A Helston “gardener” caught with £134,000 worth of drugs in his boot and a huge cannabis farm in his garage was jailed this week.

William Anthony Mason, pictured below, was sentenced on Friday for his part in a larger conspiracy centred on Falmouth and Newquay, which saw nearly a million pounds worth of narcotics seized by the police in the biggest drugs bust in Cornish history.

Falmouth Packet:

Mason, aged 50, was stopped in January 2011 by officers working on “Operation Ipanema,” as the investigation was known, while driving back to his home at Carminowe near Ashton from a pub in Surrey.

In his boot was a holdall containing nine kilos of amphetamine and 750g of cocaine.

A search of his home address also uncovered an extensive cannabis plantation set up in two separate tents within his detached double garage.

The 481 plants recovered had a potential yield of 12kg that, along with the 5kg already harvested, could have fetched an estimated £100,000 on the street.

Mason acted as a “hired hand” for a gang of Falmouth drug dealers headed by Roy Ernest Jones, aged 33, of Porhan Green, Truro Crown Court heard.

His name was saved in one of the gang’s phone as “gardener,” but defence lawyer Jeremy Leaning insisted that Mason “did not hold a significant role in these offences.”

“He was paid per task,” Mr Leaning said, adding that for the drive back from Surrey “he would have been paid £200 petrol expenses, against drugs said to be worth on the street £134,000.”

“Probably it would have cost more to engage a taxi driver innocently to have made that journey,” Mr Leaning said.

Mason claimed to have not known what was going on in his garage initially and said that Roy Wilks, part of the Falmouth gang, had asked to use it to store some furniture.

“You are, in effect, saying ‘all I did was allow them to use my garage’,” said sentencing Judge John Neligan.

But “it’s not as if” he said to Wilks “if you want to store furniture in my garage, by all means, here’s the key I will be back in six months time,” Mr Neligan said.

“What he is doing is seeing it all arrive, set up and watering it twice.”

Mr Leaning argued that Mason did not see the cannabis or growing equipment arrive and that he was “involved through naivety and, we would submit, a degree of exploitation.”

“Stupidity it certainly was,” Mr Neligan replied, “but I don’t think at his age you have the argument of naivete.”

Mason was sentenced to three and half years in jail, with the judge showing leniency due to his wife’s poor state of health.

Although “her condition was not as it is now when you committed these offences,” he said.

 

For the full story of Cornwall's biggest drugs investigation click here