A drug dealer caught with £1,000-worth of crack cocaine told police that the cash found on him was a government Test and Trace payment to reimburse him for having to self-isolate.

Abdul Malik, 40, said the cash ‘certainly wasn’t’ the proceeds of his drug dealing, prosecutor Jonathan Stone told Oxford Crown Court on Thursday.

Jailing him for five years, Judge Michael Gledhill QC told the West Midlands man: “There is no doubt at all in my mind between 2019 and 2021 you were a professional drug dealer.

“The scale of your offending is breath-taking.”

Earlier, Mr Stone said a police officer was on patrol in Banbury town centre on December 4 last year when he noticed a blue Audi hurtling past him at speed.

When he pulled the Audi over, Malik was in the drivers’ seat. Co-defendant Ibrar Hussain, who has already been jailed, was a passenger in the car.

The men were evasive, telling the officer they’d travelled down from Birmingham to Banbury to go shopping. Mr Stone said: “His account was weak.”

Phones kept on ringing in the car as they were speaking to the police. The car and the men were searched; officers found £810 in cash and £10,640-worth of heroin and crack cocaine.

Interviewed by the police, he said he was homeless and the £800 was money he’d withdrawn from his HSBC account.

Three months’ later, on February 20, Warwickshire police chased another Audi from the M42 to junction 11 of the M40, near Banbury.

Malik was a passenger in the car. Found on him was 8.3g of crack cocaine worth around £1,000 on the street, cash and digital scales.

He told police the money was from the government for self-isolating. The £500 Test and Trace support payment was introduced last year to support those on low incomes who had been asked to self-isolate after testing positive for coronavirus or being ‘contact traced’ by the NHS.

The court heard Malik had eight convictions, including two for drug supply making him a ‘third striker’ and subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years’ imprisonment.

Christopher Pembridge, mitigating, said it would be unjust to impose the seven year minimum sentence. Malik had last been sentenced for drug dealing in April, when the judge at Leeds Crown Court appeared not to have been aware of his other arrests.

His client had been a drug addict for 20 years. Since being remanded he’d gone cold turkey and was now drug-free.

Judge Gledhill ruled that it would be unjust to impose the seven year minimum sentence. But he said the five year jail term would be served after the 42 month sentence given to Malik by the Leeds judge in April.

Malik, of HMP Bullingdon, pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to possession with intent to supply class A drugs and possession of crack cocaine.

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