“You need owt rah doh” - Nuneaton man sentenced to five and a half years for involvement in supply of cocaine

Joe Cantrill, 29 of Brights Road in Nuneaton, has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison for being involved in the supply of cocaine.

On 26 March, a mobile phone belonging to Cantrill was discovered on the drive of a house in Galley Common by officers who were called out to a separate incident.

The phone, under the belief it was related to the other incident, was tied to Cantrill through deduction based on a family contact number saved on the phone which was known to the police.

In the text messages were found hundreds of messages relating to the sale of “sniff”.

After his arrest on 30 March, another mobile phone was found in Cantrill’s pocket, from which further messages relating to the supply of controlled drugs were found, as well as £80 in cash.

In his interview, Cantrill’s account kept on changing as more evidence was introduced to him.

He says that he most likely lost his phone a couple of weeks before, that it was possibly stolen, and he just bought another one.

Asked about the messages on the phone, he said that it was “people pretending to be me”, “someone else using my phone”, and that he believed he was “being made a scapegoat”.

When Joe was presented with a text related to the sale of drugs in which his bank details, including his name, were given out, he said “F*ck knows. Possibly someone I know. Everyone knows my bank details. They may not have their own bank account.”

Cantrill later claimed that for his work, he gets paid into a close relative’s account, who then either gives him the cash, or transfers it into his account.

Asked about messages during a period of time in which he said he had the phone which were offering to supply drugs, he claimed “that was someone else”, but refused to speculate regarding who.

These messages included lines like “you need owt rah doh”, “got fire sniff propper deald”, and “it’s joe […] got lovely sniff for sale on drop let me no”.

At one point during the interview, he said “I’m telling the truth, but it don’t look good”.

Cantrill was sentenced in Warwick Crown Court on Friday 6 October.

PC Maguire from the Serious Organised Crime team said “Joe Cantrill really thought we would believe another drug dealer would use his bank account to store their money, and that this would be a thing he wouldn’t notice.

“He thought he could get away with using his own name on his own phone for deals involving illicit substances, and that we would just accept his assertion that it was nothing to do with him.

“Cantrill’s activities have brought harm to his community and to the people around him. They have helped fund the violent gangs who bring cocaine into the country on slicks of blood stretching halfway round the world.

“We hope five and a half years is enough for Joe to realise that he needs to be a lot better than this.”