court yesterday Mr Michael Duck, prosecuting, claimed that Dodd's benefit from heroin and cocaine operations was estimated at around £935,000.

He said there was a further £256,000 from a separate trade in cannabis which Dodd had admitted to police when he was arrested in 2012.

Mr Duck said there was no official employment records for Dodd going back almost eight years.

Giving evidence Dodd, of Ludlow Drive, Stirchley, told the court he was jailed in 2009 for drugs offences and released on licence in November, 2010.

He was later made subject to a Proceeds of Crime order in the sum of £26,000, which remains in place.

Dodd said he had no means of earning money on his release from prison and almost immediately started dealing cannabis using drugs supplied "on credit" from a person he had met in prison.

He accepted later getting involved in some cocaine and heroin deals after July, 2011 when the covert police investigation, codename Operation Active - started.

But Dodd said his level of benefit suggested by the prosecution was totally wrong.

He denied that, having been subject to a previous confiscation order, he had "hidden away" monies he made from Class A drug dealing.

Dodd said that of the thousands pounds that he may have had, it was all spent on clothes, drinking, nights out and paying for his own heavy cannabis habit.

The hearing continues and Judge Chambers is expected to make a ruling on the confiscation order next week.

The judge is also due to make a confiscation order against 31-year-old Rochford, of Lake End Drive, Brookside, Telford, who was jailed for eight years in March last year for his role in the drugs plot.