Though we know that there's a minuscule chance of actually winning, millions of us continue to faithfully enter the lottery, week after week and year after year. But it's all rather bizarre when you come to think about it, I mean just take a gander at the statistics: your chances of winning the jackpot are around 1 in 45 million. To put this into context, you're more likely to be hit by a piece of extra-terrestrial matter than to win financial freedom. Yes, the chances of being hit by a falling meteorite is a more plausible 1 in 700,000.
So yeah, that's pretty unlikely. But do you know what's even more unlikely? Finding £50 million worth of cocaine washed up on a beach. I mean, really, who needs seashells and sandcastles, when you can find millions of pounds worth of class A narcotics?
This was the exact situation that one "opportunistic" drug-dealer found himself in when he stumbled across £50 million (that is, $66 million) worth of cocaine washed up on the beaches at Caister-on-sea and Hopton in February.
Julian Underhill, who hails from Caister-on-Sea in Norfolk, was absolutely delighted by the find, and eagerly scooped up tens of thousands of pounds worth of the 360kg loot. In fact, he even compared the discovery to be his equivalent of "Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket". What an Oompa Loompa, eh?
However, after sending a text to a woman bragging about what he'd picked up on his recent trip to the seaside, Underhill was quickly caught by authorities. The drugs, which are said to have been 94 per cent pure, were subsequently seized by the National Crime Agency.
Prosecutor on the case, Martin Ivory, has stated: "The defendant in his text message to another individual said that he had effectively stumbled upon what he described as 'Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket' and that he anticipated that he could be £20,000 ($26,200) to £30,000 ($39,300) better off as a result of that find."
In a hearing at Norwich Crown Court, it was heard that Underhill was found with 8.8g of cocaine (worth between £360 - £450) at the time at his arrest on the 3rd March. He was also found with 853g of cannabis, which added up to around £5,000.
Underhill informed police officers that he had only discovered two 1kg packages of cocaine on the 9th February.
Mr. Underhill's lawyer, Andrew Oliver, has said that Underhill was not a regular dealer of cocaine, and that he had only sent the text to impress a woman. "He says he's effectively bragging to a female friend and it's of note that he doesn't want anyone else to know about it," he said. "But these things being as they are, it obviously gets out because when one goes down the list of texts that Mr Hamilton (the officer in the case) identified there are clearly requests for him for cocaine."
Oliver explained that before this incident, Underhill had just been a low-level cannabis dealer, who had a "somewhat pathetic" history of heavily using cannabis and crack cocaine. The lawyer also added that whilst Underhill has admitted that he used and dealt some of the cocaine, the precise amount that he originally took may never be known.
Underhill, who is currently unemployed, was ultimately given a two-year suspended prison sentence and was also ordered to undertake a drug rehabilitation course.
Now, I guess that's what you call a low blow...
