[420 Girl]

A BUSINESSMAN was told he faces a "very long custodial sentence" after being found guilty yesterday of smuggling 3.5 tonnes of cannabis resin into Northern Ireland.

Police caught Martin Kerfoot, a director of a transport and storage company based in an industrial estate in the Quarry Heights area of Newtownards, Co Down, with a lorry-load of the class-C drug in his business premises on October 10 2006.

The haul was the largest ever seizure of cannabis in the north with a street value of about #13 million. The drugs had been concealed in hollowed-out wooden doors which were stacked into pallets, loaded on to a lorry and smuggled in from Spain.

When police stormed Kerfoot's premises they found that the drugs were being unloaded into a rental van and a company vehicle.

Kerfoot (40), of Seacliff Road in Bangor, admitted arranging the shipment but denied knowing it contained drugs. He claimed he had acted under duress, having been threatened by a loyalist paramilitary called ‘Davy'. However, the jury at Belfast Crown Court did not believe his story.

They found him guilty of importing cannabis, supplying a controlled drug to another and having a class-C drug with intent to supply.

As the foreman of the jury read out the verdicts Kerfoot put his head in his hands. Mr Justice McLaughlin spoke of the "unprecedented cargo of cannabis coming into this country".

"Quite frankly, the courts are going to drop a ton of bricks on anyone involved in this," he said.

"Some businessmen seem to think the answer to their problems is to make a quick buck from drugs."

The judge warned Kerfoot that he faced "the absolute full rigours of the law" and told him to expect "a very long custodial sentence".

The judge refused bail and remanded Kerfoot in custody but did not set a date for sentencing.

http://www.420magazine.com/forums/in...jail-term.html