More jail for Mackay drug trafficker

String of offences activates 15 months of suspended sentence for drug trafficker

A DRUG traffficker will spend 15 months longer in jail after she was found guilty of breaching her suspended sentence.

Already in jail for other offences, Lauren Elizabeth Piccles, 32, who had ties to both Burleigh Heads and Mackay, committed a range of low-level offences which had the court reactivate part of the five-year sentence she received for trafficking MDMA in 2011.

Brisbane Supreme Court heard that in the trafficking offence, Piccles, who bears distinctive facial tattoos, was found with a significant amount of pills and $30,000 in a motel room.

Released after serving 666 days of this sentence, with three years and two months suspended, Piccles avoided crime until 2014, when she entered a shop and paid for items using a fraudulent cheque.

Then in October 2015 police searched her home and found marijuana, a bong and scissors.

Ms Piccles then stole a purse from a vehicle, using the credit card to make purchases, and tried to use false identification to get high-end mobile phone contracts.

Justice David Boddice noted the breach offences were not as serious as the original offence, and in the past Piccles had demonstrated she could be a law-abiding citizen.

For those reasons he said it would be unjust to activate the whole of the 2011 sentence, activating 15 months of Piccles' previously suspended sentence, to be served concurrently.

- ARM NEWSDESK

Originally published as More jail for Mackay drug trafficker