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Teenager jailed for £150k market towns drug supply role

A teenager who was part of a drugs gang which made more than £150,000 over 12 months has been jailed.

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The gang had been selling drugs in market towns across the West Midlands

Kane Payne, from Ivy House Road, Oldbury, was part of a County Lines drug chain that supplied heroin and crack cocaine into market and spa towns from the West Midlands.

It is estimated the 'Uzi Line' - as the gang of six was known - supplied around 2kg of Class A drugs and made more than £150,000 over 12 months supplying 133 customers on its books.

Birmingham men Zoheeb Habib, Usman Rafiq, Atieb Osman and Mohinoor Rashid, plus Denise Lynch from Aston and Payne from Oldbury, were jailed for a total of more than 40 years on Friday for conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.

Police stopped Habib, 27, and 26-year-old Rafiq as they were travelling in a car on Worcester Road, Malvern, on June 20 last year shortly after capturing evidence of them striking a drug deal in Knapp Lane, Ledbury.

Habib's DNA was later found on a wrap of heroin recovered from the drug exchange and a search of Rafiq's home in Cole Hall Lane, Shard End, uncovered a phone that was shown to have been used to run the Uzi Line.

Further covert tactics identified that associates Atieb Osman, 27, and 22-year-old Mohinoor Rashid were also making regular trips from Birmingham to Ledbury and Malvern to fulfil Uzi Line orders placed by 'customers'.

They were stopped in a hire car on January 24 this year by officers who found them with several mobile phones - analysis of which later showed them to be drugs hotlines - plus £400 in cash.

And enquires with the car rental firm revealed brazen Rafiq had used an email address containing the word 'UZI' when completing paperwork for the car.

Two more people - 19-year-old Payne, and 50-year-old Lynch from Fentham Road, Aston - were arrested on February 22 in Wells Road, Malvern, and found to also be completing drugs orders placed via the line.

In June, all six were charged with conspiring to supply heroin and crack cocaine.

Habib, from Wilson Road in Lozells, Osman, from Stafford Road, Handsworth, Rashid from Albert Road in Handsworth, Payne and Lynch all admitted their involvement but Rafiq denied being part of the conspiracy.

However, a jury at Worcester Crown Court needed just an hour to deliberate before returning a guilty verdict against the 26-year-old and on Friday he was jailed for 12 years.

Osman was jailed for nine-and-a-half years, Habib for eight years and Rashid for six years, while Lynch and Payne were both handed jail terms of two-and-a-half years.

They are the first convictions in a wider regional police offensive - codenamed Operation Ballet - targeting suspected County Lines drugs dealers.

Detective Inspector Julie Woods from the West Midlands Regional Organised Crime Unit is leading Operation Ballet.

She said: "Op Ballet is the largest operation of its kind ever carried out in the region and in June saw West Midlands Police team up with West Mercia colleagues to carry out a series of raids across the region and London.

"In total, the operation has netted 75 suspected drug dealers believed to be involved in a total of 10 County Lines operating out of the West Midlands and the capital. Some are awaiting sentence after admitting drug dealing while other are facing trial."