A corrupt prison officer who smuggled cannabis and phones into the Suffolk jail where he worked has been jailed for 12 months.

Emilian Bulancea claimed he had been forced to take the items into Highpoint Prison, near Haverhill, after he was threatened by two men who approached him outside his home while he was playing with his children.

However, Judge David Goodin dismissed his account as “beyond belief in every detail.”

Sentencing 44-year-old Bulancea, Judge Goodin said his decision to take the items into HMP Highpoint last August had been “catastrophic and disastrous” for him.

Bulancea, a father-of-two, of Thomas Way, Braintree, admitted taking 480g of cannabis, 299 oxandrolone tablets and mobile telephones into the prison on August 10, 2019.

Isobel Ascherson, prosecuting, said a Tesco carrier bag containing the contraband items was found in a cabinet at the prison by another member of staff.

She said that after his arrest police found paperwork which indicated that Bulancea had been experiencing financial problems.

Bulancea claimed he had been threatened by two men in a shared car park area near his house about a week before the offences.

He claimed the men said they knew where he lived and instructed him to carry a bag of prohibited items into the prison.

He claimed he never intended to pass the illicit items to prisoners and had taken them into the prison to set a trap to establish if any other guards were involved.

He said he had a period when he wasn’t working before getting the job at Highpoint Prison but didn’t have serious financial concerns at the time of the offences.

Asked by his barrister Briony Molybeux if he had been desperate for money and had decided to take contraband items into prison he replied: “No.”

Miss Molyneux said her client had no previous convictions and had previously worked as a teacher.

She said Bulancea had come to the UK from Romania in 2014