Free Advice: Having a Cell Phone Photo of Yourself Holding Drugs and Cash May Prevent You From Claiming You're Not A Drug Dealer
After a police raid on his Hampshire apartment yielded a significant amount of drugs, guns, cash, and other paraphernalia, 19-year-old Ayub Hagos of south-east London insisted the loot wasn't his.
And that might have convinced law-enforcement officials, if Hagos hadn't recently snapped a cellphone photo of himself with two wads of cash in his hands, a bag of cocaine in his mouth, and a crown made of paper bills on his head.
His lawyer tried to blame the incriminating pic on his client's naïveté, asserting that he "took the photographs as bravado to make himself seem more important in front of his peers."
Since "stupidity" is rarely an effective line of defense, Hagos was sentenced by the court to three and a half years behind bars.