Former Arsenal forward jailed in UK on cannabis smuggling charge
LONDON (Reuters) - Former Arsenal and Ipswich Town forward Jay Emmanuel-Thomas was on Thursday jailed for four years for orchestrating the smuggling of 60 kg of cannabis into Britain's Stansted Airport.
The 34-year-old, who was released by Scottish second division club Greenock Morton after being charged last year, pleaded guilty at Chelmsford Crown Court last month.
Britain's National Crime Agency previously said Emmanuel-Thomas had recruited his girlfriend and another woman to travel to Thailand, where Emmanuel-Thomas briefly played in 2019, to collect the cannabis and smuggle it to Britain.
The two women were also charged with smuggling cannabis but the prosecution offered no evidence against them and the charges were dropped on Wednesday, the NCA added.
Emmanuel-Thomas sat in the dock as Judge Alexander Mills told him: "Your transition from professional footballer to criminal represents a substantial fall from grace, one that effectively ends the only career path that you have ever known."
He will serve 40% of that sentence in custody before he is released on licence.
Prosecutor David Josse said the 60 kg of cannabis had a street value of approximately 600,000 pounds (roughly $816,000) and a wholesale value of around 250,000 pounds, though Emmanuel-Thomas was paid 5,000 pounds for his involvement.
"This was an isolated incident (and) a catastrophic error of judgment," Emmanuel-Thomas' lawyer Alex Rose told the court.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin, editing by Ed Osmond)
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