Drug courier caught throwing £900,000 box of cocaine from car ordered to repay thousands

A personal trainer and drug courier caught after a high-speed police chase has been ordered to repay thousands of pounds.

William Paterson was jailed for five years and four months in August 2024 after pleading guilty to being concerned in the supply of cocaine.

The 37-year-old threw the box of cocaine worth nearly £900,000 from a car window during a police pursuit around the north of Glasgow on March 1, 2023.

Officers had earlier kept tabs on “courier” Paterson through Operation Windstriker, which focused on an organised crime group based in the West of Scotland.

At the High Court in Edinburgh on Monday, Paterson was ordered to repay £46,370 with the benefit of criminal conduct found to be £205,000.

At a previous hearing, the court heard how Paterson disposed of cocaine worth hundreds of thousands of pounds in the street during a high-speed police car pursuit.

He discarded nine kilos of the Class A drug concealed in a black box beside a residential housing estate near Hogganfield Loch, Glasgow, in March 2023.

He later drove his Mercedes car straight at an unmarked police car.

Officers had spotted Paterson, described as a personal trainer, collecting a black plastic box from another male in the Springboig area of Glasgow, placing it in the boot of his Mercedes, and then driving away.

He was eventually stopped following a high-speed chase after trying to evade capture.

Detectives who searched the car found £6,370 in loose banknotes, but there was no sign of the black box.

However, they retraced Paterson’s route during the pursuit and discovered the container on a street across from Hogganfield Loch, where its contents were revealed.