A MAN who stored almost a quarter of a million bootleg cigarettes in a Haslingden stable was today starting a four month jail term.

Burnley Crown Court heard how Mark Bray, 31, also had another 96,000 cigarettes hidden in tubes in the back of a transit van when Customs and Excise officers swooped at Higher Hud Hey Farm, last May. The government was cheated out of more than £45,000 in duty with the haul.

Sentencing the defendant, Judge Raymond Bennett said the message must go out to people involved in fraudulent evasion of excise duty on a substantial scale that prison was inevitable if they were caught.

The defendant, of Chaddock Lane, Boothstown, Worsley, admitted being knowingly concerned in the fraudulent evasion of duty and being knowingly concerned in keeping goods.

Amanda Johnson, prosecuting for HM Customs and Excise, said officers saw the defendant in a van, using a mobile phone and with the engine running at the farm. He was arrested and said he had borrowed the van which contained boxes of legitimate televisions and ladies' underwear.

Inside the vehicle were also 12 steel tubes containing 96,000 smuggled cigarettes. A stable at the farm was unlocked and officers discovered 240,000 more cigarettes. The owner of the property said Bray had been using the stable for about three months.

Bray was taken to the police station and accepted he knew what was in the stable. He told officers he had been offered cash to store the cigarettes and thought it was a way of earning extra income.

Miss Johnson said the total amount of duty evaded on the cigarettes in the van and stable together was £45, 155.

Joseph Ganner, defending, said Bray showed remorse, fully co-operated with investigators and had no previous convictions.

He had a solid employment record, steady relationship and had blighted his own reputation plus that of his family. The proceedings had had a salutary effect on him.

The offences were non sexual, non threatening and non violent and the defendant went into them with his eyes open.