I turned to drug dealing because of zero-hour contract
HE TURNED TO CRIME ‘BECAUSE ZERO-HOURS JOB DIDN’T PAY ENOUGH TO COVER DEBTS’
AN UBER delivery driver caught with £25,000 of crack claimed he turned to peddling cocaine because he couldn’t pay his drug debts on a zero-hours contract.
Ahmesaidali Aden, 25, stashed the quarter-kilo of drugs in the seat compartment of the moped he used to deliver food for the smartphone app firm UberEats, which customers use to order restaurant meals.
Aden had previously worked as a courier for online shopping platform Amazon, but neither job paid enough to keep underworld creditors at bay, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Now Aden, of Criccieth Street, Moss Side, has been jailed for 40 months after admitting possessing class A drugs with intent to supply.
He was caught after police raided an address in Withington on April 11 and examined his scooter parked outside. They found four large rocks of crack cocaine, of 88 per cent purity, in a paper bag in the storage area.
Aden was offered the drugs, which he was told had been stolen from another dealer, as a way of working off debt, and told he could keep a slice of the profits, the court heard.
The 26-year-old has five previous drug offences on his record and was last jailed in 2015 for cannabis dealing. Defence barrister Ian Metcalfe said: “The circumstances in which this man found himself back before a crown court are regrettably depressingly familiar.
“He’s a drug user. He accumulated debts because he was using more drugs than he was paying for. These debts carried forward and were increased by the drugs recovered when he was arrested in possession of cannabis with intent to supply. He went to prison and was released.
“He came out of prison with the best of intentions, he sought work and found work, zerohours contract work, as a delivery driver, initially with Amazon, then UberEats, again zero-hours contract work. The two effects of that were that he didn’t have the money to discharge his previous drug debts and also he had a lot of spare time on his hands. Inevitably he came back into contact with old associates. He was reminded that he owed a debt. In time those reminders became slightly more pressing.”
Sentencing, Judge Hilary Manley said Aden was ‘no stranger to the courts,’ and said she had ‘little doubt’ he had relied on the fact of his drug debts at his last sentencing hearing. Sending him down, the judge said she took into account the ‘real efforts’ he ‘had made to secure and maintain legitimate employment.’