L Walker 
A dark web drug dealer who made more than £1.5 million from selling ecstasy from a flat in Aberdeen has agreed to pay back just £8,470.
Scott Roddie, 29, was part of a significant drugs operation and was jailed for six years and three months earlier this year.
The Crown brought proceedings to seize crime profits from him and a judge at the High Court in Edinburgh was told today that a settlement was reached in the action.
Lord Armstrong heard that Roddie had benefited from criminal conduct by £1,513,610 and that £8,470 was available for a confiscation order.
He had paid the bulk of the rent on a flat where quantities of the Class A drug were delivered with customers placing orders through the internet and paying in bitcoin.
The operation unravelled when Border Force officers at the international parcel hub in Coventry intercepted two packages containing eight kilos of the drug, worth more than £680,000, addressed to an accomplice Connor Holmes.
National Crime Agency officers in Scotland were alerted and police searched the flat in Aberdeen’s Thomson Street in December 2018 and found more than £730,000 of the drug.
Holmes admitted being concerned in the supply of ecstasy between October and December that year and was jailed for two years and three months for his role in the operation. A proceeds of crime action against him was continued today.
When officers armed with a warrant searched the property, they found 73,000 ecstasy tablets in a locked room, along with cash, scales, envelopes and stamps.
Officers learnt that Roddie was responsible for the delivery of packages to the flat which Holmes, 24, would sign for.
‘He was not the brains behind this’
An examination of Roddie’s laptop revealed that 11 packages were tracked and delivered to the flat between November 14 and December 14 in 2018.
Witnesses revealed that they had bought drugs over the internet through the Dream Market website and would have them delivered by post after paying in bitcoin.
Defence counsel David Moggach said Roddie had run into debt and was approached to set up a safe house and distribution centre.
He told the High Court in Edinburgh: “He certainly was not the brains behind this organisation.”
