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Gym owner who protested lockdowns on This Morning exposed as ‘professional’ drug smuggler
Nicholas Whitcombe had appeared on This Morning in 2020 to protest the national lockdown
A gym owner who appeared on ITV’s This Morning to protest the 2020 lockdowns has been exposed as a ‘professional’ drug smuggler.
Nicholas Whitcombe, from Liverpool, was interviewed on the breakfast show in autumn 2020 after he was fined £1,000 for refusing to close his Body Tech Fitness site in Moreton during the national lockdown.
Whitcombe told the hosts that he had refused to close as he felt gyms were ‘essential to the physical and mental health’ of the population.
He also launched an online fundraiser which reached £55,000, something he later said was donated to mental health charities.
ITV
However, he and Jersey resident Anthony Andrew Dryden have now been found guilty of importing £54k worth of cannabis into Jersey and exportation of cash.
The pair’s drug smuggling plot was rumbled when an investigation by the Jersey’s customs and immigration department found text messages in which Whitcombe told an associate how to ‘clean’ his dirty money, the Liverpool Echo reports.
One of the text messages read: “You get to clean your money and you’ll slowly get better at it and eventually it’ll be your legit business.”
The investigation found that between 2018 and 2019, Whitcombe and Dryden were involved in a conspiracy to traffic cannabis resin into the island and launder the money, with Whitcombe operating from Merseyside and Dryden from Jersey.
States of Jersey Police
Prosecutors said Whitcombe was responsible for sourcing the drugs and instructing people to send them from England to a third party at their work address in Jersey.
On Wednesday, January 5th, both Whitcombe and Dryden were sentenced to three years and six months in prison at Jersey’s Royal Court.
Rhiannon Small, Senior Manager at JCIS said after the court case, as per ITV Granada: “The custodial sentences handed down by the Royal Court reflect the serious nature of drug trafficking and money laundering into our island; the detection and prevention of such offences remain a priority for JCIS.”