DETECTIVES at Cumbria Constabulary have been told that they can continue holding £7,000 of suspicious cash that officers seized from a motorist.

The money was found hidden inside a child’s car seat after police stopped a car that was in the Spadeadam area, Carlisle’s Rickergate court heard. Police applied to continue holding the cash as they investigate its origins.

A financial investigator with the force outlined the circumstances that lay behind the cash seizure on June 17. When asked about the money, which he had not mentioned when first questioned, the driver gave varying explanations.

The investigator told District Judge John Temperley: “He initially said he was going to an address to price up some electrical work.

“But when I spoke to him yesterday, he said he was employed as a waiter in an Italian restaurant in Newcastle.”

At the roadside, the court heard, the driver had appeared to be “extremely nervous,” initially denying that there was anything of interest in the car.

Though the man, from the Newcastle area, did not attend the court hearing, he told police he had been delivering the money, having collected it from a person in Scotland. The cash was mostly made up of Scottish bank notes.

He was taking it to a person in Newcastle, he claimed.

District Judge Temperley said that, given the details of how the money was found – hidden in a car seat; and the behaviour of the driver - he considered that it was recoverable under Proceeds of Crime legislation.

The cash seizure bore all the hallmarks of courier trip linked to drug dealing, said the Judge. He approved the continued detention of the money for a further three months.