A PENSIONER caught smuggling tobacco and cigarettes has to hand over £52,000 within three months or go to jail for nine months.

Kenneth Reginald Wood, 71, benefited by £54,775.52 through his illegal activities, York Crown Court heard.

Angus MacDonald, for Revenue and Customs, said its investigators had concluded Wood had assets worth £52,198.04.

Judge Simon Hickey made a confiscation order forcing Wood to hand over £52,198.04 by November 26.

He said that if Wood didn’t comply with the order in time, he would go to jail for nine months – and would still have to pay the money.

Wood, of Ropery Walk, Malton, did not contest the order.

He was given an eight-month prison sentence suspended for 12 months in February and was fined £8,000 after he pleaded guilty to evading excise duty on tobacco products.

Mr MacDonald told York Crown Court in February that Revenue and Customs officers found 85,500 cigarettes and 112 kilos of rolled tobacco at Wood’s rented storage unit in York.

He had not paid £54,126 due in excise duty on them and other tobacco products found in Wood’s house and car.

Solicitor advocate Kevin Blount for Wood told the February hearing he had been selling “a small number of cigarettes to people he knew”.

But he had been exploited by others further up the smuggling chain.

They had told him he would only get a “slap on the wrist” if he stored tobacco products for them, said the solicitor advocate.