A man who admitted he had been working for a county lines drug gang said he wanted to stop.
Paul Walters, 66, was discovered by police officers when they were doing a welfare check on people in the Swansea bedsit where he lived. When Walters opened the door, officers saw a bag of brown powder, and Walters told the officers that he had been supplying heroin on behalf of a Liverpool drug dealer.
Walters told the officers he wanted to stop, and his barrister told Swansea Crown Court that Walters was just the kind of person criminals from county lines drug gangs prey on to do their bidding.
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Megan Jones, prosecuting, said police went to a house of multiple-occupation in the Hafod area of Swansea in July this year following concerns that a tenant was being cuckooed - that is, was being exploited by a drug gang which was using their property as a base for deal, reports Wales Online.
The person the police went to speak to was not home but when officers knocked on the door of another tenant - Walters - to talk to him, they saw a bag of brown powder in the room. The court heard that Walters then volunteered to the officers that he had been supplying heroin on behalf of a Liverpudlian drug dealer and was expecting a phone call in the coming few days about receiving another shipment of half-a-kilo.
The defendant told the officer to wanted to stop dealing. The court heard police recovered a total of 52g of cannabis and 12g of heroin from the defendant's room along with £1,890 in cash.
In his interview the 66-year-old made full admissions about how he had been receiving "large quantities" of heroin from a Liverpool-based drug dealer. And while not being subjected to threats by the Liverpudlian, he said he felt intimidated and had not felt able to say no as the amounts of heroin being delivered to his house increased.
He estimated that in total he had been supplied with eight-and-a-half kilos of the drug, and he described his contact from Merseyside as a "dangerous man".
Paul Francis Walters, of Neath Road, Hafod, Swansea, had previously pleaded guilt to possession of heroin with intent to supply, being concerned in the supply of heroin, possession of cannabis with intent to supply, and driving with the level of cannabis above the specified limit when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. The drug driving offence relates to an incident in November last year when his car was stopped near the Sainsbury's supermarket on Quay Parade in Swansea city centre and was found to be more than two-times over the legal cannabis limit.
The defendant has 35 previous convictions for 70 offences, the majority of which are for drug offences including possession of cannabis with intent to supply.
Hywel Davies, for Walters, said the defendant had been approached by a Liverpudlian gang member who provided him with a quantity of diamorphine to supply, an arrangement his client had not felt able to say no to out of fear. He said from there, matters had "escalated".
The barrister added: "Mr Walters has a long-standing heroin habit, and is exactly the kind of person members of a county lines gang would prey upon to do their bidding locally".
With a one-third discount for his guilty pleas, recorder Christian Jowett sentenced Walters to 88 months in prison for the drug trafficking offences and to two months for the drug-driving offence to run consecutively. He will serve two-thirds of the 90 months in custody before being released on licence to serve the remainder in the community.
Walters was also banned from driving for a total of 77 months - an initial ban plus two-thirds of his custodial sentence.
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