This was the moment a woman was caught with a whopping £750,000 cocaine haul after being stopped on the M6. Linda Laurence had more than 9kg of the class A drug in the boot of her Mitsubishi ASX, which ‘would have gone on to cause untold misery on the streets of the UK’.
Staffordshire Police officers pulled the 58-year-old over at Norton Canes Motorway Service Station on October 8 last year, as it was suspected drugs would be found inside. During a search of her vehicle, nine blocks of cocaine were found in an open cardboard box in the boot, prompting the officer to say ‘bingo’.
Officers also found two mobile phones, her passport, a roll of brown parcel tape, plastic disposable gloves, pieces of paper with phone numbers on them, hotel receipts, and £140 in cash. Bank statements found at her home also showed several hundreds of pounds had been paid into her account at ‘random’ intervals over a period of at least a year.
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Lawrence, of St Neots, Cambridgeshire, admitted possession with intent to supply class A drugs and was jailed for six years at Stafford Crown Court on January 9. Following the sentencing, DC Liam O’Brien, from the Regional Organised Crime Unit for the West Midlands, said: “We believe Lawrence was being paid by others to transport these drugs around the country, and investigations into the wider drugs network continue.
“This was a really significant seizure of class A drugs – drugs which would have gone on to cause untold misery on the streets of the UK. We work across the region to disrupt and arrest those involved in the supply and sale of drugs.”