A BOUNCY castle business boss was caught after leaving £2,000 of Class A drugs in a parked car while he went to a police station to answer bail.

Mark Butler, of no fixed abode, had already admitted one count of possession of cocaine.

Oxford Crown Court heard at his sentencing on Thursday how the 33-year old turned up at Abingdon Police Station on May 30 to answer police bail on a domestic violence matter.

While at the station officers seized a set of keys for an Audi A3, but Butler refused to say where he had parked the car.

A search ensued and a PCSO was dispatched to scour the nearby area for parked Audi A3s and to try the keys to ‘beep’ each vehicle in order to identify the correct one.

Eventually, the court heard, he found the correct car parked at the Beefeater pub over the road and, on searching it, found a haul of cocaine totalling 62.5g carrying a street value of roughly £2,000.

Cash totalling £9,000 was also seized.

The court heard yesterday that police did not pursue charges of supplying the drugs due to a lack of evidence and the cash formed the proceeds from his bouncy castle business and not from any alleged criminal activity involving drug dealing.

In mitigation, Peter Du Feu said that his client had fallen into a serious drug habit and at the time of the offence he was consuming a large amount of Class A drugs.

He added that at the time police searched the car he was homeless and living out of the vehicle which was not his and he was borrowing from a friend.

Sentencing Judge Zoe Smith said: “To carry that around in the car was extremely dangerous and these drugs could have gone into the hands of anybody.

“At interview you admitted the drugs were for personal use and you had a bad habit at the time.”

Butler was jailed for six months and must pay court costs of £1,200 pending a future magistrates’ court hearing to decide what to do with the seized cash.