A MUM-OF-FIVE who dealt thousands of prescription of drugs to help fund a luxury lifestyle of foreign holidays and designer watches has walked free from court. Emma McDougall, 38, earned more than £100,000 a year from dealing gabapentin, zopiclone, etizolam, tramadol, temazepam, diazepam, alprazolam, pregabalin, and tapentadol in an operation described by a judge as “essentially a home pharmacy”, Ipswich Crown Court heard on Friday. Peter Gair, prosecuting, said police uncovered the scale of her offending when they investigated the phone of one of her customers, who had died from an unrelated drug overdose.
Sentence - Emma McDougall appeared before a judge at Ipswich Crown Court on Friday (Image: Daniel Rees, Newsquest) Police searched McDougall’s address in Colchester in July 2022 while she was away on holiday in Venice with her then fiancé Joe Gooch. Her children were at home at the time officers entered the house and were being looked after by one of McDougall’s relatives, the court heard. Inside, officers found boxes containing “many thousands of tablets of class A and class C” drugs with a combined street value of more than £55,000.
The defendant, now of Honeybee Grove, Tiptree, was told of the police search and returned to the UK without the phone she had used to deal the drugs to more than 100 customers. She admitted one charge of possession of class A drugs with intent to supply, and eight charges of possession of class C drugs with intent to supply. G.
