Dinner lady 'led astray' by criminal son spared jail after acting as banker to drugs gang

Illicit trade: Amanda Grannells received payments from deals organised by her son Gary
Metropolitan Police
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A school dinner lady who acted as the banker in a scheme to smuggle drugs and mobile phones into prison has been spared a jail sentence after a judge said she had been led astray by her convict son.

Amanda Grannells, 56, received payments into her bank account for her son Gary’s illicit trade behind bars. Goods were sneaked past guards, thrown over prison walls and even flown in on drones.

When her home in Shepherd’s Bush was raided, police found a Jimmy Choo shoebox in her bedroom containing mobile phones wrapped in clingfilm ready to be smuggled into prison.

Detectives discovered the grandmother, who was on benefits and earned a small wage as a school dinner lady, had received payments from the friends and family of serving prisoners and money from at least one corrupt prison officer.

Her son, a serial burglar, had £15,000 of the drug Spice hidden in a hole in the wall of his cell at HMP Pentonville, as well as a phone which revealed his mother’s role in the smuggling operation.

Grannells gave out his mother’s home address and bank details to potential customers, telling one client she could explain the smuggling techniques, adding: “Mum will have it all.”

At Blackfriars crown court on Tuesday, Gary Grannells, 30, was jailed for three years and four months for the smuggling operation, and will start serving his sentence in December when he has completed a separate prison term for three burglaries.

Judge Rajeev Shetty told Mrs Grannells she had “facilitated” her son’s operation and “knew full well what was going on”. But he imposed only a 16-month prison sentence suspended for two years, as well as 70 hours of community service, telling her: “You committed these offences because of loyalty and ties of blood rather than any deep-seated criminality.”

The court heard Mrs Grannells, who has lost her job, is the registered carer of her mother, who has dementia, and has no previous criminal convictions.

Grannells, who has 17 convictions for 32 offences, including supply of drugs, has spent most of his adult life behind bars and has been repeatedly caught with mobile phones in his cells at prisons including Pentonville, Wormwood Scrubs, and High Down.

Prosecutor Martyn Bowyer told the court detectives had identified 11 transactions where Mrs Grannells had received money on behalf of her son between August 2014 and February 2017. In some cases, the cell number of the prisoner buying the goods from her son had been added in pence to the payments as an “ideal way to identify the payee”, Mr Bowyer said.

He added that the number of mobile phones smuggled into prisons across the country has reached “epidemic levels”, and authorities are now installing phones in cells to try to counter the illegal trade. Judge Shetty said: “Drugs and phones are often used as currency to extort, oppress, and pressurise other prisoners. All of this undermines the prison system and public confidence in it.”

"Mrs Grannells had ‘facilitated’ her son’s operation and ‘knew full well what was going on’"

Grannells, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled drug with intent to supply, and causing an unauthorised conveyance of list B items into prison. Mrs Grannells admitted being concerned in an arrangement which facilitates control of criminal property.

They both originally stood trial alongside Steven Stocker, Steven McMonagle-Stocker, Mary Proctor and Carmen Leon in February last year, but the case collapsed when it emerged evidence from the phone in Grannells’s cell had not been given to defence lawyers.

Conspiracy charges against the four defendants were then dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service.

The two male defendants were jailed for eight months and the women were given 12-month community orders, having already pleaded guilty to a separate charge of making unauthorised transmissions from prison.

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