Lane-hogging M6 driver was transporting cannabis worth £90k

Dmitrjs Kalmus, 42, was caught on the M6 near Carlisle on October 11 after police noticed his car was hogging the middle lane on the southbound carriageway for no apparent reason. Police officers became even more suspicious when he changed small details of his account of why he had been to Scotland. At the city's crown court, the defendant admitted possessing nine kilograms of the Class B drug with intent to supply, entering his guilty plea on the basis that his involvement was limited to acting as a courier.

Prosecutor Gerard Rogerson outlined the facts. The police officers noticed the defendant because his car remained stubbornly in the motorway's middle lane, despite the other lanes being available. He told the officers that he was returning to his home in Hull after a trip to Edinburgh.

He claimed that he had been to the Scottish city to look at a bike that he was considering buying for his son. "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," said Mr Rogerson. Becoming more suspicions, the officers searched the car.

In the boot they found three bags, each one containing three vacuum-packed packaged of cannabis. Mr Rogerson said the prosecution accepted that the defendant's involvement extended no further than being a courier. When police interviewed Kalmus, he volunteered the pin number for his mobile, which was not a burner phone but his persona phone.

William Chipperfield, defending, said the defendant was a married father who had lived in the UK for 14 years, earning his living as a butcher. "He had an injury, which made [his job] difficult," said the barrister. When he was offered GBP500 by a friend in payment for collecting a "package," and because money was tight, he agreed to the plan. Mr Chipperfield highlighted that the Probation Service considered Kalmus posed a "low risk" of reoffending.

The barrister added: "He was going to Scotland to visit a friend and was asked by [another] friend to do him a favour; he tells me he would be paid GBP500. "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."

Judge Michael Fanning accepted that there was no evidence on the defendant's phone to suggest he was anything more than a courier but he had known he was taking a risk by agreeing to collect the cannabis. The judge commented: "A 'mere' courier is a vital link in the drugs trade and without somebody they can trust to transport GBP90,000 worth of cannabis down the motorway there is not distribution network. "They were huge packages, filling the boot of your car; you acknowledged that it was cannabis."

But noting that the defendant, of Grosmont Close, Hull, had shown himself to have a good work ethic, and his limited involvement in the drugs trade, Judge Fanning suspended the eight-month jail term he imposed on the defendant.

Given the Probation Service assessment that he was unlikely to ever become involved in such offending again, said the judge, it was right to conclude that he can be rehabilitated.

The sentence, which is suspended for a year, includes 200 hours of unpaid work.