A debt-ridden South Yorkshire probation officer who hid cocaine in her bra in an attempt to smuggle it into the country has been jailed. Mandy Base, 44, was stopped at Gatwick Airport when she arrived on a flight from Trinidad on February 8. Customs officers searched her and discovered drugs worth around £20,000 hidden in her bra, Croydon Crown Court was told.
Ms Base was £15,000 in debt and said that she had agreed to carry the drugs for a man she had become involved with in exchange for £5000. She has lost her job as a probation officer, which she had held for 12 years, and her home as a result of what she did.
Judge Warwick McKinnon told her: 'As a probation officer you would know only too well the great deal of harm that can be caused to others by drugs.' She was jailed for four years after pleading guilty to unlawful importation of drugs with a travel restriction order that prevents her from going abroad for two years following her release.
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