Heroin dealer jailed (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Heroin dealer jailed

1:10pm Wednesday 21st March 2007 in Swindon By Gazette Reporter

A drug dealer caught selling heroin in Swindon town centre in broad daylight has been jailed for three years.

Nathan Formoy was spotted by police meeting up with a known user on College Street at the side of the Tesco supermarket on the morning of Wednesday, November 1 last year.

Plain clothes officers then watched as the 32-year-old carried out a deal shortly after 10am and moved in to arrest him.

And when he was searched he was found to have one wrap of heroin in his pocket and a further 30 stored up his backside.

He also had £75 in cash as well as two mobile phones, one of which he admitted using to arrange deals.

Ian Halliday, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court 18 of the wraps were foil and had a purity of about 24 per cent while the remainder were plastic and of 34 per cent.

"Those who take heroin are themselves prisoners to it very often as you well know and heroin causes a great deal of misery as you well know. Those who deal in it must go to prison."

Recorder Ignatius Hughes

When he was questioned Formoy admitted he had been supplying the drugs in order to support his own longstanding addiction.

"He said he had been in the habit of purchasing £50 worth of the drug and adulterating some with violin polish and selling it on to other users to raise money to buy more drugs," Mr Halliday said.

The court heard that Formoy had a lengthy list of previous convictions mainly relating to theft, violence and driving offences.

He was last before the courts in September last year last jailed in April when magistrates sentenced him to eight months for theft from various shops.

Formoy, of Frobisher Drive, Walcot, pleaded guilty to possession of heroin with intent to supply.

Andrew Hobson, defending, said his client had been a heroin addict for 11 years and was trying to support his habit.

"From his arrest it was clear he was blatantly found supplying drugs to someone who was a known heroin user," he said.

"Mr Formoy himself was in the grip of a heroin addiction and sadly he had to finance it. Sadly he made a decision not to finance it by serious acquisitive crime like burglary or robbery.

"He bought some drugs and sold them and made a little bit of money and ploughed it back into buying more drugs.

"It was commercial to the extent that money changed hands though not large scale commercial. There were no signs of living high off the hog."

Formoy lived with his partner and four step children, he said, the younger of whom regarded him as their father.

He said that his client had been straight with the police at the roadside and frank in interview, but he insisted he had not said he cut other substances with the drugs.

Instead he said that he made money by cutting them into smaller amounts to make money. He said he had spent the past month in custody on remand and was drug free and felling better for the first time in a long time.

Jailing him Recorder Ignatius Hughes said: "Those who take heroin are themselves prisoners to it very often as you well know and heroin causes a great deal of misery as you well know.

"Those who deal in it must go to prison."

He also ordered the forfeiture and destruction of the drugs and the confiscation of the £75 and one of the mobile phones he had on him.