A YORK man who was jailed for masterminding a plot to smuggle nearly £45,000 of Ecstasy into Britain has been ordered to hand over more than £4,000 in ill-gotten gains.

Barry Ward, 34, of Tamworth Road, Clifton, was jailed for seven years last year after he was found guilty of smuggling 4,030 tablets of the Class A drug with a street value of £44,330 under the cover of a Calais to Dover "booze cruise".

At a drugs trafficking hearing at Hull Crown Court yesterday, a judge decided that £4,154 belonging to lorry driver Ward, formerly of Herongate, Pickering, was the benefits of drug trafficking and should be confiscated.

Recorder Mrs Diana Stocken also ordered him to pay £504 costs.

At a trial in October last year the jury heard that earlier in March Ward and accomplice Daniel Loughran had travelled to Dover in Ward's girlfriend's car before splitting up and hiring a car for Loughran to drive on to the ferry to Calais.

Loughran, 24, formerly of Hawthorn Avenue, Peasey Hills, Malton, was jailed for four years after admitting his part in the drug smuggling plot.

When the pair returned to Britain later the same day in separate cars, Loughran's vehicle was stopped by Customs and Excise officers and searched.