A painter and decorator has been jailed for 12 mon

A painter and decorator has been jailed for 12 months for selling cannabis in Richmond and Hampton.

The 38-year-old was found to have benefited from the trafficking of the Class B drug to the tune of pnds stlng 13,264.

The judge, Mr Recorder Roydon Thomas, QC, also ordered the confiscation of Gary Bache’s realisable assets, put at pnds stlng 4,166.

Bache was found guilty in December of possessing 13.

3g of cannabis with intent to supply on February 17, last year.

At London’s Southwark Crown Court, Bache, of (19) Cambridge Road, Hampton, Mddx, was cleared by a jury of two similar charges on the same day relating to 7.

98g of cannabis, and 44.

3g of cannabis resin.

Following the conviction, police carried out a detailed search of the defendant’s bank and building society to ascertain illicit benefit and realisable assets.

Miss Shandra (corr) McAteer, defending, said her client ‘disputed’ that the pnds stlng 4,166 was drug money.

From the witness box, Bache explained how certain sums being received into his accounts were from closing building society books and receiving the balance.

He said he also worked at weekends as a roofer and labourer for a local builder, adding:

‘I was always paid in cash.

‘

Bache said he also received pnds stlng 1,450 for selling a motorbike, and later a credit of over pnds stlng 1,000 from an insurance company after writing off a replacement machine.

And another cash payment into his account, he said, was having purchased a video camera in Tenerife for a friend.

Bache said two large sums of pnds stlng 4,500 and pnds stlng 3,000 had been made to his landlord in lieu of rent.

But despite his explanation, the judge ordered the realisable assets be forfeit to the Crown under the Drug Trafficking Act, 1994.

ends