Ex-Blues forward Jay Emmanuel-Thomas was sentenced to four years in prison at Chelmsford Crown Court this afternoon having pleaded guilty to his involvement in a plot to smuggle class B drugs into the UK last month.
The 34-year-old was arrested by the National Crime Agency (NCA) in September last year, Border Force officers having found 60kg of cannabis with a street value of 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 but changed his plea at a hearing on May 7th.
Yasmin Piotrowska, 33, Emmanuel-Thomas’s girlfriend, who was in the public gallery for the sentencing, and Rosie Rowland, 28, her friend, were also charged but faced no further action, investigations into their involvement having ended following analysis of Emmanuel-Thomas’s mobile phone.
The pair had been offered £2,500 in cash and an all-expenses-paid trip in return from bringing back the suitcases, which they had been led to believe contained gold. Emmanuel-Thomas himself was set to make £5,000.
"It was you who got those women involved,” Judge Mills said. "They would be taking the primary risk of going to prison.
"You knew precisely what you were involved with and what you had gotten them involved with.
"Clearly, you were aware of the importation of cannabis from Thailand and seemingly the inexhaustible supply of it.”
He added: "It is through your own actions you will no longer be known as a professional footballer. You will be known as a criminal. A professional footballer who threw it all away.”
In a letter to the judge read out in court prior to sentencing, Emmanuel-Thomas, who has been on remand in Chelmsford Prison since his arrest, said: "This past year has been the most harmful and eye-opening of my life. At times it has been unbearable.”
Having "never imagined” he would be in the situation in which he finds himself, he added that he "completely regrets but takes full responsibility for” his actions.
The Forest Gate-born attacker says being visited in prison by his daughter, one of two children, was tough to take.
"Watching her walk into the space broke me,” he admitted. "I never wanted her to see me in that light.”
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. A mercurial talent, manager Paul Jewell famously once said he "goes from a world beater to a panel beater”.
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.