Chatteris: Mum Pays Back Thousands After Supplying Drugs

30 April 2014, 10:32 | Updated: 30 April 2014, 10:37

A Mum who was caught supplying drugs to her serving prisoner son via inmates on day release has been ordered to pay back £14,000 - despite the narcotics being worth just a fraction of that amount.

Alicia Robertson, 53, was jailed for 14 months in October after she admitted handing cannabis and ketamine to inmates while they worked at a Huntingdon school on day release.

Now she has been ordered to hand over the £13,690 cash which was found in her Chatteris home at the time of her arrest.

Despite initially contesting that the cash was from legitimate sources, she eventually conceded that she was unable to give a viable explanation for where it had come from. She was judged to have benefitted by a total of £14,101 from crime.

Economic Crime Unit Manager, Paul Prosser said: "Our investigations showed a number of deposits into her bank account which she could not explain.

"Despite the seized drugs only having a street value of around £550, Alicia Robertson has ended up paying around 25 times that amount thanks to the Proceeds of Crime Act.

"This should send a clear message that we will do everything in our powers to pursue criminals to ensure they do not benefit through their crime. In fact they may find themselves even worse off that when they started."

The 53-year-old had set up the deal with Saxon Gamblin and Matthew Spice in April, last year, in order to get the drugs back into HMP Littlehey where Robertson's 22-year-old son, Daniel, was serving a seven-year sentence for armed robbery.

Gamblin and Spice were discovered to have packages of drugs hidden inside them when they returned to the prison.

Police found £13,690 in cash when they searched Alicia Robertson's home in High Street, Chatteris.

Other packages of drugs were later discovered hidden in the school grounds.

At the original hearing in October, Daniel Robertson, was jailed for three years after pleading guilty to two counts of being concerned in the supply of a controlled drug.

Gamblin, 21, of Manchester Road, London, admitted two counts of bringing a List A article into prison and was jailed for 14 months while Spice, 21, from Essex,was handed an eight-week sentence for one count of that charge.