Taxi Driver Must Repay £128k Drug Dealing Profits

A Newport taxi driver caught with 2kg of high purity cocaine must hand over more than £128,000 in ill-gotten gains or face further jail time.

Mohammed Yamin, 55, of Adeline Street, was jailed for six years and six months in 2024 after being arrested on the A472 in the Blackwood area during a Gwent Police covert operation.

The cocaine, found in a plastic bag in the front passenger footwell of his cab, had a purity of between 86 and 88 per cent and was worth around £200,000 on the street. Police also discovered £9,000 cash inside the taxi and a further £8,500 at his home.

At a proceeds of crime hearing at Cardiff Crown Court, Judge Daniel Williams heard that Yamin had profited by £128,409.38. With more than £400,000 in available assets, he was ordered to pay the full amount within three months or face an additional 15 months in prison.

Yamin was found guilty by a jury following a trial of possession with intent to supply cocaine. He had claimed he didn’t know what was inside the bag, telling jurors he had met a man on a deserted road who put it in his car and told him to take it to the Blackwood area.

Prosecutor Daniel Jones told Swansea Crown Court: “The prosecution say that the defendant had a significant role in the enterprise and played an operational function as a trusted courier within the chain.”

Defence barrister Yamin Bashir said: “It was a single trip from point A to point B. The defendant is a man of previous good character with no convictions recorded against him.”

Recorder Simon Hughes told Yamin: “You are not yourself a cocaine addict and therefore you were dealing for financial advantage. You were under no obligation, coercion, intimidation or groomed to become involved in this group drug trading. It must have been clear to you that this was a large scale operation.”