Tonbridge Drug Dealer Stripped of £215,623 After Cocaine Network Conviction

A 29-year-old Tonbridge man already serving a prison sentence for running a cocaine supply network across west Kent has been stripped of £215,623, after Kent Police's financial investigators successfully applied for a confiscation order at Maidstone Crown Court on Thursday 24 September.

Kent Police say the man, known locally through a network it calls the 'Scarface' operation, controlled several phones over almost a year to send and receive more than 32,000 calls and texts advertising cocaine for sale. Runners delivered the drugs through a system of texts and postcodes, a common model for county lines-style dealing that lets the person organising supply stay a step removed from the point of sale.

Officers arrested the man in the early hours of 27 September 2024 after executing a search warrant at his property in Mount Pleasant Court, Hildenborough, where they recovered knuckle dusters, machetes and an extendable baton, along with cocaine and more than £1,100 in cash. He pleaded guilty within 24 hours at Medway Magistrates' Court to being concerned in the supply of cocaine between October 2023 and September 2024, possessing criminal property, and possessing offensive weapons. He was sentenced at Maidstone Crown Court in February 2025 to five years and six months in prison.

A prison sentence punishes the offence; a confiscation order under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 is the separate step that goes after what the offender made from it, so a conviction alone doesn't leave someone free to enjoy the proceeds once released. Kent Police's financial investigators kept examining the man's assets after he was jailed and found he had benefited by hundreds of thousands of pounds from his dealing. The order made this week requires him to pay back £215,623, with several high-value watches and cash recovered from a safe deposit box among the assets seized.

Detective Inspector David Godfrey said: "Nobody should be able to benefit financially when committing crime, and in [his] case, the extent of drug dealing carried out through a network he managed would have caused so much misery to vulnerable people. While he was offending and making money by it, the wider community did not benefit at all by his actions. Our financial investigators were determined to ensure his assets were no longer available to him. I hope this sends out a strong reminder to anyone thinking they can make their living illegally, that crime simply does not pay." Source: Kent Police