Dealer used home as ‘‘storefront’’ for drugs

A man who dealt drugs from his home lost his criminal business when some of his clients turned out to be undercover police.

Lance Earl Lovejoy’s phone records made it plain he was using his house as a ‘‘storefront’’ for drugs, Judge Lance Rowe said in the Palmerston North District Court yesterday.

Lovejoy, 60, was sentenced to 11 months’ home detention on a variety of drugs charges, including supplying methamphetamine and using a property for drug offending.

Police launched an investigation in 2018 looking into the supply of drugs in Bunnythorpe. Undercover officers visited Lovejoy’s home throughout 2018, where they witnessed him packaging a substance believed to be methamphetamine.

The judge said most people who dealt methamphetamine should expect to go to prison.

They also saw him sell methamphetamine, and bought that drug and cannabis from him. He would sometimes tell officers he needed to source drugs before being able to sell them, which the judge said showed Lovejoy was a middleman in the supply chain.

He let his customers know he had stock by sending out group text messages, with records showing he offered to supply methamphetamine hundreds of times.

‘‘It is clear you were dealing methamphetamine from your home and that your home was being used as, essentially, a storefront for the supply of methamphetamine to others,’’ the judge said.

Defence lawyer Paul Murray said Lovejoy had used the time since his arrest to deal with his addiction problems.

He was on a 24-hour curfew for more than a year, but never breached it, showing he could be trusted on home detention, Murray said.

The judge said most people who dealt methamphetamine should expect to go to prison. But Lovejoy tackling his addiction issues, as well as a litany of health problems, tipped the scales towards home detention. ‘‘It is time for you to set the example you should be setting to others, Mr Lovejoy,’’ the judge told him.