‘I thought stuff my son was smuggling into jail was for his friend’s nail bar’

A mother accused of involvement in a plot to smuggle drugs and mobile phones into jails told a court her son never explained what was going on.

Alexander Mullings, 32, smuggled heroin, crack, cannabis and designer drug U-47,000, known as ‘pink heroin’, jurors heard.

Mullings also used drones to fly packages of drugs and small mobile phones to other prisoners, at jails including high security HMP Swaleside in Kent.

The synthetic drug spice was also dissolved into fake legal letters which were sent to inmates, Southwark Crown Court has heard.

Mullings has admitted a series of charges including smuggle drugs and mobile phones into a number of prisons between 2016 and 2019.

His mother, Alexandra Nicolaou, 52, along with Charlotte Finch, 21, Hamza Ahmed, 29, Ahmed Binfgih, 58, Katriye Kaplan, 32, and Danyaal Msaouri-Coulson, 22, deny drug supply charges.

Finch is said to have used an Instagram account called ‘HMP_Mamba_Plug’ to offer drugs to inmates.

Giving evidence Nicolaou said her son had asked her to buy mobile phones, chemicals and pre-paid envelopes and pass them to him or his friends.

She said Mullings just sent her links to products on Ebay and asked her to buy them using money passed to him by his grandmother, which she looked after for him.

Nicolaou said she believed her son made money selling on the mobile phones, and the chemicals, including acetone, cardarine and isopropyl, were for a mobile nail bar business run by one of his friends.

Asked what she thought the envelopes were for, Nicolaou told the court: ‘My son didn’t give me no explanation.

‘It wasn’t something I was suspicious of, it’s just envelopes.

‘The only way I was going to know if they were for criminality is if he had told me so himself.’

She said when she first challenged her son over the purchases he reacted badly.

‘He jumped down my throat,’ she told the court.

‘He said to me that he’s an adult, he’s not a child, he can spend that money as he wishes.

‘I put it to him that he was being reckless with the money my mother had given to him.

‘He said it’s his choice. That it’s nothing to do with me, none of my business.’

Nicolaou said he threatened to transfer the money to someone else if she didn’t do as he asked.

She said that while she passed many of the items directly to Mullings, she was told to put some of them on a path by the side of her house for others to collect.

She thought her son had asked her not to meet his friends because he was ashamed of her.

Nicolaou wept as she told the court: ‘I began to think me son wasn’t proud of me and I actually felt that he was ashamed of me because at the time I was classed as morbidly obese.’

Nicolaou, of Merton, south London, Ahmed, Binfgih and Msaouri-Coulson, both of Islington, north London, deny conspiring with Mullings and others to smuggle spice and anabolic steroids into Swaleside prison between December 2016 and February 2017.

All four also deny conspiring with Mullings and others to smuggle mobile phones into a number of prisons between June 2016 and March 2018.

Finch, of Crouch End, north London Nicolaou and Binfgih deny conspiring with Mullings and others to smuggle spice into Swaleside prison between March and August 2017.

Nicolaou, Binfgih, Kaplan, of Waltham Cross, Herts, and Finch deny conspiring with Mullings and others to supply heroin between March 2017 and June 2017.

Nicolaou, Kaplan and Finch deny conspiring with Mullings and others to supply spice between March 2017 and June 2017.

Nicolaou, Ahmed and Finch deny conspiring with Mullings and others to smuggle spice into Swaleside prison, Wormwood Scrubs and other prisons between September 2017 and October 2019.

Finch alone denies conspiring with Mullings and others to supply heroin between March 2018 and October 2019.

Finch also denies two counts of conspiring to supply crack cocaine, two counts of supplying fentanyl and one count of conspiring to supply U-47700, between March 2018 and October 2019.

Nicolaou, Kaplan and Finch also deny one count of transferring the proceeds of crime.

Ahmed, Binfgih, Msaouri-Coulson, Kaplan and Finch all deny transmitting or causing to transmit text messages or images from jail between January 2016 and December 2019.

Nicolaou has admitted this offence, which relates to phone calls to and from her son.

The trial continues.