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BBC News, Essex
Getty ImagesA certified footballer who imported £600,000 price of hashish from Thailand to the United Kingdom has been jailed for 4 years.
Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, 34, orchestrated the smuggling of a 60kg (132lb) medication haul that was once discovered at London Stansted Airport, Essex, on 2 September.
He was once sacked through Scottish membership Greenock Morton after being arrested, having up to now performed for Arsenal, Aberdeen and England at early life stage.
“It is through your own actions you will no longer be known as a professional footballer; you will be known as a criminal,” Judge Alexander Mills advised him at Chelmsford Crown Court.
“A professional footballer who threw it all away.”
Emmanuel-Thomas recruited his female friend, Yasmin Piotrowska, 33, and her 28-year-old pal Rosie Rowland, to smuggle the Class B drug into the United Kingdom.
Border Force officials on the airport discovered vacuum-packed hashish saved throughout 4 suitcases they transported from Bangkok to Essex.
NCAMobile telephone research connected Emmanuel-Thomas to the invention, with him texting Miss Piotrowska to “delete everything from our chat if you can” when she was once stopped and searched.
He then travelled to Stratford, east London, on 5 September and changed his personal cell phone, prosecutor David Josse KC stated.
Emmanuel-Thomas was once arrested at his house in Cardwell Road, in Gourock close to Glasgow, Scotland, on 18 September.
Mr Josse stated he used his “influence as a professional footballer” to trick the ladies, additionally providing them an all bills paid go back and forth to Thailand and £2,500 in money.
Charges towards Ms Piotrowska and Ms Rowland had been dropped after it emerged they concept they had been transporting gold, a prior listening to was once advised.
But Emmanuel-Thomas was once to be paid £5,000 through an unknown particular person for a a hit operation, stated Mr Josse.
Getty Images‘Catastrophic error’
The court docket was once learn a handwritten letter penned through the footballer to Judge Mills.
In it, he wrote: “This past year has been the most harmful and eye-opening of my life.
“At occasions it’s been insufferable.”
He said seeing his daughter visit him in prison was one of the toughest moments of his life.
“Watching her stroll into the distance broke me,” he added. “I by no means sought after her to look me in that gentle.”
NCAHis barrister, Alex Rose, said he was tempted into crime during “important monetary laborious occasions” when out of contract.
Referencing the footballer’s arrest, he said: “When he had that knock at the door and realised it was once the police and he was once going to be arrested, he realised his entire international was once falling in – his occupation as a footballer was once over.
“His football career is finished. That is something he has brought entirely on himself, but it is a devastating blow for somebody who had such promise.”
Mr Rose stated Emmanuel-Thomas struggled with transferring to Scotland to play soccer, including: “That, I am afraid, led to the temptation in this case.
“He succumbed to temptation and a catastrophic error of judgement.”
