A DRUG dealer who tried to trick customers by selling them cocoa powder once boasted to an undercover police officer: “I’ve got some belting dooda.”

Gareth Griffiths, 30, claimed to have top-quality heroin, but warned people to be careful injecting it because someone he knew had overdosed on it.

Griffiths came to the attention of the police during a crackdown on dealers in Middlesbrough town centre last summer – codenamed Operation Atlanta.

He sold four wraps of heroin and claimed to have been peddling for six years. He told an undercover police officer: “Keep it right with me, and I’ll keep you happy.”

While he bombarded the detective with phone calls in the following days, he foolishly forgot his alias, saying: “Hiya, it’s Gareth, oh no, I mean Craig.”

The pair arranged a second meeting during which a nervous-looking Griffiths produced a bag of brown powder from his pocket and sold it for £45.

Laboratory tests later revealed that the substance was not heroin but cocoa powder, Jolyon Perks, prosecuting, told Teesside Crown Court yesterday.

The court heard that Griffiths was initially contacted by police on a mobile phone they believed belonged to a dealer – which he had stolen.

Robert Mochrie, mitigating, told Judge Peter Fox: “Mr Griffiths is a blagger. It was a short-lived enterprise, a shortlived con, and nothing more than that.

“He is a man who tried to instill confidence in the undercover police officers by making reference to the length of time he had been dealing.

“This is by no means a case of a man who is going about his daily activities supplying heroin to anybody he can, he was making a small profit.”

Mr Mochrie said Griffiths had been in full-time work, earning £1,500 a week, but lost his job after being badly hurt in a car crash last year.

Griffiths, of Amersham Road, Middlesbrough, admitted supplying Class A drugs on August 14 and offering to supply them on August 19.

Judge Fox jailed him for three years after telling him: “If you go around telling people you have been dealing in heroin for six years, they might believe you. The trouble with conmen is you don’t know how much to believe.”