Footballer Jay Emmanuel-Thomas was told he had ‘thrown it all away’ as he was jailed for four years for trying to smuggle £600,000 of cannabis from Thailand.
The 34-year-old striker was arrested after officers from the National Crime Agency (NCA) seized the haul as it was being taken through Stansted Airport.
He had recruited his girlfriend and her pal to bring the drugs, which they thought was gold. Both women were cleared of importing the drugs at a previous hearing.
Former Arsenal academy product Emmanuel-Thomas pleaded guilty to importing cannabis between July 1 and September 2 last year.
The footballer, whose former clubs include Ipswich, Bristol City, QPR, Livingston, Aberdeen and Thai side PTT Rayong, was sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court.
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Judge Alexander Mills told him: ‘It is through your own actions you will no longer be known as a professional footballer.
‘You will be known as a criminal. A professional footballer who threw it all away.’
Emmanuel-Thomas was sacked by Scottish Championship side Greenock Morton after his arrest last year.
Prosecutor David Josse KC said the ‘interception’ of the two women – Emmanuel-Thomas’s girlfriend Yasmin Piotrowska and her friend Rosie Rowland – happened at the airport.
He said it ‘became apparent this defendant, Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, had been involved in their recruitment to travel to Thailand’ while playing for a side there.
The barrister said Emmanuel-Thomas had ‘some awareness and understanding of the scale of the operation’ and was acting in an ‘operational management function’ in the plot.
Alex Rose, for Emmanuel-Thomas, said: ‘The financial gain in this case for Mr Emmanuel-Thomas was £5,000.’
Mr Rose said the defendant was a father-of-two and had made a ‘catastrophic error of judgment’.
He said a ‘period of being out of contract led to very significant financial hard times’ and he ‘succumbed to temptation’.
‘Although he had previously experienced periods of being in between contracts or – putting it another way – being unemployed as a footballer, they had largely been on the back of fairly lucrative long-term contracts,’ said Mr Rose.
He said the ‘situation was rather different in the background to this’.
Mr Rose continued: ‘His football career is finished and that’s something he has brought entirely on himself.
‘It’s a devastating blow for somebody who had such promise and such an impressive football career.’
Judge Mills said Emmanuel-Thomas had played five games for Greenock Morton and was on a £600 per week contract at the time of the incident.
He said the footballer ‘recruited’ his girlfriend and her friend and was ‘essentially turning the importation of cannabis into an all-expenses paid holiday in the Far East’, arranging business class flights, hotel costs and discussing in messages how to maximise their time on the Thai island of Ko Samui.
Ms Piotrowska, 33, and Ms Rowland, 29, denied the charge and at an earlier hearing prosecutors offered no evidence in their case.
Mr Josse said at an earlier hearing that the women ‘said they thought they were importing gold not cannabis’, and the judge directed that not guilty verdicts be recorded for them.
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