Police crack drug importer’s phone code to convict him

Ryan Matthew Gray, 22, admitted importing 27.76g of cocaine, and failing to provide information to Law Enforcement under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law.

Advocate Sarah Watson, prosecuting, told the Royal Court that the defendant came from Doncaster, and had moved to Guernsey in September 2021 to work as carpenter.

On 19 August last year, a suspect package was identified at Guernsey Post’s headquarters, which was found to contain the drug. It was addressed to Jose Gonzalez, at 3, St James Street, St Peter Port.

As it was established that the address was being used as a site office for a nearby building development, and many people used it, a controlled delivery was arranged.

At 11.22am on 22 August the package was delivered to the building. Half an hour later the defendant entered the building carrying a backpack with open zips.

When he came out about five minutes later, the zips were done up and he was speaking on a mobile phone.

He said he understood why he was being arrested but said the drug was not his and that ‘I shouldn’t have let him do it’.

In interview he said he met a man called Jay twice in Town bars. Jay had offered him £500 to accept the package and he had arranged to meet Jay at North Beach car park at 7pm on a certain day to pass it to him.

He had not known it was cocaine, but suspected it was ‘something dodgy’.

He denied the package was his but could not explain why it had been posted from 0.8 miles away from where he used to live in Doncaster.

In a second interview he told Customs officers that he did not know if Jay would give them the same story if they met him at North Beach.

His mobile phone was accessed despite his failure to provide the code for it.

Messages recovered from it showed his intention to supply cocaine to third parties. He had also told someone how to conceal the drug and how to post it.

In March 2022, he was convicted in the Magistrate’s Court of possessing two tablets of the class A substance MDMA, commonly known as Ecstasy.

Defending advocate Liam Roffey said his client had made a grave and life-changing mistake and he was terrified of what awaited.

His employer had stuck by him, despite the position he had put himself in.

He had been introduced to cocaine aged 19 and moved to Guernsey to distance himself from previous drug associates as well as for work.

A good portion of the drug would have been for his own use and he would only have supplied it to a small group of friends.

He had not benefited financially from it and since September had been working with the charity In-dependence to address his drug and alcohol issues.

Judge Russell Finch said that had the hi-tech crime unit not have been able to access the phone, some of the defendant’s wrongdoing would have remained hidden.

This was not just the importation of a particularly damaging class A drug but there was evidence of intent to supply.

The defendant had also given ‘a cock and bull story’ at the start about the involvement of another person.