Jailed bricklayer "left with no assets" (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Jailed bricklayer "left with no assets"

3:49pm Wednesday 10th March 2010

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A 41-YEAR-OLD Cotswolds bricklayer jailed for three years for cocaine dealing no longer has any assets available for confiscation under the Proceeds of Crime Act, a judge accepted.

Brian Creed of Salmonsbury Cottages, Station Road, Bourton on the Water, was jailed last April and at a subsequent confiscation hearing was said to have made £50,000 from his crime.

At that hearing Gloucester Crown Court found that he had available assets of £15,000 which would have to be forfeit.

But earlier this week, Creed was back before the court to ask for a variation of the confiscation order on the grounds that the £15,000 assets never materialised.

His solicitor Jason Coulter explained that the figure had been based on the estimated equity in Creed's house.

But it had now been repossessed because he has not paid the mortgage and he has ended up with nothing, he said.

Prosecutor Mary Harley said the Crown accepted that Creed was penniless and in debt and that the £15,000 was not available.

She asked the court to make a confiscation order in the nominal sum of £1 - just in case Creed wins the Lottery or comes into money in some other way.

Judge Martin Picton agreed and made a formal confiscation order for £1 saying: "It is a nominal order to guard against some future enrichment, should that happen."

Last year the court heard how Creed had started to dealing 'to make ends meet' after he lost his job and could not afford his own £500 a week addiction.

Police got wind of Brian Creed's illicit trade and dramatically arrested him in Bourton's British Legion Club as he tried to flee through the bar with a bag of cocaine in his hand, the court heard.

He was jailed for 3 years after he admitted supplying cocaine and three charges of possessing cocaine and crack cocaine with intent to supply.

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