A Mr Big who boasted of making as much in a week selling drugs as he did in 12 months working his £30k-a-year car plant job will have to pay back just £2,010 under proceeds of crime rules.
A judge at Oxford Crown Court ruled on Monday that Malachi Charles made £10,010 from his wholesale drug dealing operation.
But the 40-year-old former BMW plant worker will have to pay back just £2,010 – the ‘available amount’ that can be confiscated as the proceeds of crime.
Although Charles has been given the three months to pay the sum, the deadline is academic. The £2,010 is cash seized by detectives during the course of their investigation and currently held in police stores.
READ MORE: Cocaine dealer who called himself 'Satin Seal' held down £30k a year job at BMW
Last year, Charles was given 12 years and three months in jail for conspiracy to supply class A drugs and perverting the course of justice.
He was undone by messages to associates on the heavily-encrypted communications network EncroChat – cracked by French police in 2020.
Charles, writing under the username ‘Satin Seal’, spoke of going into business with another EncroChat user ‘Natural Royal’ to deal wholesale amounts of cocaine.
He put Natural Royal in touch with importer ‘Useful Mind’. Natural Royal told Charles of his ambition to put in orders for 10kg of cocaine a week. They talked about where they could warehouse the cocaine, with Charles saying he knew a 20-year-old woman who could do it. They concluded they would ‘need someone middle aged who will appreciate cash for storing drugs’.
Charles boasted to the gang’s banker, ‘Living Mint’, of making as much from his drugs business in a week from as he did in a month at his £30,000-a year BMW plant job.
He told her he made £2,000 a week from drugs, including from four ‘drivers’ each bringing in £250 a week and a ‘safe house’ worth £250 a week.
Mitigating, Michael Neofytou said last September that those boasts had been ‘no more than bravado’. His client and ‘Natural Royal’ had dealt a kilo of cocaine but had only ambitions to sell more.
“There is often much big talk among those within an enterprise of this nature. The reality is different as this case has shown,” the barrister said.
Malachi Charles and Thomas Webb Pictures: SEROCU
Charles was sent to clear up the mess when fellow dealer Thomas Webb was pulled over behind the wheel of a ‘stash’ car in which was hidden a kilo of ketamine.
Inside his car was a remote-controlled secret compartment in which he’d stashed a kilo of ketamine.
Within 40 minutes of Webb’s arrest, Charles was at the suspect’s home in Broadfields, Oxford. He used a breeze block to smash a hole in the dealer’s plastic front door.
When police arrived the kitchen had been ransacked, with an obvious space in one cupboard where an item appeared to have been removed.
Thomas Webb's remote controlled hide in his Vauxhall Insignia Picture: SEROCU
Prosecutor Robert Forrest said it was supposed the missing item was drugs, although Charles’ barrister said he’d been tasked to remove cash from the house. Police found electronic cash counters and debtor lists showing transactions worth thousands of pounds that had been left behind at the Broadfields home.
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