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Finn Attreed, 21, was facing charges in four different crown courts in London and Ipswich when he was finally taken into custody last year after he was caught going from “shop to shop” offering drugs for sale at the Wilderness Festival from Oxfordshire.

Two of those sets of court cases were later dropped as prosecutors accepted a Home Office team’s decision that the young man was being exploited by criminals higher up the chain and was a victim of “modern slavery”.

Jailing him for three years and nine months at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday (April 6), Judge Ian Pringle KC said that when he was arrested at the Wilderness Festival, the defendant had “learned as a slave and now you are yours.” “. teacher’.

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The court heard that Attreed already had a conviction for ecstasy and ketamine trafficking when, in December 2020, he was arrested in London on suspicion of drug trafficking.

Although he initially claimed he was underage and could not be strip-searched, when his father confirmed he was actually 18, Attreed offered the 39 ecstasy pills hidden in his trousers, £150 worth of ketamine and three pills. of the party drug 2CB.

Interviewed by officers, he claimed that the £200 cash seized from him belonged to his parents and that the ecstasy pills were what “we take at raves to screw ourselves over”. The ketamine was for her own use, he claimed, telling police: “I’m addicted to it; they have been for years.”

On a guilty basis, accepted by the Crown, the defendant said that he had been acting at the direction of others.

His parents’ north London home was raided on 27 January 2020. Behind his locked bedroom door, officers found 220g of ecstasy powder and 38 pills with a combined value of £10,000, although Attreed said he was simply saving the drugs for someone else.

Also found in the bedroom were 6.3g of cocaine worth £200, £90 of cannabis and 138g of ketamine valued between £3,000 and £5,000.

A phone found in a fruit bowl on the ground-floor porch was analyzed and found messages consistent with him supplying drugs.

A text from a customer read: “Hey can I get ecstasy and ket (sic) if you have any?” Other messages suggested that he had been selling drugs at the Reading Festival and boasted that the dealer was “online all over London all the time”.

Attreed was arrested by the Metropolitan Police and later placed on bail.

It was while out on bail that security officers at the Wilderness Festival in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, were tipped off by other festival goers about the defendant going from shop to shop in the early hours of August 5 last year offering drugs. for sale.

He was searched and found to have cocaine, 2CB and ketamine with a combined value of £560.

The phone messages pointed to Attreed’s involvement in both preparing and selling the drugs for the party.

Festival goers in the Wilderness near Charlbury Image: Ed Nix

His customers seemed disappointed in the quality of his product, with one text complaining: “I don’t want that K (ketamine) anymore. I’m going to (sic) give it back to you. That K is so fucked up.”

Attreed, of Torrington Park, Barnet, pleaded guilty in previous hearings to possession with intent to supply class A and B drugs and possession of 2CB and cannabis. Pleadings relating to offenses dealt with by the Crown Courts of Inner London, Harrow and Oxford.

In addition, he asked the judge who sentenced him this week to consider more issues of possession with intent to supply ecstasy, ketamine and the synthetic anxiolytic Bromazolam.

He had faced other cases at Ipswich and Snaresbrook crown courts, which were denied. Prosecutors accepted arguments in the other three cases.

In mitigation, Peta-Louise Bagott said her client started using drugs at age 13 and spent her teenage years addicted to ketamine.

His parents had washed their hands of him, Bagott said. Addicted to drugs, he was a ‘prime target for exploitation’.

Since his pretrial detention, he had vowed to “clean up” and “grow up.” He hoped to get a trade as a painter and move on, learning that a life of crime leads to ‘nothing but four walls’ of his prison cell.

“The intervention of the police and the courts has saved him,” Ms Bagott told the judge. He had been forced to take responsibility for his actions and “grow up,” the court heard.