A beauty therapist who was jailed for ten years after she was caught with £1.5m of cocaine in her car has been ordered to pay back just £41.
Police caught Stephanie Nelson driving through the Dartford Tunnel with 15kg of high purity cocaine hidden in a sophisticated purpose-built hide in the boot of her car.
Nelson, 30, who owned Porsche Cosmetics on Queens Drive, was pregnant at the time of her arrest on June 10 last year. She later gave birth behind bars.
Nelson, from Wilmslow, later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply cocaine and was jailed for 10 years. That was later reduced to eight years and three months on appeal in May this year.
The Cheshire woman used social media to boast about her glamourous lifestyle, posing for photographs in exotic resorts and on board yacts.
Other pictures showed the drug smuggler tucking into meals at top restaurants in Marbella, including celebrity favourite NOBU and Olivia's La Cala.
Prosecutors has originally claimed that Nelson made almost £700,000 from her involvement in a drugs plot.
But during a Proceeds of Crime Hearing last Thursday ( October 22) at Maidstone Crown Court, a judge was told that after 'negotiations and compromise' it had been agreed her ill-gotten gains totalled a much more meagre £10,000.
And, as her available assets were said to amount to just the £41.05 taken from her on arrest, she was ordered to pay that sum within 28 days, or serve a further 14 days behind bars in default.
At a previous hearing, the prosecution had assessed her financial benefit to be approximately £692,000, with available assets of a car worth just over £4,500.
Her legal team however argued she had not been paid a penny, and investigators were given time to look into her financial affairs.
Prosecutor Tom Nicholson told Judge David Griffith-Jones QC that it was now accepted she was paid the much lower figure of £10,000, as 'reflected' in her bank statements. No mention was made of the car.
Enter your postcode for local news and updates from your area:
Nelson was arrested last year after a NCA investigation into the activies which funded her enviable lifestyle.
On the day of her arrest police watched her meet drug dealer John Markham, 53, from Enfield, who was waiting in a white van and handed over two black holdalls.
Nelson drove off and was stopped a short time later in the Dartford Tunnel.
Markham was also jailed for ten years when they both appeared at Maidstone Crown Court on July 18 and pleaded guilty.
After Nelson was jailed last year Adam Warnock, NCA Branch Commander, described how the Cheshire woman used drugs to fund her lifestyle.
He said: “Drug trafficking was Nelson’s passport to a high-rolling lifestyle – an expensive house in Cheshire and exotic holidays all over the world – but it was very high risk and now she is behind bars. We believe the drugs run we observed was her sixth one this year."
