A mum who was jailed for her role in a drugs gang could lose £150,000 she won on a scratchcard.
Elaine Hindley, 42, had a "tick list" which was uncovered by detectives searching her home, where police also found a Cartier watch.
The 42-year-old, of Toxteth, Liverpool. ran the drugs supply operation to fund her cocaine habit and was was found out when police stopped her car on April 10 last year.
Hindley was driving with her 13 year old daughter in the car when officers smelt cannabis and noticed the mum-of-two "appeared nervous" reports the Liverpool Echo.
A search was carried out and they removed a large number of sealable pots.
Michael Stephenson, prosecuting, said: "“This is apparently the new practice of supplying cannabis in small pots rather than in snap bags. She was arrested and a search was carried out at her home and in the hallway they recovered a large holdall which had just short of two kilos of female flowering cannabis heads.”
Mr Stephenson said the drug was in a variety of size bags and had a total street value of £28,000.
Officers also recovered dealer tick lists and paraphernalia including sealable pots and scales.
They also found £5,381 cash and a receipt for a Cartier watch.
Hindley's lawyer Ken Heckle told Liverpool Crown Court: “By a quirk of fate several weeks ago she had a winning scratch card, which was shared with another person, of £300,000.”
But the scratch card win will be taken into account as available assets when a Proceeds of Crime hearing is held later this year.
The Proceeds of Crime Act (or POCA) allows the police to apply for cash to be seized from criminals who have made their money from ill-gotten gains.
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Mr Heckle said that although Hindley had not been dealing from the car when stopped by police it was accepted that her two young children “had been exposed to or come across the nature of what she was doing.”
She was the victim of a controlling and coercive relationship with the father of her children and she found him dead from an overdose at her home in December 2018, Mr Heckle said.
Hindley has been bringing up her daughter and young son, in difficult circumstances and Mr Heckle said if she was jailed they will have to go into foster care.
He said she has a foundation degree in stage make-up and following her scratch card windfall “she perceives a brand new life away from all the problems and she very much wants to do that…..She has the ways and means to make a new life for herself.”
Hindley pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis with intent to supply and possessing criminal property.
Judge Stuart Driver, QC, said she had been “supplying cannabis on a significant scale” from her home.
The Liverpool Echo reports that he told her: “The real aggravating feature is that your two children lived with you in the house which was the venue for drug processing and supply and they must have been perfectly well aware of that because you exposed them to it.”
Jailing her for 12 months, Judge Driver said: “I'm afraid appropriate punishment can only be achieved by immediate imprisonment but I am going reduce the sentence very significantly to take into account your children.”
