A drugs courier has been ordered to pay back £20,000 in ill gotten gains after a Judge ruled he had made the money from crime rather than by selling Christmas Puddings.
Christopher Leader was part of a £3.3 million cocaine gang who modeled themselves on James Bond and who were broken up after he was caught by police at Cullompton taking drugs from Essex to Plymouth.
He has already been released from a nine year sentence for his part in the plot but will have to go back to jail for another 12 months unless he pays over the £20,250 within six months.
He claimed unexplained cash payments into his bank accounts came from selling food including Christmas Puddings and Christmas cakes rather than from drugs.
He said other cash had come from dealing in adult videos and running a Gentleman's Club in London's West End.
Leader, aged 57, of Havering Road, Romford, Essex, was ordered to pay the cash under the Proceeds of Crime Act by Judge Phillip Wassall at Exeter Crown Court.
He said:"I am completely unpersuaded by the evidence produced to show this was not criminal property. It lacks cogency and clarity and falls well short of satisfying the burden of proof.
"It is reasonable to conclude he was a cash trader but he would equally be prepared to take cash in furtherance of a criminal enterprise, and that is what he was doing."
Leader was stopped on the M5 at Cullompton in 2009 for having no insurance on his BMW. Police became suspicious because he was sweating heavily and searched the car where they found £125,000 worth of cocaine in a gift-wrapped parcel.
Leader's arrest led to a huge police surveillance operation codenamed Stagshaw which led to the arrest of a gang of drug dealers who modeled themselves on James Bond.
The gang were jailed for a total of more than 90 years in 2011. The ringleaders owned a luxury motor cruiser named Shaken nor Stirred, they had numberplates and phone numbers which ended in 007 and had guns and cash at their homes.
Leader was paid just £400 by the gang for each of four trips to Devon as a courier but a financial investigation tion found other unexplained cash deposits into his three bank accounts.
He said there were innocent explanations for the money, including his work as a market trader, specializing in Christmas foods,
