Drug dealer claimed gangsters left £100k of cocaine in his flat
POLICE found cocaine worth up to £100,000 when they raided a drug dealer’s flat above a wine bar.
When officers raided Ryan Ridgeway’s pad in Disley near Stockport, they also discovered £3,000 in cash, a debtor list and six mobile phones.
The 36-year-old drug dealer claimed he knew nothing about the cocaine and that his flat had been hijacked by Salford gangsters. But the dad’s fingerprints were found on the carrier bag which contained a kilo of cocaine and he has now been jailed.
Police raided Ridgeway’s flat above Frankies Wine Bar on Buxton Old Road in Disley on February 20.
They arrested three men, including
Ridgeway, who had a list on him which was ‘likely’ to have been previous cocaine sales, prosecutor Kevin Donnelly told Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court.
A search uncovered a kilo of cocaine inside a carrier big inside a red pedal bin in the kitchen while the cash was found in a wooden box on the window sill in the bedroom.
Six mobile phones were found in the flat, one of them a BQ Aquaris ‘encro’ phone frequently used by criminals because they are almost impossible for investigators to analyse. It had a Dutch sim card.
Analysis showed the highpurity cocaine had a wholesale value of up to £35,000 and was worth as much as £100,000 on the streets.
Messages downloaded from a phone attributed to Ridgeway suggested he been involved in collecting ‘significant debts’ from drug purchases, the court was told.
The Aquaris device, which was also attributed to Ridgeway, looked like a normal smartphone but it utilised software designed to thwart law enforcement agencies from obtaining data from it, Mr Donnelly said.
Police experience showed these devices were ‘invariably’ used by drug dealers.
Ridgeway had previously been found with such a device when police arrested him in Stockport in October 2017.
Following the raid, Ridgeway told police he had been saddled with a £100,000 debt when drugs were stolen and he was blamed.
He said he’d had to move from his home in Stockport to Crewe because
You have involved yourself in all kinds of different offences Judge Tina Landale
he claimed people had tried to kill him and he said his throat had been slashed in prison. Ten days before the police raid in Disley, he said he was attacked by three men who slashed his arm with a knife and held a gun to his head.
Ridgeway said the men had threatened his partner and their children and they said they would be using his flat.
He said a man he didn’t know came to his flat on three occasions and he was ordered to stay in the bedroom.
Ridgeway insisted he had not seen the cocaine before and claimed he would not be linked forensically to it – analysis later uncovered his fingerprints on the carrier bag which contained the drugs.
He refused to name names but pointed towards ‘a gang of men from Salford.’
The court heard Ridgeway had 26 previous convictions for 35 offences including for dishonesty, motoring offences, vandalism, public disorder, burglary and battery. In October 2018, he was handed a three-and-half year jail sentence for conspiracy to burgle.
Alex Leach, defending, said his client had ‘laboured under a substantial debt as a result of his connection to criminal activity,’ adding that he owed the money to ‘individuals capable or intent’ on harming him or his family.
Jailing him for six years, Judge Tina Landale said: “You have got a poor criminal record. You have involved yourself in all kinds of different offences and that has led to you becoming involved in this drugs arrangement.”
Ridgeway pleaded guilty to possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply.