Emmanuel-Thomas jailed for four years for cannabis smuggling plot

Jay Emmanuel-Thomas has been jailed for four years after being found guilty of trying to smuggle £600,000 of cannabis into the country from Thailand.

The 34-year-old played four times on loan for MK Dons in 2016 from Queens Park Rangers. He also played for Arsenal, Ipswich and Bristol City during his career.

Emmanuel-Thomas was judged to have orchestrated a scheme to bring in 60kg of drugs into the country, but the plot was foiled at Stansted airport last September. He recruited girlfriend, Yasmin Piotrowska, 33, and her 28-year-old friend Rosie Rowland, to smuggle the Class B drug, which was found vacuum packed in four separate suitcases.

Charges against the women were dropped at a previous hearing after it emerged they believed they were transporting gold.

"It is through your own actions you will no longer be known as a professional footballer; you will be known as a criminal," Judge Alexander Mills told him at Chelmsford Crown Court. "A professional footballer who threw it all away."

Writing a letter to the judge ahead of his sentencing, Emmanuel-Thomas wrote: “This past year has been the most harmful and eye-opening of my life. At times it has been unbearable."

"Watching [his daughter] walk into the space broke me. I never wanted her to see me in that light."

Barrister Alex Rose said the footballer was suffering ‘significant financial hard times’ and was tempted into the world of crime.

He said: “When he had that knock on the door and realised it was the police and he was going to be arrested, he realised his whole world was falling in - his career as a footballer was over.

"His football career is finished. That is something he has brought entirely on himself, but it is a devastating blow for somebody who had such promise.

“He succumbed to temptation and a catastrophic error of judgement.”