A DRUG user was forced to sell cocaine to pay off large debts to his dealer before being caught-red handed by police. 

Ryan Crook, 33, had been a Class A drug user for ten years when he fell into £900 debt with his dealer and was forced to sell drugs to pay it off, Basildon Crown Court heard on Wednesday.

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After working off the debt, Crook was threatened by the dealer he had worked for and told to continue selling drugs.

He was arrested on the afternoon of October 21 when officers from Essex Police’s operation raptor teams caught him red-handed making a sale while on patrol in Southend.

A man was witnessed approaching the passenger side window of a parked car and exchanging something with Crook before walking away from the vehicle.

In her sentencing remarks, Judge Samantha Cohen said: “You had been a Class A drug user for ten years and you ran up a debt of about £900 which you then repaid by working for your dealer.

“Once that debt was expunged you were then threatened that ‘your life would be made hell’ if you did not continue dealing.

“That pressure meant that, instead of going to the police, you carried on dealing.”

Officers, having realised they had most likely witnessed a drug sale, followed the vehicle before stopping it a few roads away.

Crook was sitting in the passenger seat and was being driven by a woman.

Before being searched Crook admitted to “having gear” on him and officers found eight wraps of cocaine, £323.27 and an iPhone.

During the arrest he told officers the driver “knew nothing about it”.

Analysis of his phone found messaging relating to the sale of Class A drugs, the court was told, including talk of reloads, “tickets” and discussions of doing “80 to 90 tickets a day”.

Crook, of Archer Close, Southend, who had pleaded guilty to possessing a controlled drug of Class A with intent and possessing criminal property at an earlier hearing, was handed a two-year sentence suspended for two years.
He was also ordered to undertake 250 hours of unpaid work.