December 27-2013
A young Iranian man convicted of drug dealing in England has been ordered to fork over almost three-quarters of a million dollars or head off to four years in prison when it was found he was no penny-ante dealer.
Hanif Shakeri, 27, was arrested after failing to stop at a police roadblock in December 2011.
On chasing him down and searching his BMW, officers recovered a small quantity of cannabis and the equivalent of $3,200 in cash. Then they searched his mobile home and found 10 kilos (22 lbs.) of cannabis and $37,000 in cash.
The 27-year-old pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis with intent to supply, careless driving and possession of criminal property in November 2012, and was immediately released due to the time he had spent in custody.
But he was summoned back to court this month when a financial investigation concluded he had made a profit of almost a million dollars from drug dealing and still had almost three-quarters of that in hand.
The magistrate, Matthew Nicklin, ordered Shakeri to hand over his full assets within the next six months or face four years in prison.
Shakeri had claimed that not all of his assets were the result of criminal activity and could be accounted for by transfers of money into his UK bank account by his mother in Iran. He also said some of the cash had come from the sale of property in Iran following the death of his father. But the court did not accept those explanations.