A drug mule who owed his mum money tried to smuggle cannabis through Manchester Airport. Dean Pharoah has been locked up after suspicious Border Force officers caught him when he arrived back in the UK following a holiday in Thailand.
After being arrested, he denied having a drug debt but said he had owed his mother money. Manchester Crown Court heard that he was found with more than £200,000-worth of the class B drug.
Prosecuting, James Preece told how Pharoah arrived at Manchester Airport from Thailand via Dubai on August 28. He had two large suitcases, and another smaller one.
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He returned to the UK following a nine day trip to the Far East. Pharoah was approached by Border Force officers as he travelled through the ‘nothing to declare’ channel.
He told the officers he was carrying the two larger suitcases for a friend and claimed he didn’t know what was inside them. Pharoah also denied knowing the code number to unlock the bags.
But officers used the code ‘000’ and unlocked both suitcases, discovering 53.65 kilos of cannabis inside, worth £214,600 at wholesale level.
“It’s cannabis, isn’t it?,” Pharoah said after the officers opened the suitcases. He was arrested and later told police that while he had been in Thailand, he’d been offered money to smuggle drugs back to the UK.
Pharoah said he had expected to receive £10,000 after returning on home soil. But he said he ‘didn’t think there would be as much cannabis as there was’.
He told officers he was a drug user. Pharoah denied having any drug debt but said he did owe his mother some money. He refused to give the police the PIN number for his phone.
Pharoah claimed to have been ‘under some pressure’ to commit the offence but denied he’d been threatened. The 28-year-old, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to one count of being concerned in the fraudulent evasion of a prohibition on the importation of a class B drug.
Defending, Shila Whitehead said that the defendant had given a ‘full and frank account’ to police and had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity. Sentencing, Judge John Potter told Pharoah: “People like you, who take part in importing commercial quantities of cannabis like this, must and no doubt would expect on capture to be sent to prison. That is the fate that awaits you.”
The judge said Pharoah’s debts may have been the reason he decided to become involved in the ‘enterprise’. Pharoah was sentenced to 26 months in jail.
