Stratford drug dealer who helped channel £250,000 of crack cocaine and heroin into Great Yarmouth jailed
Dilan Baren. Picture: Met Police - Credit: Met Police
A Stratford drug dealer who helped channel £250,000 crack cocaine and heroin from London onto the sleepy streets of Great Yarmouth was jailed for four years at Snaresbrook Crown Court today.
Aldernir Pinto, of Warley Avenue, Dagenham, oversaw the operation which brought more than a kilogram of Class A drugs from London to Norfolk between August 2016 and March 2017.
Pinto, whose crime alias is ‘Apollo’, had two London deputies - Dilen Diran, of Waddington Street, Stratford and Yasmina Ghanamme, of Sunray Avenue, East Dulwich. The pair have also been jailed - for four years and three years respectively.
The London dealers set up shop in the bedroom of Ashley Papper, a Great Yarmouth drug user.
Arizuna Asante, prosecuting the four gang members on Friday, told the court 52,000 calls and texts could be identified on the Apollo phone lines over the course of the conspiracy.
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He said: “The impact it has on drug users and members of the public in Great Yarmouth is it blights the area. The crime that has been committed here causes misery and social disconnection.
“Effectively they were cuckooing residences that have been commandeered for the sale and supply of drugs.”
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Pinto has sold Class A drugs since he was 15, the court heard.
James Barnard, mitigating for Pinto, said he had been “vulnerable and preyed on by the older drug dealers, and coerced into that position.”
“He is a bright young man with a promising future,” he said. “That makes the tragedy even worse. He is remorseful and deeply regrets his actions.”
The court heard Ghanamme had come to the UK from Algeria and got involved in drug dealing after being left “homeless and living in a park in Stratford.”
Angharad Mousely, mitigating for her, said: “She found herself in this country without any legal status. She was a very young woman with nowhere to go. She faces a very difficult and uncertain future.”
Detective Sergeant Craig Bidwell, intelligence co-ordinator for Operation Gravity, which caught the dealers, said: “We can nick drug runners up here left right and centre, but that doesn’t achieve anything unless you go back to the point where it is being controlled from,” he said. “Since Pinto has been arrested that line has completely vanished.”
