Drug dealers’ texts to ‘hundreds’ of potential buyers
A PAIR of drug dealers were sending out regular bulk text messages to hundreds of potential customers at a time, a court has heard.
Kaine Peterson and Daniel Williams’ cocaine selling operation was uncovered after police got access to the details of their iPhone activity.
Cardiff Crown Court heard the pair were running a “substantial” cocainedealing business.
Marian Lewis, prosecuting, said that on July 3 this year police stopped and searched a VW Golf carrying 21-yearold Peterson and 29-year-old Williams and officers recovered an iPhone.
The prosecutor said the police secured a warrant to obtain information from mobile company EE and were able to access messages on the phone.
The court heard the texts showed both men had been using the phone and the communications revealed the “type and extent of the dealing” being carried out.
Miss Lewis said the phone was regularly used to send bulk texts, often to more than 200 contacts at a time.
Peterson, of Lime Crescent, Newport, and Williams, of no fixed abode, both admitted being concerned in the supply of cocaine.
Peterson has no previous convictions while Williams has convictions for the production of cannabis and the simple possession of cannabis and cocaine.
Nick Gedge, for Peterson, said his client came from a good family “unacquainted with the criminal justice system” which was “horrified” at the situation the defendant had got himself into.
He said a combination of losing his job, the breakdown of a relationship and the death of a grandparent whom he was very close to had seen the defendant descend into drug use and then drug debt and on to dealing.
The barrister added that upon release from the inevitable prison sentence he was facing Peterson had expressed a desire to move away from the area and away from “the associates he had been involved with”.
Nigel Fryer, for Williams, said his client had struggled with drug and alcohol misuse for a number of years and had been effectively homeless and “sofa surfing” at the time he got involved in the street dealing.
Recorder Paul Lewis QC said the text messages recovered by the police showed “unequivocally” that both defendants had been involved in dealing cocaine.
He told the pair they had been sending messages “to literally hundreds of potential purchasers of your wares” and were running a “substantial line of business”.
Giving the defendants a one-third discount for their guilty pleas the recorder sentenced Peterson to 32 months in prison and Williams to 36 months.
Both defendants will serve up to half of those terms in custody before being released on licence to serve the remainder in the community.
He told Peterson: “Even people of your young age and good character who deal in Class A drugs must go to prison and go to prison for some considerable time.”
The recorder refused an application to confiscate the VW Golf, which was insured in Williams’ name, when the prosecution said they did not know who the registered keeper of the vehicle was.