A teenage member of a Birmingham-based organised crime group was being driven back and forth to Swansea by local users, a court has heard.
Mustafa Rummi was just 17 when he used local couriers to transport heroin and cocaine to south Wales from the West Midlands.
The teenager avoided immediate custody when the case came to court but his two drivers were sent down.
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Jim Davis, prosecuting, told Swansea Crown Court that on April 25, 2019, police identified Rummi and a Swansea man called Brandon Miles as they travelled in Miles' Volvo on the A46 near Stratford. The following say the same car was spotted entering Swansea on Fabian Way and stopped. Miles was again the driver and in the vehicle were 50 wraps of cocaine. The 51-year-old defendant, who is a double leg amputee, was searched and two phones containing messages relating to dealing were found. One message sent from one of the phones read: "Got both. Best of both. Any free houses let me know". The prosecutor said "both" was a reference to cocaine and heroin, while the reference to houses referred to properties where drugs could be used for storing or supplying drugs.
Rummi came to the attention of police in Swansea six weeks later when officers executed a search warrant at a flat in Leonard Charles House in Oxford Street on the evening of June 6. In the property was the tenant, 56-year-old Andrew Potter, along with the teenager. The court heard that as officers were forcing entry to the premises packages were seen being thrown from a window. These were retrieved by police and were found to contain drugs. When officers got into the flat they found weighing scales, rolls of cling film, and mobile phones. In total more than 50 wraps of heroin and cocaine were seized. Subsequent checks on the movement of Potter's car showed it had driven to Birmingham on June 4 and returned to Swansea just hours before the police raid at the flat. Potter told police Rummi was his friend and said he had given him a lift to Birmingham. The defendants were released while investigations continued.
Police encountered the teenager again on July 21 when officers stopped a car in the West Cross area of Swansea and found him alongside fellow Birmingham man Alan Lake and 19 wraps of heroin and three mobile phones. The pair were questioned and released.
Mustafa Rummi, now aged 20, of Gerrard Street, Birmingham, admitted possession of cocaine with intent to supply and possession of heroin with intent to supply. He has no previous convictions.
Brandon Miles, of Warwick Place, West Cross, Swansea, was convicted at trial of possessing cocaine with intent to supply. Andrew Potter, of Oxford Street, Swanseaadmitted being concerned in the supply of heroin and being concerned in supply cocaine.
Alan George Lake, aged 29, of Alder Road, Balsall Heath, Birmingham, admitted possession of heroin with intent to supply. The court heard that in November 2019 he was sentenced to 40 months in prison at Swansea Crown Court for possession of heroin, crack, and cannabis with intent to supply with these offences having been committed on October 6 of that year – just a few months after he was caught in the car in West Cross with Rummi. On that occasion his barrister told the court the father-of-two had come to Swansea to "get away from the crowd he was mixing with in Birmingham" but had fallen in with bad company once in Wales. The court also heard that in April 2021 Lake was sentenced as a serving prisoner at Greater Grimsby Crown Court to 54 months in prison for a drug trafficking offence which he had committed in Humberside back in 2018.
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Martin David-Sperry, for Rummi, said the defendant came from an "excellent family" but had "strayed from the straight and narrow" after starting a relationship with a girl whose parents were involved in "illicit activity".
Dyfed Thomas, for Miles, said the defendant was a "sporadic" user of drugs to self-medicate the pain he was experiencing as a result of his double amputation. He said there was an element of exploitation in the case with others taking advantage of the defendant's drug addiction and that he "got drugs for free" in return for driving people from Birmingham to Swansea. The barrister said Miles was currently studying for a degree in computing with the Open University.
Stephen Thomas, for Potter, said it was accepted the defendant had a "degree of knowledge" about what co-defendant Rummi had been doing in Swansea. He said his client "foolishly" became involved in trafficking in order to fund his own addiction. The court heard Potter describes himself as a "functioning heroin addict".
Ieuan Rees, for Lake, invited the court to consider what overall sentence the defendant would have received had the offences before the court been sentenced at the same time as the Grimsby matters as had originally been intended.
Judge Catherine Richards told Miles and Potter that they had chosen to involve themselves in the supply of Class A drugs by driving the teenager Rummi from Birmingham to Swansea and that such substances "ruin lives and destroy communities". She told Rummi that for a period in 2019 he had been involved with an organised crime group operating out of Birmingham though she said she accepted he was being exploited by others in the gang.
With a reduction in sentence to take account of his age and a discount for his guilty pleas Rummi was sentenced to 23 months detention in a young offenders' institution suspended for two years. He must also complete a rehabilitation course and a drug treatment programme and was ordered to complete 150 hours of unpaid work and to abide by a nightly curfew for the next three months. The judge said she had considered his sentence carefully and whether a term of suspended custody would send out the "wrong message" to others but that she was persuaded that there was a realistic prospect of rehabilitation in his case – notwithstanding the "somewhat arrogant" attitude he had shown to probation staff in his interview.
Miles had no discount for a guilty plea having been convicted at trial but the judge said his sentence would reflect the particular physical difficulties he would experience serving a custodial sentence and he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
With a 25% discount for his guilty plea Potter was sentenced to two years and three months in prison.
With discounts for his guilty pleas Lake was sentenced to 40 months in prison to run concurrently with the sentence he is already serving.
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