A Fife mother who ran a cocaine dealing operation involving more than £200,000 and exposed a young girl to the drug has been jailed for three years.
Elle Taylor, 28, recruited a 14-year-old boy to deliver cocaine as many as 20 times a day while allowing him to live at her home in Ballingry.
Taylor admitted supplying cocaine, funnelling drug money and wilfully exposing a child to danger when she appeared at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court.
Sheriff John MacRitchie described her offending as “absolutely horrific” and said the three-year prison sentence was at the “very lowest end” of what sentencing guidelines permitted.
Financial investigators discovered Taylor had received £213,163.07 in third-party transfers and moved £147,828.47 through Bank of Scotland accounts between September 2019 and September 2025.
Prosecutors said the amounts could not be explained by legitimate income.
The court heard Taylor met the 14-year-old boy at Seton Sands holiday park before he became involved in delivering drugs for her.
She provided him with somewhere to stay and food and occasionally gave him small amounts of money for meals, but he was not paid for making the drug deliveries.
Messages recovered during the investigation showed Taylor arranging cocaine sales through social media and telling customers she could “drop” drugs off within 20 minutes.
Deliveries were then carried out by Taylor, the teenager or another associate.
Police raided Taylor’s Ballingry home on August 21 last year and recovered 33 street-deal bags of cocaine worth an estimated £1,320.
Twenty-eight of the bags were found inside an envelope bearing Taylor’s name. Officers also seized £380 in cash and scales, while Snapchat messages provided further evidence of drug dealing.
Taylor also admitted exposing a young girl to danger on August 5 and 6 last year, resulting in the child ingesting cocaine and becoming seriously unwell.
The girl was taken to Victoria Hospital A&E suffering from vomiting and drowsiness. She was described as pale and lethargic and had dilated pupils.
Tests detected cocaine and its metabolite benzoylecgonine, as well as unquantified amounts of Tramadol and venlafaxine.
Taylor told medical staff she had left the girl with a friend for around 30 minutes while she went to a shop. The child told doctors she had found a tablet on the floor and swallowed it.
Prosecutors accepted Taylor’s not-guilty plea to a separate human trafficking allegation concerning the teenage boy.
Her defence asked the court to consider a community-based sentence that would allow her to remain with her children.
Sheriff MacRitchie instead imposed a three-year prison sentence, describing the offences as extremely serious.
