A former DJ was found selling drugs on the streets of Great Yarmouth to fund his own serious addiction after losing his job in the pandemic.
Rafeeq Fortune, 39, teamed up with his own drug supplier to peddle crack cocaine and heroin to street addicts in the seaside town, Norwich Crown Court heard.
An undercover police officer spotted him with a group of known drug users on Howard Street South in October 2020.
Prosecutor Brad Lawlor said was arrested after a stop and search in King Street found he had 19 wraps of crack and five of heroin and £185 in cash.
Analysis of his phone found text messages consistent with him having a “significant role” in supplying drugs, said Mr Lawlor.
Fortune, who admitted two charges of posing with intent to supply, appeared via video link from prison where he is serving a four-year sentence imposed in March 2022 for selling heroin and crack cocaine in Hull.
He moved to Hull from Lowestoft, where he grew up with his grandfather, and has convictions for 12 previous offences between 1999 and 2007, including possessing Ecstasy.
Harry Bradford, mitigating, said he had studied for a music degree, been a DJ, and dreamed of owning his own record shop.
But after becoming unemployed during the pandemic he started using class A drugs and had been urged by his supplier to fund this by selling to others, he said.
“This started a pattern where he sold drugs to acquire drugs which is a never-ending cycle,” he added.
Sentencing him to a further 29 weeks in jail, Judge Katharine Moore said he was “clearly an intelligent and creative individual” who had turned to drug dealing.
She said he had helped traffick drugs in Yarmouth and had then gone on to deal in drugs in Hull despite his arrest in Norfolk.
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