Jail for drug dealer caught selling ketamine at Wilderness Festival

Finn Attreed, 21, was facing allegations at four different crown courts in London and Ipswich when he was eventually remanded in custody last year after he was caught going ‘tent to tent’ offering drugs for sale at Oxfordshire’s Wilderness Festival.

Two of those sets of court matters were later dropped, as prosecutors accepted the decision of a Home Office team that the young man was being exploited by criminals higher up the chain - and was a victim of 'modern slavery'.

Jailing him for three years and nine months at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday (April 6), Judge Ian Pringle KC said that by the time he was arrested at Wilderness Festival, the defendant had ‘learned by being a slave and now you were your own master’.

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The court heard Attreed already had a conviction for dealing ecstasy and ketamine under his belt when, in December 2020, he was arrested in London on suspicion of dealing drugs.

Although initially claiming he was underage and could not be strip searched, when his dad confirmed he was in fact 18 Attreed volunteered the 39 ecstasy pills stashed in his pants, £150-worth of ketamine and three pills of party drug 2CB.

Interviewed by the officers, he claimed the £200 cash seized from him belonged to his parents and the ecstasy pills were ones ‘we take at raves to get f***ed up’. The ketamine was for his own use, he claimed, telling the police: “I’m addicted to it; have been for years.”

In a basis of plea, accepted by the Crown, the defendant said he had been acting under the direction of others.

His parents' North London home was raided on January 27, 2020. Behind his locked bedroom door, officers found 220g of ecstasy powder and 38 pills with a combined value of £10,000 – although Attreed said he was simply holding the drugs for someone else.

Also found in the bedroom was 6.3g of cocaine worth £200, £90-worth of cannabis and 138g of ketamine valued at between £3,000 and £5,000.

A phone found in a fruit bowl in a downstairs porch was analysed and messages found consistent with him supplying drugs.

One text from a customer read: “Hey, can I get ecstasy and ket [sic] if you have any?” Other messages pointed to him having been dealing drugs at the Reading Festival and boasted of the dealer being ‘online all over London all of the time’.

Attreed was arrested by the Metropolitan Police and later bailed.

It was while on bail that security officers at Wilderness Festival in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, were tipped off by other festivalgoers about the defendant going from tent to tent in the early hours of August 5 last year offering drugs for sale.

He was searched and found to have cocaine, 2CB and ketamine with a combined value of £560.

Messages on the phone pointed to Attreed’s involvement in both the preparation and sale of the party drugs.

Festivalgoers at Wilderness, near Charlbury Picture: Ed Nix

His customers appeared disappointed by the quality of his produce, with one text complaining: “I don’t want that K [ketamine] no more. I’mma [sic] give it back to you. That K is so f***ed.”

Attreed, of Torrington Park, Barnet, pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to possession with intent to supply class A and B drugs and possession of 2CB and cannabis. The pleas related to offending dealt with by Inner London, Harrow and Oxford crown courts.

In addition, he asked the judge sentencing him this week to take into account further matters of possession with intent to supply ecstasy, ketamine and synthetic anti-anxiety drug Bromazolam.

He had faced other cases at Ipswich and Snaresbrook crown courts, which were denied. Prosecutors accepted pleas in the other three cases.

Mitigating, Peta-Louise Bagott said her client had started taking drugs aged 13 and spent his teenage years with an addiction to ketamine.

His parents had washed their hands of him, Ms Bagott said. Addicted to drugs, he was a ‘prime target for exploitation’.

Since his remand into custody, he had pledged to ‘clean up’ and ‘grow up’. He hoped to gain a trade as a painter and go straight, learning that a life of crime leads to ‘nothing more than four walls’ of his prison cell.

“The police and courts’ intervention has saved him,” Ms Bagott told the judge. He had been forced to take responsibility for his actions and ‘grow up’, the court heard.