Dealer used addict couple to sell drugs
ADRUG addicted couple were used by a dealer nicknamed ‘Red’ to bring a county lines crack cocaine and heroin operation into Macclesfield.
Joseph Drury, 28, would travel from his home in Liverpool to monitor and supply addicts selling the class A drugs in the town.
Melissa Kennerley, 26, and Nathan Malkin, 23, from Macclesfield, were users who he offered the chance of work.
All three were sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court this week - Drury was imprisoned for four and a half years but Kennerley and Malkin were given suspended sentences.
Police placed Drury on their radar after undercover officers broke up a gathering of street dealers in Macclesfield in October last year.
Kennerley and Malkin were arrested - both swallowing a wrap of drugs in the process.
She told officers there were drugs at the couple’s nearby home on Half
Street and a search led to the recovery of 13 £10 deals of heroin and 18 £10 deals of crack cocaine.
Both said they were resupplied three to four times a day, making between £50 and £100 between them, though they dealt around £600 each day they worked.
Their mobile phones were analysed and Simon Duncan, prosecuting, said: “The evidence clearly showed that Mr Malkin and Ms Kennerley were dealing on behalf of Mr Drury and accountable to him for drug sales.”
Texts advertising drugs on behalf of an operation called Scouse JJ were found on the phones, as well as messages from Drury discussing the flow of drugs and cash.
They included requests for the dealers’ takings and instructions to send out adverts via text such as: “Lad, you need to catch the morning people.”
Drury was himself arrested in Macclesfield the following month.
As an officer waited outside he saw Drury emerge from an alleyway behind a nearby row of properties and stopped him.
He was questioned on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of Class A drugs, but claimed he was in the town visiting a friend.
While that investigation was ongoing, Drury’s home on Griffin Close was raided by Merseyside Police in April as part of a separate probe.
Officers found heroin and crack cocaine with a combined street value of up to £11,000, plus £2,300 in cash and scales and snap bags.
A phone seized from the 28-year-old was found to be a Scouse JJ graft phone that had made hundreds of calls every day.
There was a total of 14,614 texts or calls between February and April of this year as transactions were arranged and dealers instructed.
It also linked Drury to drug dealing in Blackpool.
Mr Duncan said that Drury was not a leading figure in Scouse JJ but said he had operational and management roles and recruited others.
He accepted Malkin and Kennerley, who were prosecuted for dealing across several days of October 2020, were ‘way down the pecking order from Mr Drury’.
But added: “They clearly understood the scale of the operation by reference to the sheer amount of drugs they were dealing on a daily basis.”
Drury admitted being concerned in the supply of heroin and crack cocaine and two counts of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.
Malkin and Kennerley pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.
Trevor Parry Jones, defending Drury, said his client became involved with the Scouse JJ operation after falling into debt of more than £4,000 over drugs.
John Staunton, defending Kennerley, said she had turned to drugs after suffering personal tragedy and that her ‘frankness was clear’ during her police interview.
Mr Staunton added that police officers commented they had ‘ never dealt with two nicer individuals’ than Malkin and his client, who he said had managed to break her reliance on street heroin.
Philip Tully, defending Malkin, said he had ‘genuine remorse’ for his actions and was desperate to overcome his own drug addiction.
Kennerley and Malkin were given two year suspended sentences and 250 and 200 hours unpaid work respectively as well as a three month curfew.