Lavish lifestyle of drug baroness 'unravelled' after police caught her speeding

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A university graduate with a penchant for luxury secretly funded her lavish lifestyle of designer handbags, foreign holidays and second homes by selling heroin, cannabis and crack cocaine.Danielle Stafford had a long-running secret second job that meant she never had to touch her engineer's salary.

She was only caught by chance when police caught her speeding – and her empire began "unravelling before her very eyes".Her phone lit up with calls and texts after she was arrested and cops later found over £26,000 in cash and £33,000 of drugs stashed in her home.

Hull Live reports she was "awash with cash from her drug dealing business", according to remarks delivered at Hull Crown Court.Stafford, 29, of Cottingham near the English city, admitted three offences of supplying heroin, crack cocaine and cannabis, and another of money laundering, all between October 2017 and May 2020.

She had originally denied nine offences and was facing trial before entering four guilty pleas.Nadim Bashir, prosecuting, detailed how police recovered text messages from her phone that saw her directing another woman to deal cannabis in her absence. "Make sure he pays," reads one of the messages she sent.Mr Bashir said: "A group message was sent out by Danielle Stafford advertising a list of the types of cannabis she has to sell and their prices." Other group messages advertising sales of drugs, including cocaine, were also sent out.The prosecutor continued: "This went completely unnoticed by the police until one day in May 2020 when her manner of driving was noticed by the police and was the start of this case unravelling before her very eyes." Cops searched Stafford's Audi over after it was spotted speeding in Hull, cutting corners and cutting up