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A London Drug Dealer Just Went to Prison After Taking Selfies with Wads of Cash

This man got so carried away with his own hype that he pretended stacks of cash were a cell phone.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

A drug dealer from the London borough of Lambeth has been sentenced to six years in prison after cops found a bunch of photos where he posed with wads of money held up to his head as though he were speaking into a cell phone.

Besides actual drugs and those little see-through bags, a cell phone is generally a drug dealer's most essential tool. Unfortunately, this man got so carried away with his own hype that he confused a wad of money for a Nokia. It's sad, in a way.

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33-year-old Junior Francis will be in prison for the next six years and eight months. As the Standard reports, after Francis initially denied all charges, the main evidence the police hooked him for was a trove of selfies on his phone where he can be seen holding up cash to his ear. Also useful were the Instagram photos he took where he has a bunch of crumpled notes bound up on a kitchen counter alongside a container of squeezable ketchup. Never have thousands of dollars in cash looked so underwhelming.

Francis was found with £7,000 cash [$10,000] and £75,000 [$111,000] of heroin in a police raid on his home last November, and further investigation uncovered the photos, some of which are captioned on Instagram with Notorious BIG and Method Man lyrics. After initially denying all involvement, Davis admitted possession with intent at London Crown Court on Wednesday and was nabbed for money laundering, too.

"Francis used bullying and intimidation to facilitate his drugs business," Detective Constable Matthew Clark said after the hearing. "From start to finish he denied having any money or dealing drugs but was ultimately undone by his vanity, taking selfies and boasting on social media. Removing Francis from our streets has removed a key contributor to the drugs trade in Lambeth."

After putting so much coke on a lacquered desk that it forms a mountainous pile, having a tiger as a pet, putting spinning rims on a blacked-out Audi, or calling people "chief," taking a cash money selfie is about the most stereotypically drug-dealer activity a person can engage in. So if you're in the business, maybe don't do that, because then people like the police will know you are a drug dealer. I know you want to brag about your hustle, and that you've done well to make so much money from dealing a shitload of drugs. But tamp the ego down a bit, and maybe next time you won't go to prison.

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