Paula White, who was the former finance director for the now defunct Chester City football club, ran the drugs operation which included the website, wide-mouth-frogs. Investigators from the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit said the business was the largest of its kind in the UK with over £4m of drugs sold, 200 kilos of which were sold through the Wide Mouth Frogs website alone.

Coupled with other sites officers identified sales to nearly every country across the globe with around 90,000 sales and 18,500 registered customers on the Wide Mouth Frogs website.

The police investigation began in the summer of 2012 when Jersey and the Channel Islands started to see a sharp rise in the amount of drugs purporting to be legal highs coming onto the islands via postal deliveries from the Greater Manchester area. They found White running a drug production unit producing mephedrone and 35 other similar party drugs.  Sales had begun in 2010 and continued for some time after the drugs were banned in April that year.

According to evidence heard in court, White was said to have spent the proceeds on a luxury lifestyle including designer clothing and watches, a £800,000 three storey detached home and a Spanish villa in Marbella, as well as a £120,000 Aston Martin, Ford Mustang and a top of the range BMW convertible.

She owned 11 properties across Salford and Manchester and was spending £240,000 to build an orangery and a swimming pool, as well as kennels for her dogs worth £10,000, at the time of her arrest in 2013.

White admitted conspiracy to supply class B drugs between 2010 and 2013 and has been jailed for nine years at Bolton Crown Court.