A BUTCHER has received a suspended sentence after being caught on the M6 transporting three bags of cannabis in his car worth a whopping £90,000.
Dmitrjs Kalmus appeared in Carlisle Crown Court yesterday, where he pleaded guilty to possessing nine kilograms of the drug with intent to supply.
The 42-year-old dad was stopped by police near Carlisle on October 11 after suspicions were raised about him driving solely in the middle lane, despite the others being empty.
He claimed to have been collecting the cannabis for a friend, who offered him £500 to take it from Edinburgh down to Hull, but said he was unaware that it was worth almost six figures.
Kalmus, a Hull resident, told officers that he had been in Edinburgh in order to look at a bike for his son.
Prosecutor Gerard Rogerson stated in court: “He said he didn’t want to proceed with the purchase and in telling the story changed the apparent sex of the person he was purchasing the bike from.”
After becoming suspicious, Cumbria Police searched the boot of the car and found three vacuum-packed packages of cannabis.
William Chipperfield, who defended Kalmus in court, stated: “He did not know the person he was going to meet, and he did not know the quantity of drugs he was going to collect and did not expect it to be such a large quantity.”
“He is extremely nervous about going to prison.”
The court accepted that Kalmus’s involvement in the drug network extended no further than being a courier, and he was defended as a married man who had lived 14 years in the UK as a butcher.
It was also noted that, due to an injury, Kalmus found work difficult and was in need of money, therefore agreed to the £500 in return for collecting the drugs from Edinburgh.
Judge Michael Fanning accepted that there was no evidence on the defendant’s phone to suggest he was significantly involved in the drug market, and he did not possess a burner phone but did know he was taking a risk by agreeing to collect the cannabis.
As reported in the Cumberland News and Star, the judge commented: “A ‘mere’ courier is a vital link in the drugs trade and without somebody they can trust to transport £90,000 worth of cannabis down the motorway there is no distribution network.
“They were huge packages, filling the boot of your car; you acknowledged that it was cannabis.”
As Kalmus was deemed unlikely to offend again, the judge suspended his eight-month jail term, which includes 200 hours of unpaid community work.
