A drug dealer has been ordered to pay back hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Craig Ashley Smith, 35, of Hove Park Way, Hove, was ordered to repay £235,000 he earned through crime at a confiscation hearing.

Smith was arrested in June 2008 by Sussex Police’s serious and organised crime unit with four blocks of cannabis resin in the pockets of his shorts.

Officers then found another 782 blocks of the drug hidden in a lock-up garage in Lyndhurst Road hove.

After being sentenced to five and a half years in prison for possession with intent to supply drugs, police experts investigated Smith’s finances.

They found he had lived a lavish lifestyle buying high value vehicles, an expensive home and subsidising his property business with the proceeds of crime.

Detective Inspector Chris Neilson, head of Sussex Police’s economic crime unit, said: “The money recovered from criminals like Smith is put back into the criminal justice system nationally and is then re-distributed into the community for the benefit of law enforcement and also for community projects as part of the community payback scheme.

“Criminals face a further term of imprisonment if they fail to pay confiscation orders. The order remains with them for their life-time unless paid, so we can enforce such orders by taking criminals back to court to make them pay up in full.”