Deon P. Green, Sunday Gleaner Writer

London, England:

The police in North London have seized just under 70,000 or in excess of J$7 million in cash belonging to a convicted Jamaican drug dealer, 44-year-old Sean Lewis. The police have reported that the money, found in shoe boxes, is the largest cash seizure in the history of the borough of Brent.

So far, the borough of Brent has recorded a total of 600,000 in drug cash from 40 different seizures.

Reports reaching The Sunday Gleaner are that the police carried out two raids at addresses in Neasden and Enfield where they discovered 69,922 stashed away in several shoe boxes, along with four rocks of crack cocaine in March last year. However, the disclosure of the find became public knowledge only recently, following legal proceedings which linked the cash with the convict.

According to the police, the money belongs to Lewis of Holmwood Road in Enfield, who operated a hair salon in the area. Lewis is currently in prison serving a five-year sentence for drug trafficking.

He will be deported to Jamaica on completion of his sentence, while the cash seized will be handed over to the British treasury to be deposited in a high-interest bank account, and is to be used in the fight against crime.

Lewis illegally entered England in 1997, and was first apprehended by the police in 2004, but the police failed to make the immigration connections and he was eventually released on completion of a conviction and sentence. A second arrest followed in 2006 and his illegal immigration status was revealed.