A drug dealer's love of Stilton cheese was used to get him arrested
A 39-year-old from Liverpool has been undone by a block of cheese. While the most any of us typically suffer from cheese-based lapses in judgment is a bad stomachache and a permanent ban from county fairs, the Liverpudlian was arrested and sentenced to 13 years and six months in prison for crimes he may very well have gotten away with if he didn’t love cheese so damn much.
According to CNN, Carl Stewart was identified by police after taking a photo in Marks & Spencer holding a block of “mature blue Stilton” and uploading it to EncroChat, an app used to facilitate crimes including drug and arms deals. While Stewart may have shared the photo on this service in an attempt to gauge the market for illicit cheese-trading, it was ultimately used by police to identify him as a drug dealer.
Merseyside Police told press that Stewart’s visible fingerprints and palm allowed them to identify and charge him, leading to a sentencing on Friday where he plead guilty “to conspiracy to supply cocaine, heroin, MDMA, and ketamine, and to transferring criminal property.” EncroChat was breached by French and Dutch authorities last year, and the information on criminal activity found in the “infiltration” was used by European police to launch a massive series of investigations and raids.
“Carl Stewart was involved in supplying large amounts of class A and B drugs,” a Merseyside Detective Inspector said, “But was caught out by his love of Stilton cheese.”
Whether Stewart deserves to spend more than a decade in prison for selling drugs is a topic for a different story. What we’re left with here and now is a cautionary tale regarding the dangers of loving cheese too much—and how that which brings us the most joy can harm us in the end.
[via Boing Boing]
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