24 September 2023 , 10:04
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A woman working for a drugs gang boasted the heroin and cocaine they sold was "fuel to make NASA jealous". Emma Philbin operated a phone from her home advertising hard drugs for sale.
Other messages included "get your bits out for the lads" and "still around with the best in town". After her arrest Philbin told detectives: "It's all my fault. It's all my doing, no one else’s."
Philbin was actually part of a bigger drug supply operation run by others. Joshua Williams recruited a teenage boy to work in the county lines ring in a case treated as "modern slavery". When police came to arrest him he tried to stuff illicit substances up his bottom.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that Williams was a key part of two operations based in Liverpool and trading in the Widnes area. It included taking over the homes of vulnerable occupants.
Philbin operated the "Sully" line from her home in the Cheshire town in the summer of 2021. A Samsung mobile phone recovered later in a search contained text messages sent out of a three-month period advertising drugs.
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A Kinder Surprise egg containing three wraps of heroin and one of crack cocaine was also found in a bedroom drawer at the address. Philbin, now of Halton Lodge Avenue in Runcorn, claimed to have been responsible for sending the messages out, and was described as being "particularly proud" of one which read: "We've got fuel to make NASA jealous."
The 40-year-old would "pass the wraps" and "give the money to the lads", for which she would be "paid in bits", the court was told. Police raided Williams' then home on Dewsbury Road in Anfield the same morning.
After forcing entry to the property, officers found him "crouching on the floor in the second bedroom, looking as though he was attempting both to conceal himself and seeking to conceal items into his anus" as he was "messing with his boxer shorts" He was then taken to the kitchen, but his speech was noted to be "muffled".
Williams was ordered to open his mouth as a result, revealing a "ball-shaped item" which contained a further 38 wraps of heroin. More drugs were found stashed with the same room, reports the Liverpool Echo.
The 23-year-old was later released under investigation. But he would be arrested again on April this year alongside a 17-year-old boy, from Liverpool, at another house in Widnes. The youth had 72 wraps of crack cocaine hidden in his underwear. The teen was not charged with criminal offences in relation to the incident after it was found that he had been a "victim of modern slavery".
Williams was described as a dad to a young child. Philbin has 50 offences on her record. She was described as "ravaged" by drug use and working to "fund her own habit and pay off debts". She now volunteers to help other "vulnerable" members of society in similar situations.
Williams, now of Walton, admitted conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine, being concerned in the supply of crack cocaine, possession of heroin with intent to supply and possession of cannabis. He was jailed for seven years and four months.
Philbin pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine. She was handed a 24-month imprisonment suspended for two years as well as a drug rehabilitation requirement and a rehabilitation activity requirement of up to 27 days.
Sentencing, Recorder Ian Harris described Williams as the "prime operator" and Philbin as a "weak or inadequate person predicated upon to allow her home to be used for a drug supply business."
He told her: "In time, you would have destroyed yourself. You were used by those who were more sophisticated in drug supply.
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"You are, in my judgement, a completely different individual now. I am able to suspended the sentence, just, to mark the astonishing progress you have made and to assist you in your attempts at rehabilitation."