A drugs courier has been jailed after being caught in Inverness with nearly £200,000 worth of cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy inside an Aldi shopping bag.
Officers who stopped a blue Audi A3 found more than a kilogram of high-purity cocaine inside the bag behind the passenger seat where Marc Forsyth was sitting
The carrier bag also contained two packages of cannabis worth up to £14,116 and more than 900 ecstasy tablets with a potential street value of £13,755.
Forsyth, 23, had denied charges of being concerned in the supply of the class A and B drugs.
The jury in the three-day Inverness Sheriff Court trial heard how the officers, acting on intelligence, pulled the car over on the A9 at Seafield just before 11pm on April 30 2019.
When interviewed by police, Forsyth said the driver of the car was a friend of his, but resorted to “no comment” answers when asked about the circumstances surrounding his arrest.
In a second interview, he confirmed to officers that he did not hold a driving licence and could not drive cars.
The driver of the Audi, Darren Douglas, 24, was also charged and stood trial along with Forsyth.
Following the stop, Mr Douglas was interviewed and told police he had been asked to drive the vehicle and pick up Forsyth by a woman that he considered “a friend” in exchange for drugs and money to clear a drugs debt.
He did not provide the woman’s name or details.
The then 19-year-old was living in homeless accommodation and struggling with his mental health at the time.
After seeking confirmation that he would be insured to drive, he had agreed.
Drugs courier travelled to Burnley
The court heard evidence that the pair had then followed directions from Forsyth’s phone to an address in Burnley, before they made the return trip, stopping at Burger King en-route.
The cocaine recovered had a purity of 67% and could be worth up to £157,000 if adulterated to the normal street purity in Inverness at that time and sold on in gram deals.
The cannabis, which was packed in sealed foil bags, had a maximum potential value of £14,116. The ecstasy tablets could be sold on for as much as £13,755.
The jury heard that there was no forensic evidence linking either man in the car to the Aldi bag or its contents and no evidence that they had been attempting to prevent forensic transfer, for example by using gloves.
In his closing speech to the jury, fiscal depute Robert Weir said the drugs were “not concealed in any way” and were “sitting in the rear of the car with a pair of denims on top of it”.
Addressing suggestions from the defence for both men that they were unaware of the bag’s contents, Mr Weir encouraged the jurors to consider the size of the shipment.
“Look at the quantity of drugs in relation to the size of the package, we are not looking at a needle in a haystack here,” he said.
Forsyth’s solicitor Graham Mann told the jury: “We really don’t know how long that package has been there, we don’t know when that package was put there.”
Driver ‘led up the garden path’
Douglas’ defence agent Pauline Chapman said her client had been “led up the garden path by a supposed friend,” adding: “He considered her a friend. Clearly, she wasn’t a friend.”
The jury took more than five hours to return majority guilty verdicts on all three of the charges against Forsyth, of Ceylon Croft, Duncanston.
They found the charges against Douglas, of Muir of Ord, to be not proven – resulting in his acquittal.
Sheriff Sara Matheson deferred the sentencing of Forsyth to next month, calling for the production of pre-sentencing reports.
She told him: “You will be remanded in custody as a result of the amount of drugs, the purity, and the likely disposal.”