This is the moment a man who who sold hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of magic mushrooms was caught by police.
James Edmans age 36, from Furzehatt Road in Plymouth was jailed last month after admitting dealing in the hallucinogenic drug and laundering the proceeds of his enterprise.
Plymouth Crown Court heard how he was picked up on August 15, 2023 when he was seen getting into his mother's car, who was going to drive him a short distance to a post box.
He was in possession of a carrier bag of items he was about to post, which the court heard had happened "many times before". They were both stopped by the police executing a search warrant.
Prosecutor Rowan Jenkins said Edmans was found to be wearing a pair of prosthetic gloves which were used to avoid forensic links to the packages. His arrest and responses were caught on officers' bodyworn cameras and has now been released following his sentencing hearing. Edmans was heard to say "holy sh**" before adding "I'm so f*****."
When asked by officers arresting him what did he mean, he sighed and replied "oh, you know why, c'mon".
Edmans went on to say "my life's over, innit?" before asking "will you search my house?" The bodyworn camera footage also showed officers asking Edmans to remove his prosthetic gloves which he then peeled off.
Supported by colleagues from Devon and Cornwall Police, officers from the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit (SWROCU) attended his home where they found various different mushroom grow areas. The wardrobes had been converted and contained 113 grow bags stored two-layers deep.
Mushroom spores were located in the fridge. Mushrooms were being dehydrated and other paraphernalia associated with drug production and supply was evident.
An investigation by SWROCU’s Dark Web Operations Team showed Edmans was promoting and selling magic mushrooms across multiple sites under the brand name SweetGreenUK.
The court heard that the initial search warrant had been secured because in June of that year, an undercover officer had made a purchase on the dark web from a vendor using the name "SweetgreenUK" which was advertising various strains of magic mushrooms.
She paid around £53 and later collected a package which held dried mushrooms, containing psilocin. The package was eventually tracked back - despite using a false postcode - to Edmans.
He was offering the class A drug in quantities of up to 112g and shipping to customers throughout the UK using the postal service. It was estimated he made over 5,000 sales on various marketplaces generating in excess of £500,000.
Mr Jenkins told Plymouth Crown Court that information gathered by police revealed what was believed to be a "seven-year period", and while it was "impossible" for the prosecution to say exactly how much Edmans earned in that time, a variety of methods had been used including the potential yield, the packages sizes, the cost per gram of magic mushrooms, a number of different cryptocurrency wallets containing bitcoin which were attained "exclusively through the dark web".
The sales resulted in reviews from purchasers, which the court heard included 640 separate reviews during an 18-month-period and that they could show there were 3,444 orders processed of which 3,001 of the orders had weights linked to them.
Using all these different methods Mr Jenkins said the maximum they believed Edmans received in sales of at least 50kg of magic mushrooms into his cryptocurrency wallets during the seven year period was "£1.234 million" although he conceded that at the "absolute minimum" Edmans made was £303,000. He said however the court looked at it, this was an operation on a "commercial scale".
Investigators found that Edmans would make numerous evening trips to local post boxes – driven by his mother – to dispatch the orders after getting payment via the dark web.
He would wear a pair of long prosthetic gloves to ensure his fingerprints were not on the packages and used them as an alternative to wearing latex gloves which may have aroused suspicion should he be seen posting the drugs.
Mr Jenkins said the mushrooms had originated in Thailand and Edmans had been known to travel to the country where he had a Thai girlfriend.
The court was told that he had initially claimed that he had been pressured into the business by his girlfriend, but this line of defence was later discarded as a text message was found in 2021 where Edmans said "the opposite".
As a result of the police's inquiries, Edmans was eventually charged with possession with intent to supply class A psilocin (magic mushrooms), supply of class A psilocin, production of a class A drug psilocin, money laundering and supply of class B drug cannabis. The court heard that the sale of cannabis amounted to a very short period of time at the beginning of his magic mushroom enterprise.
In addition, Kim Edmans, James' mother, was charged with permitting the production on premises of a class A drug - psilocin. Her claims that she did not know what was going on were also discarded on the day of trial when she changed her plea from not guilty to guilty.
Judge Robert Linford noted that Edmans had used "highly sophisticated methods" to avoid detection but observed the numerous positive reports he had received about the 36-year-old, the early guilty plea, the character references, his previous good character and the reports about his mental health.
He handed Edmans 81 months - six years and nine months - for the production of the drugs, 81 months for the supply of class A drugs, 81 months for the possession of the class A drugs, eight months for supplying class B drugs and four years for the charge of money laundering which took place between April 2016 and August 2023 - all to run concurrently, resulting in a total sentence of 81 months [six years and nine months].
His mother Kim Edmans was handed a 20-month sentence suspended for two years for permitting her premises to be used for supplying class A drugs.
Det Sgt Matt Brain from the Dark Web Operations Team said: "My team is part of a nationally coordinated network investigating dark web markets and the trade of illicit goods.
"Edmans thought he could operate anonymously behind his SweetGreenUK brand but we were able to uncover his identity and stop these dangerous illegal drugs being distributed across the UK."
