A gym owner who appeared on ITV’s This Morning to protest the 2020 bans has been exposed as a “professional” drug smuggler.
Liverpool’s Nicholas Whitcombe was interviewed on the Breakfast Show in the Fall of 2020 after being fined £ 1,000 for refusing to close his Body Tech Fitness location in Moreton during the national lockdown.
Whitcombe told hosts that he refused to close because he believed gyms were “essential” to the physical and mental health of the population.
He also launched an online fundraiser that reached £ 55,000, something he later said was donated to mental health charities.
ITV
However, he and Jersey resident Anthony Andrew Dryden have now been found guilty of importing £ 54,000 worth of cannabis into Jersey and exporting cash.
The couple’s drug smuggling conspiracy was disrupted when an investigation by Jersey Customs and Immigration Services revealed text messages from Whitcombe telling an employee how to “clean up” his dirty money, the Liverpool Echo reports.
One of the text messages read, “You can clean up your money and you are getting better at it and at some point it will be your legitimate business.”
The investigation found that Whitcombe and Dryden were involved in a conspiracy between 2018 and 2019 to smuggle cannabis resin to the island and launder the money, with Whitcombe operating out of Merseyside and Dryden out of Jersey.
Jersey State Police
Prosecutors said Whitcombe was responsible for procuring the drugs and instructed people to send them from England to a third party at their work address in Jersey.
On Wednesday January 5, both Whitcombe and Dryden were sentenced to three years and six months in prison at the Royal Court of Jersey.
Rhiannon Small, Senior Manager at JCIS, said after the trial, according to ITV Granada: “The prison sentences imposed by the Royal Court reflect the severity of drug trafficking and money laundering on our island; Detecting and preventing such crimes remains a priority for JCIS. “