Dealer who hid drugs between buttocks jailed

A DRUG dealer caught with heroin and crack stowed between his buttocks said he was selling it to pay off a debt for drugs seized the last time he was arrested.

Billy Sam Hulme, 24, of Kingsway, Widnes, had attracted the attention of the authorities due to “intelligence” and officers spotted him entering a café on Widnes Road where he sat opposite another man at about 12.50am on Thursday, July 1.

Chris Taylor, prosecuting at Liverpool Crown Court, said Hulme was “resisting” and “struggling” when officers identified themselves and detained him, upon which they found he had two phones and £420.85 in cash.

Hulme was strip-searched at a Cheshire police custody suite and “indicated he had cheeked some drugs and they would drop if he squatted”.

The resulting bundle had 15 deals of cocaine, 15 deals of heroin and 20 deals of crack cocaine with a total street value of £500.

Mr Taylor said: “The drugs expert indicated ‘cheeked’ means drugs secreted in the buttocks which is a typical street dealer method of hiding drugs.”

Hulme didn’t provide the PIN number for his two “graft phones” and they weren’t examined further due to the dealer’s “lack of sophistication”.

He later pleaded guilty to two counts of possession with intent to supply Class A drugs and one of possessing criminal property.

Mr Taylor said Hulme had 12 convictions for 19 offences, two of which were drug-related, namely for dealing heroin and cocaine and for which he was on licence from his last prison sentence when he was arrested on Widnes Road on July 1, having been released in September 2020.

Mark Pritchard, defending, said Hulme was addicted to the drugs he sold and had resorted to selling them again to pay off the debt for the £1,200 of drugs that were seized when he was previously arrested for dealing.

Hulme had also been living in and out of hostel, B&B and hotel accommodation and had been homeless and was selling drugs to buy food for him and his girlfriend, adding Hulme had finally secured a successful Universal Credit application when he was arrested.

Mr Pritchard said Hulme had been “arrested in quite a hard manner” resulting in injury from which he continued to feel the effects of “to this day”.

He asked the judge to consider Hulme’s guilty pleas and to place the sentence at the low end of significant role, or higher end of lesser role, because the matter didn’t “comfortably fit” in either bracket and his client was a “street dealer” at the “bottom of the food chain” in the drug hierarchy.

Recorder Michael Taylor noted the statutory aggravating features of the case – the previous drug dealing convictions and being on licence at the time – and discounted a third from the starting point, ultimately jailing Hulme, who appeared via videolink from Altcourse, to three years and eight months in prison.

A Proceeds of Crime Act timetable was agreed.

Sentencing Hulme, Recorder Taylor said: “You know all about the problems that drug addiction causes, and I suspect because of your own problems you’ve not stopped and thought about the fact you are passing your problems onto other people who then start committing crime of various types to get the money to pay for the drugs.

“In the end, people addicted to drugs often end up selling them. That’s what happened to you.

“You are doing it for a significant financial advantage. You are getting a significant amount of money from selling drugs.”