Smuggling mastermind must pay £500k

Michael Hartshorne "frittered away" the other £500,000 profit he made to fund a lavish lifestyle, Judge Nicholas Webb ruled yesterday at Wolverhampton Crown Court.

But the judge refused to accept the 44-year-old, of Cemetery Road, Lye, Stourbridge, had spent the entire £1m he made. And a confiscation order was made for him to pay back £461,000 within six months or face a further three-and-a-half years in jail.

He was in charge of the UK end of an operation linked to the Netherlands which brought millions of pounds of cannabis to the West Midlands between 2004 and 2006,

Hartshorne, who is a year into an 11-year sentence for the importation of controlled drugs, denied throughout the three-day proceeds of crime hearing he had cash stashed away. Despite living in a council house and his payslip saying he only made £250 a week, the court heard the father-of-two spent a total of £140,850 on luxury cars including two BMW X5s, a Land Rover Discovery and a Mercedes CLK 320, as well as his ice cream van, worth £17,000.

He also gambled £288,000 at Castle Hill Casino, where he lost £206,000, spent £5,000 on a cruise, built a conservatory, splashed out on a 50 inch TV, and spent £7,048 on jewellery for his wife in Barbados.

Taking into account that 60 per cent of the smuggled goods was cannabis and deducting living costs, Judge Webb calculated a net profit of £10m for the gang, of which he estimated Hartshorne to have made £1m. The judge said: "I do not believe for a minute he frittered away everything and did not put anything away for the future. He lied to me when he said he did not know he could be deprived of these assets.'

"I have made every allowance I can for Michael Hartshorne but he must have received at least £1 million for his involvement and spent at least half of that."