A 24-year-old man will spend three years and four months behind bars after missing not one but two ‘special deliveries’ for cocaine hidden in gingerbread-scented candles.

Benjamin Jake Bartlett-Noble appeared in and was sentenced by the Royal Court yesterday after pleading guilty to a single count of being concerned in the postal importation of 57.15 grams of cocaine.

Missed deliveries

Crown Advocate Luke Sette, prosecuting, explained that a package containing “three candles” with a declared worth of £45 was shipped to Bartlett-Noble’s St Helier address in early July 2024.

Addressed to a fictional ‘Sue Cooper’, the parcel actually contained three “airpure gingerbread-scented candles” filled with between £8,600 and £14,300 of cocaine.

An initial attempt to deliver the illicit parcel was made by Jersey Post on 8 July at 11:20am – but Bartlett-Noble was nowhere to be seen, the court heard.

After tracking the parcel and realising it had already arrived in Jersey, Crown Advocate Sette said the defendant got in touch with Jersey Post and paid £2 for a re-delivery service.

The postal service then arrived on 10 July at a slightly earlier time of 11.10am, with the cocaine candles primed and ready to be received. Once again, however, no-one was home.

On both occasions, Crown Advocate Sette noted, Jersey Post left customary “sorry we missed you” dockets at Bartlett-Noble’s address.

Rumbled

After the two missed deliveries, Jersey Customs and Immigration (JCIS) eventually selected the parcel for further examination at Jersey Post’s headquarters.

Crown Advocate Sette said the parcel was opened and found to contain a “candle with the centre hollowed out” and a “tea light placed in the cavity”.

“Underneath the tea light was a blue plastic bag. This bag contained a cling-film wrapped package, within which was a further blue plastic bag containing white powder,” he said.

Analysis later identified 26.75g of cocaine at a purity of 38% stashed inside the gingerbread-scented candle.

Another candle “in a glass jar with a hollowed-out centre” was found to be concealing 30.4g of the class A drug at a purity of 32%.

Bartlett-Noble was arrested on 1 August, with a search of his home address locating an iPhone, drug paraphernalia, and a “sorry we missed you” tag dated to 10 July 2024.

“I thought it might have been something my missus ordered”

Noting the parcel’s sender details as being on the outskirts of Stockport, police asked Bartlett-Noble about any connections he had to the northern town during an initial interview on 1 August.

In response, the defendant replied: “I don’t speak to anyone from Stockport.”

He also claimed not to have “read the name” on the Jersey Post docket before requesting redelivery on 8 July.

The 24-year-old told officers he “thought it might have been something my missus ordered”, the court heard.

In a second interview on 14 October, Bartlett-Noble suggested that he had been “stitched up”.

Following the interview, he was bailed for a charging decision to be made and immediately left the island.

Bartlett-Noble was arrested by Devon and Cornwall Police on 31 January 2026 and brought back to Jersey, where he entered not guilty pleas at the Magistrate’s Court.

He later changed his plea to guilty after the indictment was amended.

“Very limited role”

Advocate Mark Boothman, defending, said his client was “motivated to put this episode behind him” and “move on positively” with his life after spending a total of 96 days in custody on remand.

Bartlett-Noble was described as a “hard-working, trustworthy” young man who “demonstrates great kindness to others”.

It was argued he played a “very limited role” in the drug trafficking and would have stood to benefit “virtually nothing” from the importation of “relatively low-purity” cocaine.

Referring to Crown Advocate Sette’s suggestion of a minimum term of imprisonment of nine years, Advocate Boothman asked that the court “show a degree of mercy”.

Sentencing

Commissioner Alan Binnington, presiding, said the defendant was sentenced on his “basis of plea”, namely that he was not expecting to receive any monetary payment and only “suspected” the package to contain drugs.

Delivering the court’s decision, he handed Bartlett-Noble a total sentence of three years and four months’ imprisonment.

An order for the forfeiture and destruction of the drugs was also made.