Shropshire Star

Pay back £460,000 or face more jail time, Shropshire drug dealers told

A couple involved in an extensive conspiracy to supply cocaine and heroin have been ordered to pay more than £460,000 or face more time in prison.

Published

For more than eight years Sharon Ann-Marie Campbell and Paul Garfield Patterson sold drugs from two properties in Brookside, Telford.

An estimated £250,000 in profits from the drugs operation is known to have been transferred via Western Union to people in Jamaica.

During a two-day Proceeds of Crime Act confiscation hearing at Birmingham Crown Court, it was determined that Campbell, Patterson, and their associate, Courtney Hamilton, each had a criminal benefit approaching £1.3 million and had criminal lifestyles.

Mr Michael Duck QC, prosecuting, said it followed extensive financial inquiries by West Mercia Police's economic crime unit into the benefit gained from the defendants' long-running criminal activity and the suspicion of there being hidden assets.

In April this year Campbell was jailed for 10 years having been convicted of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs and money laundering between 2005 and 2013 following a trial and Patterson and Hamilton were jailed for nine years having pleaded guilty to the same offences.

At court yesterday Campbell was ordered to pay £248,500 and Patterson about £213,000 within the next three months or face an additional two years in prison.

Both Campbell, 43, and Patterson, 48, had challenged the confiscation applications, saying monies sent to various relatives and associates in Jamaica was from legitimate sources.

Making his ruling Recorder Gareth Evans QC told Campbell she was "thoroughly dishonest" and the tears she had shed were not genuine, but borne out of frustration.

Hamilton, formerly of Trysull Road, Wolverhampton, has three months to pay the money or face a further three months in prison.

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