A scrambler yob found with more than 2.5kgs of MDMA told police he was just holding it for his drug dealer.
Ryan Blake, from Garston, was caught with around £100,000 worth of ecstasy when police raided his home in 2019. Yet in a bizarre attempt to diminish his guilt, the 26 year old told officers his own dealer, known simply as ‘Gary’, had asked him to hold the colossal amount of ecstasy - then never asked for it back.
Yesterday, a judge told Blake, who has been jailed before for a cowardly scrambler bike attack on police, that his excuse was unbelievable as he jailed him at Liverpool Crown Court. Kyra Badman, prosecuting, told the court police raided Blake’s home on November 11, 2019, and found 2.62kg of ecstasy. The drugs, at 32% purity, were judged to have a street value of between £78,000 and £130,000.
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Blake pleaded guilty to possession with intent to supply but said his role in the scheme was a minor one and that he was actually just holding drugs for a drug dealer to whom he owed a £800 debt. In a statement to the court he said his dealer, ‘Gary’, asked him to hold on to the package for a short period in exchange for the debt being cancelled.
Blake said: “He said if I agreed to it for a day he would cancel the debt and I agreed. He never came back.” Judge Robert Trevor-Jones rubbished Blake’s claims that he was only a minor player in the drugs scheme. He said Blake, who had previously been recruited to sell drugs in 2016 after running up a similar debt, must have known he was getting involved in drug dealing on a significant scale.
He said: “It is abundantly clear that the dealer must have placed considerable trust in the defendant to ask him to keep the drugs safe for a significant period of time. This account involves the dealer never returning or even seeking the return of the drugs. That does not add up. It is an incredible account.”
Blake was also found with eight wraps of cocaine during a separate police search in July 2020. While police said he was also dealing commercially on that occasion, the judge in his case sided with Blake and said it is possible he was set to share the 3.9g of cocaine he had among his friends rather than sell them to others.
Jonathan Duffy, defending, said Blake’s bizarre account was partly explained by his nerves when dealing with police. He said: “I would ask the court to bear in mind his age and the fact he was obviously very nervous giving evidence. He is not a confident man in his general presentation.”
Blake, of Hughes Street, was jailed for seven years and 11 months after pleading guilty to possession of both cocaine and ecstasy with intent to supply. The ECHO has previously reported on how Blake and a friend launched a revenge attack on a police officer, chucking a brick through the rear windscreen of his car from a scrambler bike.
That incident, which happened three months after he was found with MDMA in his home, saw either Blake or the unidentified man strike driver PC John Prescott in the back of the head. PC Prescott was left with only minor injuries after the attack on Speke Road in February 2020. Blake was jailed for 16 months after a court heard he and his accomplice carried out the attack as revenge for another friend’s scrambler bike being seized.
