A dealer who ran a lucrative county lines phone line which advertised drugs for sale to addicts — while on bail for copycat offending 400 miles away in Kendal — has been locked up for 54 months.
Kieran Kristensen, now 23, stepped into the shoes of another criminal peddler who was arrested by police after they raided a Stricklandgate flat in December 2019.
Michael Taylor, then aged 19 and from Liverpool, had operated a phone which sent out text bombs to drug users and addicts advertising heroin and crack cocaine for sale.
Taylor, found hiding in a small broom cupboard, was jailed for 36 months earlier this year.
“Within two hours,” prosecutor Tim Evans told Carlisle Crown Court, “the conspiracy moved seamlessly on. Within two hours after Taylor had been arrested, the conspiracy was recruiting its next Kendal agent.”
That was another teenager, Kristensen, who assumed control over the phone through which text adverts were dispatched. But just three days later he was also detained after police forced entry to a Capper Close address in Kendal. Kristensen gave a false name and was in possession of £1,400 cash.
He was arrested and bailed. But in the early months of 2021, Kristensen returned to county lines crime in Cornwall, running a phone line dubbed Scouse Deano. “The conspiracy took the usual form with the text bombing of multiple Cornwall-based drug users offering crack cocaine and heroin,” said Mr Evans.
One had stated “back on wid fire no messin deliveries get on me”.
Kristensen was arrested, later admitting conspiring to supply class A drugs for three days in Kendal, and offering to supply them in Cornwall during a two-month period. He had previously been jailed for 27 months in 2020 for earlier county lines drugs supply offending in Cornwall.
Anthony O’Donohoe, mitigating, said of his offending: “The reasons behind it, I suggest, are a lack the lack of opportunities this man has had in his life. Difficulties with his education, being permanently excluded; he has never had a proper job, never been properly trained.”
Kristensen, of Maldon Close, Liverpool, received a total 54-month jail term for his Cumbria and Cornwall offending.
