A DRUG dealer caught operating a Banbury drugs line has been convicted.

Isaac Coker, of no fixed abode, had denied one count of being concerned in the supply of Class A drugs to another and one count of possession of criminal property.

Prosecutors at Oxford Crown Court said during his three-day trial that the 24-year old was first caught after police raided an address at Jubilee Court, Banbury, on November 21 last year.

Robert Harding told the jury of four women and eight men that Coker was found with a wrapped set of digital scales, £1,850.28 in cash and a number of mobile phones.

The phones, he told the court, were analysed by police investigators who found a number of messages seemingly agreeing sales of drugs.

He also told jurors that Coker had a number of previous convictions for drug dealing including charges of possession with intent to supply Class A drugs.

As the trial at Oxford Crown Court came to an end yesterday jurors took less than an hour to roundly convict him of both counts.

In mitigation, Edward Renvoize said before his client was sentenced, that Coker had had a 'tough' upbringing on a large council estate in south London but could not explain how he had fallen into drug dealing.

He told the court his client had become 'disenfranchised' at a young age before embarking on criminal activity.

Sentencing, Judge Zoe Smith said: "Supplying drugs is a serious matter. I see you have made a career of it for a number of years.

"It destroys peoples lives and you have no doubt seen that for yourself when you have been at Banbury within the community and dealing drugs."

Coker was jailed for five years and six months for the two offences as well a further two-month jail term for simple possession of cannabis, to run concurrent to the larger sentence.