A career drug dealer was caught red-handed flooding a town with cocaine and heroin just weeks after he was released from prison.
Zack Graham, 28, of Chatsworth Drive in Picton, was arrested as part of an investigation into a county lines drug ring operating in Milton Keynes in November, 2021. Graham, who had 29 previous convictions, had only been released from prison on licence a few weeks earlier after being convicted for playing a "leading role" in an earlier drug trafficking ring operating between Liverpool and Milton Keynes in 2019.
On that occasion, heroin and cocaine worth around £17,400 was seized by police, who also found Graham had been marketing the drugs on a graft phone and signing off his messages with the nickname "Scouse". After his arrest in 2019, he was sentenced to six years in prison and released on licence at the half way point.
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Graham was soon back to old ways, and according to Thames Valley Police was in a car stopped in the Sunrise Parkway area of the town on November 30, 2021, as part of a "proactive operation" targeting county lines drugs rings. Also inside the vehicle was 30-year-old Kyle Dickinson, of Drake Road in Moreton, Wirral, and local man Sharmarke Hassan, 26.
Hassan, of Boycott Avenue, Milton Keynes, had also been locked up alongside Graham in the 2019 case. A search of the vehicle recovered 124 wraps of heroin and a quantity of cocaine, as well as a "graft" phone used to arrange drugs transactions.
Graham and Dickinson both pleaded guilty to possession of heroin and cocaine with intent to supply, while Hassan admitted being concerned in the supply of heroin and cocaine.
Last week the men were sentenced at Aylesbury Crown Court. Graham was locked up for five years and eight months, while Dickinson was spared immediate custody and handed a two year prison sentence, suspended for two years.
Hassan was jailed for four years and six months. Detective Constable Beck Hurley-Brydon, of the Thames Valley Police Serious and Organised Crime Unit, said: “This investigation by the Serious and Organised Crime Unit focussed on a number of drugs lines operating in the Milton Keynes area supplying class A drugs.
“With the help of the Stronghold team, we were able to successfully disrupt this line that operated at a significant level across Milton Keynes. Thames Valley Police are committed to tackling organised crime in partnership, in order to dismantle and disrupt country drugs lines that cause serious harm within our communities."
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