A pregnant former soldier, who used her own daughter as cover in a £170,000 heroin smuggling racket will have to pay back just one pound!

Lance Corporal Naomi Thriepland, 25, took seven-year-old Aiesha with her to Amsterdam to collect the drugs.

But an investigation into her finances discovered she has no assets to pay back her estimated £78,000 share of the scam.

A judge at Canterbury Crown Court was told that although she had paid for trips to the nail salons, hotel stays and the trip to Disneyland, there was no evidence that she had salted away any money in secret bank accounts.

Instead, Thriepland - who is serving a four year jail term - was ordered to pay back just a nominal £1 within the next 28 days - or serve an extra seven days in default.

Her lawyers said she couldn’t make the Proceeds Of Crime Act hearing because the pregnant inmate was ill.

The former soldier was questioned by customs officials at the Channel Tunnel entrance near Calais last year and pretended she and her daughter had been to Disneyland Paris for a holiday.

Staff eventually discovered the heroin, which had been hidden in her BMW convertible and she admitted the Disneyland trip was a cover.

Thriepland, who served as a clerk attached to medics in Iraq and a bomb-disposal unit in Afghanistan, is eight months pregnant and will give birth behind bars.

She told officials she had been seeking ‘better conditions’ for her family, but Judge Heather Norton responded: ‘You did what you did for financial gain.

‘More than that, you took your seven-year-old child with you as some kind of family cover, putting that child at risk.

‘You claim you became a courier to give her a better life, but that child is now likely to suffer more than you.’

She added: ‘You have served this country with a number of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and in perilous positions.

‘So, whatever else can be said of you, this was certainly out of character.’

Thriepland, from Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria, broke down in court as her forces record was mentioned.

She served in the Army for six years, but left after Aiesha wept on breakfast television programme GMTV shortly before Christmas in 2009 as she spoke to her mother via a satellite link.