Dealer left jail then ran drugs
ADRUG dealer began shipping large quantities of heroin and cocaine into Aberystwyth just days after being let out of prison where he was serving a sentence for the same offence.
Tobias Cribbett collected Marcus Yeldham from the gates of the prison and the pair quickly went into business together trafficking Class A drugs from Bristol to Aberystwyth.
At the height of the pair’s operation they were making drug runs from the West Country to west Wales every couple of days, often using a hire car.
The defendants’ dealing was brought to an end after police intercepted Cribbett near Swansea as he returned to Ceredigion with a consignment of heroin and crack “plugged” up his anus.
Ian Wright, prosecuting, told Swansea Crown Court that on December 18, 2020, Yeldham was released from HMP Sudbury in Derbyshire, where he was serving a sentence for Class A drug dealing. Cribbett was waiting at the jail in his Vauxhall Corsa and gave him a lift home. The prosecutor said Yeldham “immediately” returned to drug dealing, using his contacts with a Bristol gang which was operating the “Cali” drugs line to source stock and using Cribbett as a courier.
On December 23 Cribbett’s car drove from Ceredigion to Bristol and back, a trip he was to repeat either in his Corsa or a hired Dacia on December 27 and December 31, and then on January 6, 11, 13, 17, 23 and 27. It was on this final trip that he was intercepted in Morriston as he returned to Aberystwyth. The court heard officers believed he had a consignment of drugs concealed internally and that that suspicion was confirmed by a CT scan at hospital. The package emerged the following day and was found to contain wraps of heroin and cocaine worth almost £1,400. Yeldham was arrested the following week when his car was stopped by police.
The court heard a total of six mobile phones were seized from the defendants and analysed, and this information – along with checks of vehicle movements from automatic number plate recognition cameras – revealed the shape and scale of the pair’s operation. The total amount of drugs supplied over the period has been estimated to be in the region of 95 grams of heroin, with a street value of around £12,000, and 57g of crack cocaine, with a street value of around £7,000. It also emerged Yeldham had been involved in cannabis dealing.
Marcus Aaron Yeldham, aged 43, of Great Darkgate Street, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply crack cocaine, conspiracy to supply heroin, and conspiracy to supply cannabis when he appeared for sentencing.
Tobias Cribbett, aged 37, of Alban Square, Aberaeron, Ceredigion, had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply crack cocaine, and conspiracy to supply heroin when he appeared alongside his co-defendant.
Ian Ibrahim, for Yeldham, said the defendant had been expelled from school with “wild child syndrome” – which today would be diagnosed as ADHD – and grew up in care before being housed in a hotel at 16 where he was introduced to heroin.
Dyfed Thomas, for Cribbett, said they were his instructions that the father-of-five was paid £200 per journey he made carrying the drugs to west Wales.
With a one-quarter discount for his guilty pleas Yeldham was sentenced to seven-and-a-half-years in prison by Judge Geraint Walters, and with a one-quarter discount for his guilty pleas Cribbett was given three years. The defendants will serve up to half those periods in custody before being released on licence.