Drugs courier with secret hydraulic compartment caught out during flat bust, Leeds court hears

Officers raided a flat on Peacock Close in Wakefield in December last year and caught two men in possession of almost 1kg of cocaine in a carrier bag.

The pair have since been sentenced to jail, but finger prints belonging to a third man, Andrew Bennett, were found on the bag.

Monitoring the 38-year-old, police pulled him over in Manchester weeks later and a further 10kg of high-purity cocaine were recovered from his vehicle.

His VW Touran had been modified with a hydraulic system that lifted the back seats to reveal a hidden compartment below.

It was operated by a button in the ashtray, prosecutor Caroline Abraham told Leeds Crown Court.

Again, the cocaine found was high purity with a potential street value of up to £1 million.

They searched his home address in Prestwich, Manchester, and found a bag of cannabis and a stun gun.

Bennett admitted being concerned in the supply of cocaine, possession with intent to supply Class A drugs, possession of criminal property, cannabis and a prohibited weapon.

Mitigating, Satpal Roth-Sharma said Bennett was a father-of-two and ran his own business selling baby monitors, but after it failed he got into debt by borrowing £20,000 from a loan shark.

Bennett admitted he needed to pay the debt off by drug running, which he says he had been doing weekly for three months and got paid £600 each time.

Mrs Roth-Sharma said: “This was a large amount of cocaine, he knew he was in deep water.

"He knows he will go to prison for a long time and will have a long time to think about his actions and what they have cost him.

"It was a huge mistake in his life. He fell into debt and could not find or see any way out.”

The judge, Recorder Richard Woolfall said that despite only being a courier, he told him that the amount of high-purity cocaine he was transporting “demonstrated how trusted you were”.

He handed him 11 years and four months’ jail.