A Darlington cocaine dealer who was caught when the EncroChat network was smashed handled more than 20 kilos of the class A drug, a court heard.
John Jackson, who used the name Frosty Glove, on the encrypted mobile phone network dealt with more than £750,000 worth of the drug over three-month period.
When police searched the 42-year-old’s Darlington home they recovered drugs and cash.
Jessica Slaughter, prosecuting, said the defendant was heavily involved in the supply of cocaine along with other co-conspirators.
She said one man was sourcing kilogrammes of cocaine costing £38,000 and at levels of up to six kilos at a time during the three-month period.
Messages recovered from Jackson’s handset highlighted the amount of contact the pair had as they moved up to £779,000 worth of the class A drugs before police raided his then-home on Roseberry Street.
Miss Slaughter said: “He told police there was a safe in the kitchen which contained four bags of cocaine, including three separate half kilo blocks with purity ranging from 50 to 93 per cent.”
The court heard how traces of Jackson’s DNA was located on one the packages in the safe and a hydraulic press was also recovered from the property to be used to process the cocaine.
A police drug specialist estimated that the recovered cocaine was valued at between £37,500 and £125,000 depending on how it was cut.
Jackson, formerly of Darlington, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply cocaine between March 28 and June 5, 2020, and possession with intent to supply cocaine on October 7 of the same year.
Penny Hall, mitigating, said her client was realistic about the inevitable sentence he was facing as a result of his admissions.
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“The offences are some five to six years old, so a significant period of time ago,” she said.
Judge Nathan Adams sentenced Jackson to ten years and six months in custody for his ‘significant involvement’ in supplying cocaine on a largescale.
“In October 2020, you were still dealing in cocaine and when police searched your property, they located almost a kilo of high purity cocaine as well as paraphernalia associated with dealing to others,” he said.
“This was part of a large operation that you had involved yourself and it is quite clear that it would have carried on if it had not been for the EncroChat being broken.”
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