It’s you! Lotto winner caught growing drugs

The £500,000 home of Richard Storey, who won £1.25m in a lottery syndicate in 1999, was raided by police last September after a tip-off.

Officers told Storey, 55, of Or-chard Avenue, Ramsden Bellhouse, near Billericay, that he was suspected of growing the drug.

He confessed and showed police a former stable and a huge hut within his grounds where they found a total of 377 cannabis plants.

Dad-of-three Storey later admitted he grew cannabis for a client for “two to three years” after a business venture failed.

He claimed he made £50,000 profit from the illegal operation.

Also during the raid, officers discovered £16,700 in cash and found Storey had tampered with his electricity supply so it bypassed his meter.

But he insisted the cash was a loan he was given to pay his mortgage and fund his children’s private school education.

Yesterday at Basildon Crown Court, Judge John Lodge said: “Having got yourself into financial difficulties you chose to try to get yourself out of financial difficulty by setting up a sophisticated criminal enterprise.

“You did it over a long period of time and people who do that must know, whatever their personal circumstances, that the only sentence is immediate imprisonment.”

In his stable police found two rooms filled with large plants.

The building was fully equipped to grow the plants with aluminium lined walls to reflect heat from powerful hydroponic lamps.

In a separate wooden outhouse were more mature plants.

The hut also had huge pipes and fans to get rid of the plant’s tell-tale smell as well as a vat of fertiliser and water.

Storey, who has two previous convictions for possessing cannabis, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to the production of cannabis and abstracting electricity on September 5 last year.

Judge Lodge ordered the destruction of the drugs and equipment.

Storey now faces a confiscation hearing which will determine whether or not any of his assets should be seized.