A DRUG dealer who sent gift sets of cannabis in the post made £115,512 from his criminal activity.

Jason Ayre, said to be a “cannabis connoisseur”, was caught out when Royal Mail staff sniffed out parcels at the sorting office.

He has now been ordered to pay back £10,645 from money in various bank accounts which he had.

A further £3,900 has also been forfeited, which was found when police raided his home in Rawson Road, Farnworth.

Ayre was jailed for two years in November last year.

Bolton Crown Court heard how he made up three packages — each containing cannabis, tobacco, cigarette papers and lighters — and sent them through the post as gifts to his ex-partner and two grown-up children in Cornwall.

But the parcels, which were sent on January 12, were intercepted at the Royal Mail sorting office in St Austell, Cornwall, two days later and Ayre’s fingerprints were found on the packaging.

On March 14, police raided Ayre’s home in Rawson Road and found several cannabis plants, cannabis material stuffed into carrier bags and equipment set up to grow the plants in an upstairs bedroom.

Ayre, aged 45, admitted that he had been growing the drug for up to four years and that he sold it to family and friends. The court heard he had turned to growing his own plants after being unable to buy the quality of cannabis he wanted locally.

He used most of it himself, but he would sell some to close friends, ploughing the profits back into cannabis production.

Tony Wood, finance investigator for Bolton, said: “Another Bolton drug dealer has had money taken from him.

“It continues to set an example to others in that trade that we will take their assets.”