A FEMALE personal trainer from Wembley was jailed on Friday for her part in a plot to distribute more than £9 million worth of heroin.
Gym worker Marlene Nkore, 23, of Bridge Road, was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment after admitting one count of possession with intent to supply the class A drug.
Her co-defendant, Warren McFarlane, 28, of Southern Avenue, Feltham, west London, received eight years' jail for admitting two counts of possession with intent to supply.
The pair were busted by the Metropolitan Police's Serious and Organised Crime Command on a Friday back in May, the judge at Snaresbrook Crown Court, in Wanstead, east London, was told.
At approximately 10pm, detectives spotted McFarlane leaving a block of flats in Bridge Road with a green and white carrier bag in his hand. Officers stopped him approximately 20 yards away and searched him.
They discovered the bag contained twelve A4-sized, clear vacuum-packed envelopes, inside of which was a compressed brown powder, later confirmed to be heroin.
When asked about a key taken from his pocket, McFarlane claimed: "They are for the flat. I collected them from the girl who lives there, I went to her work."
Officers let themselves into the flat in Bridge Road and came across three cardboard boxes, two in cupboards and one in the living room, each filled with more brown powder stuffed into vacuum-sealed envelopes.
The total weight of the heroin within these boxes was estimated at 75 kilograms.
Further drug paraphernalia seized included a food mixer, electronic scales, face masks, a cash counter, a metal press and a metal press mould.
During the search, Nkore turned up at the property and claimed she lived there. Police asked her where her house keys were.
She replied: "I had them, I went to work but I don’t know where they have gone."
She was then shown the keys that had been found on McFarlane, to which she said: "I don’t know how he got them."
Yet a pink mobile telephone she was carrying that contained a text message saying: "Give Monster the house key please. Just the chubb key bottom lock."
Nkore later told detectives she rented the flat but believed that someone else had been inside on other occasions as items had been moved around.
The 23-year-old admitted she had known McFarlane for about two years from her place of work and on the day she was arrested she had given him the key to her home despite him never having been there before.
After sentencing, Detective Inspector Colin Stephenson from the Serious and Organised Crime Command said: "This operation successfully removed a major consignment of class A drugs from the streets of London and has made a significant dent in the availability of heroin across the capital."
