'£5 each in Walsall': Man who saw ecstasy tablets thrown from car tried to sell them on Facebook

Paul Mciver even put a image of himself holding the bag of ecstasy tablets on the website and posted '£5 each in Walsall'. He later admitted possessing 50 of the tablets and a small amount of cocaine.

During a sentence hearing at Wolverhampton Crown Court, prosecutor Robert Cowley said he could not be sure Mciver, of Littlewood Lane, Cheslyn Hay, had sold any of the drugs.

Officers were first alerted to the drugs after Mciver, aged 28, contacted police on October 4 last year asking for help in retrieving personal items he had left at a house.

Mciver told police after reacting badly to drugs he had consumed at the property he had been forced to 'escape' after others there had refused to call an ambulance.

Mr Cowley said after being treated at hospital Mciver returned to collect £65 he had left under a mattress, only to be confronted by a man with a knife.

It was then he contacted the police, who attended the house and next to the money found a bag containing 50 ecstasy tablets, worth around £250, and just under 0.3 grams of cocaine, worth £20.

The owner of the home then showed police the comments Mciver had made on Facebook in which he explained he had witnessed drugs being thrown from a car being chased along Birmingham New Road in Wolverhampton.

Oliver Woolhouse, defending, said: "It was my client's call to the police to help him get his money which led them to find the drugs and led them to examine his phone and what was on Facebook.

"It is clear the offence was born out of naivety. The drugs literally fell in his lap. He thought it would be a good idea to broadcast this in a very dangerous and reckless way and almost publicly on Facebook."

The court heard in one Facebook post Mciver said the drugs he had found were worth £5,000 and in another said he had found a buyer who would pay £2,000.

Mr Cowley said the posts indicated a 'significant quantity' of ecstasy beyond that retrieved by police, but he could not be sure Mciver had sold any drugs.

Recorder Nigel Baker QC sentenced Mciver to a total of 30 months for two counts of possessing class A drugs.

He told Mciver: "You are not unfamiliar with the language of drug dealing and by saying '£5 each in Walsall' that indicates to me there was slightly more going on than just the 50 tablets which were found by police."