Penniless drug dealer told to pay back £1

A bungling Black Country drug dealer jailed for five years when Royal Mail staff smelled £8,000 worth of cannabis he was trying to smuggle through the post is now penniless, a judge was told.

Gervin Chambers, who is still serving the prison sentence, was ordered to pay a nominal £1 at a proceeds of crime hearing.

Mr John Evans, prosecuting, told Wolverhampton Crown Court: "We are satisfied after an investigation that he has no realisable assets."

Mr Jon Roe, defending, agreed that the £1 should be paid within 28 days and Chambers, who attended the hearing, was returned to jail to complete his sentence.

The tell-tale package had been mailed by recorded delivery to Aberdeen by 34-year-old Chambers, who used his own address as that of the sender.

It was intercepted at the Sun Street mail depot in Wolverhampton and police inquiries discovered it had been dropped off by a mystery man for delivery at the Post Office in Bargate Drive, Whitmore Reans, in June last year.

The sender's details on the back of the parcel gave Chambers' own address in nearby Glentworth Gardens. The handwriting matches his.

He even made a number of phone calls to the Royal Mail to complain that the package had not been delivered to the hairdressers in Aberdeen.

Chambers was arrested the following month and jailed in June this year for five years after being convicted by a jury of attempting to supply drugs.

Mr Roe, defending, told the court after the verdict had been given: "He was being paid £500 for selling these drugs.

"This was not to fund a lavish lifestyle but because he owes a lot of money. He was acting like a courier transporting the drugs between two locations."