Two men who used their homes as safe houses to stash drugs for a crime gang have been jailed. The pair allowed crack cocaine and heroin to be stored on behalf of a the gang's leader who ran county-lines reaching into Greater Manchester, Wirral, and Scotland.
Dale Schofield and Wayne Roberts hid the drugs at their premises on behalf of the gang’s ring-leader Mark Cavanagh of Foxdene, Ellesmere Port. He was running an estimated £1.8m drug dealing enterprise in the Ellesmere Port and Chester areas.
The 32-year-old was operating under a county lines drugs conspiracy – using a phone line – known as a graft – to send text messages known as flares advertising the sale of crack cocaine and heroin and receiving drug purchases from local users. The Dell line in Lache, a housing estate in Chester, and the Dark line in Ellesmere Port were operated, while drugs were also sold in Wirral, Greater Manchester and Scotland.
