Wouldn’t it be nice if every time you visited your dealer, you could pay on your card rather than have to visit a cashpoint beforehand and have the exact money ready?
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Of course, no drug dealer with a brain would actually do this because it would mean they could easily be tracked down and there would be a record of every drug deal that went down. Despite this rather obvious assumption, a 35-year-old guy called Mark Slender from Gloucestershire decided to pick up a chip and PIN device and ride around in his car taking card payments from clients, even giving them receipts signed with his nickname ‘Gup’.
Slender was pretty quickly caught by police who found the device plugged into his car and charging. It had recorded £12,000 worth of sales between March and August – not bad. Slender was sentenced to seven years in jail and PC Thom Finnikin, of Tewkesbury Police, said this about him:
Slender appears to have made a considerable profit dealing drugs and tried to conceal his financial gain by investing in expensive items.
We seized pieces of designer clothing and gold sovereigns worth in excess of £10,000, which we believe were bought with his drug money.
He attempted to bring drug dealing into the 21st century by using a chip and pin machine to take payment for cocaine and subsequently showed his arrogance by putting a tag line at the top of each receipt supplied to his drug buyers.
Slender has extensive previous convictions for drugs supply. He was making a considerable profit in his illicit trade and I would like to thank the members of the community who provided the intelligence which led to his apprehension.
After police received information about Slender, they raided his house in Bishop’s Cleeve and found £5800 worth of drugs there, including 93% pure cocaine. I’ve gotta head for a night out in Bishop’s Cleeve eh?
Anyway, it would be great if our dealers took card but it’s never going to happen, especially after this incident. So don’t even dream about it anymore. Drug dealing is going to be firmly stuck in the 20th century for a long time.
For more dealers being idiots, check out this one picking a fight with one of his customers and getting savagely battered. Be smarter.