A COCAINE dealer who was caught selling drugs from a holiday park in Chudleigh has been ordered to hand over his remaining assets.
Ryan Lynas used a vaping company which he was running in South Devon as a cover for his operation and made £156,000 from selling drugs before he was caught.
He had sent messages to customers demanding payment for drugs, one of which boasted: ‘I run Exeter, Torbay and Newton Abbot from a sofa with two phones.’
Police tracked him down through his mobile phone to the holiday park at Chudleigh after raiding an Airbnb property just hours after he left.
Lynas, aged 30, of Smallcombe Road, Paignton, was jailed for three years and four months at Exeter Crown Court last April after he admitted possession of cocaine with intent to supply.
He has now been ordered to hand over all his traceable assets within three months or face a further six months in jail.
Judge Anna Richardson certified his benefit from crime as £156,010.31 and his available assets as £15,081.54, which was the amount he was ordered to hand over.
A large part of this amount is already in police hands and the rest will be raised by auctioning property which was seized when he was arrested.
At the sentencing hearing in April, 2022, Mr Brian Fitzherbert, prosecuting, said Lynas spent £4,000 renting an Airbnb property in Exeter for five weeks but was not there when police raided it in December last year.
Officers were able to monitor his mobile phone and download his messages and traced him to the Finlake Holiday Park where he was arrested on January 17, with 10 bags of cocaine valued at £4,000 and £13,000 cash.
Miss Felicity Paine, defending, said Lynas was sending most of the money up the line to bigger suppliers and is now heavily in debt.
He started dealing to pay for his own habit which got out of hand when he lost his job and was unable to go to the gym during the Covid lockdowns.
Note: Lynas’s business was named BetterVapes and was based in Devon. It is unconnected to several other businesses with similar names.