Police have busted a Queenstown man for drug dealing after being called to a family-harm incident involving his only customers.
Mark Christopher Holmes, 47, a self-employed landscape gardener, was sentenced in the Queenstown District Court last week to nine months’ home detention for selling ecstasy valued at $9500 to the couple over nearly two years.
Police say data from a mobile phone seized during the February callout led them to believe Holmes had been regularly supplying the couple the class B-controlled drug in pill and powdered form.
When police officers attending noticed drug utensils in the house, they invoked warrantless search powers.
They found 47g of ecstasy in point bags, as well as digital scales and two mobile phones.
Based on the prices Holmes had been charging the couple, police calculated he had sold them 50g of ecstasy and 58 ecstasy pills for a total value of about $9500 over nearly two years.
He had also offered to sell them small amounts of LSD.
Holmes, who admitted charges of supplying ecstasy, possessing ecstasy for supply and offering to supply LSD, was convicted in October.
Judge Mark Williams said mitigating factors in the offending were that Holmes had a drug-addiction problem, and was not a "street-level" dealer selling drugs to the wider community.
From a starting point of 30 months’ imprisonment, he applied discounts for Holmes’ early guilty plea, expression of remorse and efforts towards rehabilitation.
He converted the resulting 18-month term of imprisonment to a final sentence of nine months’ home detention.
