A DRUG dealer believed to have profited nearly £1million from selling cocaine, amphetamine and cannabis has been given less than three months to pay almost £140,000 – or face another year on his 13-year jail sentence.
Self-employed builder Jason Killick had been convicted after a trial at Warwick Crown Court last year of conspiring to supply cocaine, concealing £197,000 worth of criminal property and money laundering.
He had admitted further charges of conspiring to supply cannabis grown at addresses in Rugby and Coventry and possessing more than two kilos of amphetamine with intent to supply it.
And in May last year Judge Peter Carr jailed Killick, 45, of The Paddocks, Warwick Road, Wolston, for a total of 13 years.
Now, following an investigation by Warwickshire Police financial investigation officers, Killick has been made subject to an order under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
Judge Carr, who is now sitting at Birmingham Crown Court, heard it was calculated that Killick’s benefit from all of his illegal activities was a staggering £955,315.
But Robert Price, prosecuting in the proceeds of crime hearing, said it was agreed that Killick’s available assets amounted to a value of just under £140,000.
So the judge ordered £139,856 to be confiscated from Killick under the Proceeds of Crime Act, with £15,333 to be paid forthwith and the balance by March 4.
Judge Carr ordered that if it is not all paid by that date, Killick will face an additional 12 months in jail – and will still have to pay up.
During the trial prosecutor Philip Bradley had said the conspiracy involved the ordering and collection of cocaine from Oldham and Sheffield, and there were eight deliveries of the drug to be sold on the streets of Rugby.
Between the arrest of a man who had played a leading role in the conspiracy and April 2011 there was a great deal of phone contact between another conspirator and Killick, mainly around the dates when consignments of cocaine were due.
When Killick was arrested, two kilos of amphetamine was found in two blocks at the home he shared with his long-term partner.
He said he was storing the larger block for a friend, and that the smaller block was for his own use, and that he would mix it with an adulterant in a smoothie mixer before using it – but the mixer contained traces of cocaine and the adulterant benzocaine.
Officers also found scales with traces of cocaine and £6,000 worth of cannabis-growing equipment.
Killick and another man had earlier been seen taking bags from a house in Gunton Avenue, Coventry, and in the house police found 55 plants capable of producing £35,000 worth of cannabis.
In a flat over the Bloc nightclub in Coventry was evidence that it had also been used for growing cannabis; and although that operation had been closed down, Killick had been seen removing equipment from the flat.
And the loft of a flat in a property owned by Killick in Railway Terrace, Rugby, had been turned into a cannabis factory where the police found 21 plants with an estimated street value of £9,450 when they raided it in June 2012.
Mr Bradley said Killick’s declared income as a self-employed builder/handyman was obtained from HMRC and amounted to £89,392 over a period from 2003 to 2012.
“During the period investigated, £286,411 went into his bank accounts. This amounted to £197,000 more than his declared income. These payments are the proceeds of organised crime; they are drugs money.”
To squirrel away the money, Killick paid cash into his mother’s bank account and asked her to transfer sums of money to accounts he held in the United States and Costa Rica, and to pay a $35,000 dollar deposit on a property in Costa Rica for him.
