A PUB employee who turned his place of work into a black market centre for tobacco and cigarette sales has been ordered to stay at home for 12 hours every night.

Stephen Patrick Dockerty, 61, peddled his illegal trade in the Ebor pub where he both worked and was a regular customer for two years, unknown to the landlord, said Kevin Blount, prosecuting for City of York Council.

He netted £1,000 every two or three months as he sold tobacco and cigarettes without Government health warnings.

“This was a high turnover over a lengthy period of time,” Mr Blount told York magistrates.

When council officers, acting on a tip-off, raided the pub on October 2, they found 250 packs of black market tobacco and cigarettes. All of them broke Government regulations on tobacco and cigarette sales because they did not have pictures showing the effects of smoking and didn’t have a Government health warning on them in English, said Mr Blount.

Dockerty, of Askrigg House, Bouthwaite Drive, Acomb, who has lost his job as a gardener at the pub, pleaded guilty to three charges of offering tobacco and cigarettes for sale without health warnings and asked for 247 similar offences to be taken into consideration.

He was put under a nightly curfew from 6pm to 6am at his home for 12 weeks and ordered to pay £260 prosecution costs and a £60 statutory surcharge.

In a probation report, magistrates heard that he was ashamed of his actions. Dockerty, who represented himself, said he may have been confused about regulations regarding the sale of cigarettes and tobacco.

Mr Blount said City of York Council took breaches of the regulations seriously because they undermined Government efforts to deter people from smoking.

He said the landlord of the pub was unaware of the cache of tobacco and cigarettes and of Dockerty’s activities.

Dockerty told trading standards officers he worked two hours a day at the pub as a gardener and was also a regular customer there.

He had started his illegal sales when a stranger gave him a telephone number to ring to get supplies. He had been selling hand-rolling tobacco for two years and cigarettes for about seven or eight months before the trading standards raid.

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