AN Ellesmere Port criminal has been ordered to sell his house to pay back £135k of his ill-gotten gains.

Robert Parsonage, 32, has been ordered to pay back a total of £135,143.43 after he was part of an organised crime group that imported cannabis from the United States of America.

Parsonage, currently of Rostherne Avenue, was convicted last year for offences of money laundering linked to the importation of cannabis, where he received a two-year suspended sentence.

An investigation by Cheshire Constabulary's Economic Crime Unit identified he had large amounts of money in his bank accounts and that he owned his own property, having bought it for a cash sum of £29,000 in 2016.

An application was then made to Chester Crown Court and these assets were restrained prior to the criminal trial to secure them against dissipation.

The order amount of £211,281.99 was the value of the Parsonage's benefit from his criminal conduct over the last six years.

The total amount he has been ordered to pay is £135,143.43.

This is an accumulation of all the assets he currently holds and made up of the house he owns, the money in his bank accounts and high-value Rolex watches seized during the strike phase of the Op Saigon investigation.

Parsonage has three months to sell any property not already held by Cheshire Constabulary – including his house.

If he fails to meet this, he would have to return to court and a custodial sentence would be imposed.

Most of the organised crime gang members were convicted in late 2020, including 42-year-old Raymond Holding, the head of the operation, who led the gang from his Little Sutton base.

He was in charge of sourcing and importing large quantities of cannabis from California, and recruited members of his family and several vulnerable people in Ellesmere Port as the recipients for the large number of cannabis orders placed with his supplier in America.

The class B drug was then sold to users in Ellesmere Port.

Holding was jailed for three years and three months, and later ordered to repay £73,000 of his ill-gotten gains, including Rolex watches and a Patek Phillippe watch worth approximately £25,000.