Ex-Blues forward Jay Emmanuel-Thomas has pleaded guilty to his involvement in a plot to smuggle class B drugs into the UK.
The 34-year-old was arrested by the National Crime Agency (NCA) in September, Border Force officers having found 60kg of cannabis worth around £600,000 in suitcases on September 2nd after a flight had arrived at Stansted from Bangkok via Dubai. Having been arrested and remanded in custody, he was sacked by his most recent club, Greenock Morton.
Emmanuel-Thomas, of Cardwell Road, Gourock, near Glasgow, initially pleaded not guilty in October, but changed his plea at a hearing on May 7th when he appeared at Chelmsford Crown Court by video link from Chelmsford Prison with reporting restrictions lifted today.
He will be sentenced at a later date and is facing a maximum sentence of 14 years in jail.
Rosie Rowland, 28, of Southend Road, Chelmsford, and Yasmin Piotrowska, 33, of Purves Road in north-west London were also charged but will face no further action, the investigations into their involvement having ended following analysis of Emmanuel-Thomas's mobile phone.
Prosecutor David Josse KC said: "At all material times they maintained both before the events that led to the importation and after the events they said they thought they were importing gold not cannabis.”
Emmanuel-Thomas, nicknamed JET, joined the Blues for a fee of a reported £1.5 million from Arsenal, where he had come through their academy, in July 2011.
The Forest Gate-born attacker went on to make 43 starts and 32 sub appearances for the Blues, scoring nine times, before being made available by Mick McCarthy in the summer of 2013 along with Michael Chopra.
Emmanuel-Thomas moved onto Bristol City in a swap deal which saw Paul Anderson join Town and has had plenty of clubs since then.
In addition to the Robins, he played for QPR, MK Dons, Gillingham (loan), Thai side PTT Rayong, Livingston, Aberdeen, Jamshedpur in India and Kidderminster Harriers before joining Morton in the summer of 2024.