A JAMAICAN drug dealer who made thousands of pounds as he travelled from London to flood the North-East with crack cocaine has been ordered to pay back just £75.

Oneil Washington Ford was jailed for five years in April but was brought back to Teesside Crown Court to face a Proceeds of Crime Act confiscation.

Judge Peter Armstrong heard how 26-year-old Ford made more than £17,000 during six years of drug dealing, but had just £74.59 left in a bank account.

The judge made a confiscation order for the realisable amount after prosecutors accepted that Ford, of Melford Road, London, had spent the remainder.

Ford denied conspiring to supply crack cocaine in April last year, but a jury convicted him in March and he was sentenced by Recorder Martin Bethel, QC, a month later.

The court heard that he still protests his innocence and denies involvement in drug dealing, but Mr Recorder Bethel said his mitigation undermined his refusal to admit his guilt.

Ford's barrister, David Lamb, said the offence seemed to be "classic street-level dealing" and maintained his involvement appeared to on six occasions in one week.

"It would not appear that Mr Ford was out to corrupt or to introduce those drugs to anybody that hadn't taken them on a previous occasion," Mr Lamb told the court in April. "The dealing itself was over a very short period of time."

Mr Lamb added that Ford was unable to read and write and was a "fish out of water" and found it hard to integrate since coming to the UK from Jamaica in 1999.

He said Ford had not been in serious trouble before, found prison hard and missed his wife and children terribly.

Mr Recorder Bethel told Ford: "Far from tending to your family, you were travelling up repeatedly to Middlesbrough and dealing with drugs on the streets of Middlesbrough."

He added: "One of the greatest evils that our society in this country faces is the evil of drug use, and it seems particularly to be so in Middlesbrough.

"It is only because people supply drugs that people are able to take them."