A Birmingham family ‘smuggled spice into prisons around the country by soaking fake legal letters in the class B drug in their garden shed’, a court heard. Larry Barnett junior, aged 38, has been accused of being the ‘ringleader’ behind a ‘lucrative’ plot that allegedly made thousands of pounds between March and December in 2019.
Background of the Drug Smuggling Operation
A jury was told that he, along with his father Larry Barnett senior, 61, and step-mother Andrea Simpkin, 53, of Plowden Road, Stechford, used the logos of Birmingham-based Purcell Parker Solicitors on their letters to fool security, even though the law firm had nothing to do with the illegal operation.
Birmingham Crown Court was told a single sheet of A4 paper ‘impregnated’ with spice could fetch up to £300 inside a jail. Barnett senior and Simpkin have admitted their involvement but Barnett junior denies a charge of conspiring to convey drugs into a prison.
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Opening the case against him today, Wednesday, September 11, prosecutor Robert Forrest explained that spice, also known as ‘mamba’, was a class B synthetic cannabinoid which was typically manufactured in laboratories outside of the UK and imported illegally, either in powder or liquid form. He told the jury it could be smoked on its own, with tobacco, placed in a vape, or ingested via a drink.
Mr. Forrest said, “The versatility of synthetic cannabinoids means it can also be sprayed onto paper or soaked into paper. In-turn when the paper has been impregnated with that drug you can ingest that paper and still experience the effects of the drug.
“So for drug dealers up and down the country seeking to supply prisoners with drugs, you may think this drug maybe extremely appealing to them to simply spray it onto bits of paper then send those letters into prison. That’s the way drugs were being supplied into prisons in 2019. That’s what this case is all about.
“The prosecution say Larry Barnett junior was the ringleader of a group of people who all engaged in a common purpose of sending letters laced with the drug spice, into various prisons between March and December 2019.”
Legal Correspondence as a Smuggling Tactic
Mr. Forrest added that ‘extra efforts to evade detection’ were made by marking up the letters as ‘legal correspondence’. He explained there were ‘more stringent checks’ on such letters under what was referred to as ‘rule 39’, which meant that they could only be opened by security if there was ‘reasonable cause to believe it contains illicit substances’.
The court heard prisons used sniffer dogs and Rapiscan machines to try and detect letters containing drugs.
Mr. Forrest stated that both Barnett senior and Simpkin received around £50,000 worth of ‘repeated cash deposits’ in their bank accounts between March and December 2019 despite neither declaring any income with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). He added that many transactions could be ‘directly linked’ to serving prisoners or their relatives. The jury was told that in June that year when the conspiracy was ‘in full swing’, Barnett junior was remanded into custody over an unrelated accusation.
Mr. Forrest said, “That didn’t stop him taking part in his criminal enterprise, if anything the prosecution say it gave him better access to his chosen market of other prisoners. He continued to run his drug dealing business using a series of illicit phones in the prison.”
He stated phones seized from the defendant’s cell contained messages requesting ‘sheets’ laced with drugs. Mr. Forrest told the court when Barnett senior’s and Simpkin’s property was searched in January 2020, police found paper impregnated with spice.
He added, “In their garden shed was a table which tested positive for NPS (new psychoactive substance), synthetic cannabinoid, and there were also gloves and masks. The prosecution say it’s pretty clear the garden shed was being used as a base from which this operation could be run.”
Mr. Forrest stated the main ‘issue’ in the trial was that Barnett has not accepted sending the drug-related messages found on the phones seized. He confirmed that Barnett senior and Simpkin had pleaded guilty to conspiring to convey drugs into prison, which he argued ‘proves there was a conspiracy’.
The court heard 15 letters were intercepted in total. The first was recovered at HMP Garth in Lancashire on March 8, 2019 and displayed the logo of Purcell Parker Solicitors. Mr. Forrest described the business as a ‘reputable and respected firm of criminal law solicitors in the city’.
He added, “There is no suggestion in the case the firm or any of its employees were anything to do with the criminality. The prosecution say those involved in the conspiracy must simply have copied their logo somehow to further their enterprise. Purcell Parker is nothing to do with this other than their logo was chosen in this case.”
The prosecutor stated that ‘short, anodyne’ legal letters were drafted to disguise the fact they contained spice. He told the jury that at the time spice was ‘pretty cheap’ to purchase on the street with half a gram worth around £10.
But Mr. Forrest added that a drugs expert, due to give evidence in the trial, has estimated that inside a prison ‘a single sheet of A4 paper could be as much as £300’.
The trial continues
