Swansea man, 66, admits to dealing 'large quantity' of heroin for Liverpool drug gang

A 66-year-old man from Swansea has admitted to dealing "large quantities" of heroin for a Liverpool gang.

Paul Walters, form the Hafod area of Swansea, told officers who had come to carry out a welfare check on someone else living at the same property that he had been working for a Liverpudlian drug dealer for a number of years but wanted to stop.

At Swansea Crown Court, Walters' barrister said his client had been preyed upon by a so-called county lines drug gang operation.

Walters received a prison sentence of more than seven years for possessing and supplying heroin and cannabis, as well as a driving offence.

Megan Jones, prosecuting, said police went to a bedsit where multiple tenants were residing in the Hafod area of Swansea in July this year following concerns that a tenant was being cuckooed - being exploited by a drug gang that was using their property as a base for dealing.

The person the police went to speak to was not home but when officers knocked on the door of another tenant - Walters - 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 to receive another shipment of half-a-kilo in the coming days.

The defendant told the officers he 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 police interview the 66-year-old made full admissions about how he had been receiving "large quantities" of heroin from a Liverpool-based drug dealer. He said he felt intimidated and unable 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 described his contact from Merseyside as a "dangerous man".

Prior to sentencing, Walters pled guilty 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.

The drug driving offence relates to an incident in November last year when his car was stopped in Swansea city centre and he 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, Walters was sentenced 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.