A ‘TRUSTED lieutenant’ caught guarding £128,000 worth of cash and drugs at his Bradford home has been jailed for two years.

Tomasz Piatkowski was to be paid thousands of pounds for storing and bagging up cannabis and amphetamine and looking after banknotes in two safes at his house in Surrey Grove, West Bowling.

Police busting the drugs den on May 1 seized £125,000, along with 400 bags of the Class B drugs, with a street value totalling £3,065, Bradford Crown Court was told.

Piatkowski, 27, had agreed to help the dealers in order to raise money to prop up his struggling removals business, his barrister Robin Frieze said.

He pleaded guilty yesterday to possession with intent to supply cannabis and amphetamine and possession of the cash as criminal property.

Piatkowski’s sister, Alexandra Piatkiwski, 24, of the same address, was cleared of the charges after the Crown dropped the case against her.

Prosecutor Andrew Horton said cannabis with a street value of £1,700 and amphetamine worth £1,300 were found at the house. Some of the drugs were loose and some had been bagged up into wraps. The large sum of money was found in two safes and in boxes stored at the address.

Mr Horton said the Crown’s case was that Piatkowski was “a trusted lieutenant in a large drugs operation.”

Mr Frieze said that Piatkowski had no previous convictions in the UK or his native Poland. He had worked hard all his life and hoped to earn money from the drugs operation to save his failing business.

“He was essentially taking all the risks for fairly modest gains, a few thousand pounds that he would have received,” Mr Frieze said.

Piatkowski was ashamed that he had involved his sister in his criminality.

“He was to some extent naive and he will have to pay a heavy penalty for that,” Mr Frieze told the court.

He had been remanded in custody for five months awaiting sentence.

Judge Jonathan Rose told Piatkowski: “You do not raise money to support a business by illegal means. You abandoned your previous good character in order to involve yourself in a substantial way in the peddling of drugs.

“While it was your choice to become a criminal, you put your sister and her liberty in jeopardy by that choice.”

Judge Rose said of the “few thousand pounds” Piatkowski hoped to receive: “That would not be regarded by most members of the public as a modest or paltry amount.” A confiscation order was made under the Proceeds of Crime Act to seize the £125,000 already in the hands of the police.