A man caught with more than four kilos of cocaine in his self-storage unit has been ordered to pay tens of thousands of pounds under proceeds of crime powers. John Kear must a total of £82,528 following a probe by financial investigators. Earlier this year, Kear was sentenced to seven years and two months in prison after police raided a unit at MyBox Storage in Baglan and uncovered a stash of cocaine.
Officers found a 249g block of compressed coke with a purity of 84 per cent and four packages each of just under one kilo of cocaine in powder form. The purity of these packages was 10 per cent which was said to be “standard purity”. Also in the unit was a pair of black latex gloves and a number of documents in the name of Kear, the person renting the unit. At the sentencing hearing Kear’s barrister said his client had agreed to store the cocaine for others “in a moment of weakness and stupidity”.
A Proceeds of Crime Act hearing before Judge Catherine Richards at Swansea Crown Court heard financial investigators had concluded that 57-year-old Kear benefited from his criminal conduct to the tune of £621,566 while available assets totaling £82,528 had been identified. A confiscation order was made in the available sum. In March this year, John Joseph Kear, of Silver Avenue, Sandfields, Port Talbot, was sentenced to seven years and two months in prison after pleading guilty to possession of cocaine with intent to supply, being concerned in the supply of cocaine, and possession of criminal property.
At the sentencing hearing, the defendant’s barrister, Lloyd Jenkins, said the bulk of the client’s 58 previous offenses had been committed when he was a young man. He said Kear was now a family man and grandfather who worked buying, selling, and valeting cars but who had, in a “moment of weakness and stupidity”, given in to “persistent requests” from others to store the drugs. He said it was his instructions that his client was paid £1,500 for storing the cocaine. The barrister said Kear knew he had let himself and his family down, and he bitterly regrets and is ashamed of what he did.
In 2004, Kear was sentenced to eight months in prison for money laundering in connection with a large-scale drug supply conspiracy which spanned southwest Wales from Port Talbot to Cardigan.