Genevieve Horsley convicted after supplying MDMA to police informant
The 21-year-old who sold drugs on Facebook group ‘Vegetables Australia’ has avoided jail time after being sentenced today.
Central Sydney
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The daughter of a Sydney barrister who was caught dealing drugs on Facebook under the pseudonym ‘Gucci Grey’ has avoided jail time.
Genevieve Horsley, 21, dealt MDMA, acid and Xanax out of her home in Alexandria from June 2018 until her arrest when police attended the family terrace house on August 28, 2018.
She was convicted of one charge of ongoing supply of illegal drugs at Downing Centre District Court on Thursday, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years jail, and placed on a 12 month intensive corrections order.
Horsley had also pleaded guilty to one count of growing a prohibited plant – after she voluntarily led police to a cannabis plant she was cultivating in her bedroom wardrobe during her arrest.
On Thursday Judge Penelope Wass dismissed that charge, saying the offence was on the “lowest end of the scale possible” and accepted that it was for personal use only.
The court heard Horsely, who has struggled with mental illness from a young age, began dealing drugs for money for temporary accommodation in order to “remove herself from a family situation”.
She advertised the drugs on a Facebook group called ‘Vegetables Australia’, using codewords such as ‘broccoli’ and ‘capsicums’ for drugs.
Her actions were foiled when Horsely sold more than five grams of MDMA to a registered police informant, during six transactions last August totaling $1150.
She told the court she had not used cannabis since her arrest in August 2018, when she ran out of the drug: “I didn’t have anymore, so I just stopped.”
The TAFE student who is studying to work in the disability field told the court she now realised that people could have been killed by taking the drugs she supplied.
“I didn’t really think about it before I did it,” she said.
Horsley also told the court that the police informant was “aggressive” in trying to obtain drugs: “(They) got very persistent if I said ‘no’, or if I couldn’t come.”
Judge Wass ruled that the “street dealer” was “encouraged” to offend by the informant but noted that she “willingly obliged” to sell them drugs.
“The offending was unsophisticated, with the offender advertising on Facebook with little coding,” she said.
“She placed herself at risk of being caught and indeed she was.”
The court heard Horsley, the daughter of retired barrister Richard Horsley, had undergone an “extraordinary” amount of personal rehabilitation and was “by all accounts an intelligent and thoughtful person”.
She has been ordered to abstain from illegal drugs for the duration of her sentence.