AN Aberystwyth drug dealer who has been jailed for four years for his role in a drug gang that “flooded” the streets of Aberystwyth with millions of pounds of Class A drugs, was caught after he accidentally text-messaged a police officer offering him cocaine and cannabis.

Twenty-year-old Sam James is one of 28 members of the gang convicted of conspiracy to supply drugs including cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, ketamine and cannabis, with several defendants already jailed and others, including another five Aberystwyth-based defendants who were sentenced yesterday.

James, of Clos Penn, Thespian Street, was caught after he accidentally sent a text message to a serving police officer revealing that he had received a drug consignment.

Prosecutor Andrew Jones told Swansea Crown Court that James was part of a sophisticated operation to supply drugs across west Wales on an industrial scale, with one police officer saying the gang had “flooded” the streets of Aberystwyth and Llanelli with drugs.

Mr Jones said James was the “established” Aberystwyth end of the operation until his “catastrophic mistake” when he sent a text message to all contacts in his mobile phone saying that he had received a consignment of cocaine and cannabis.

One of his contacts was a police officer he had formerly dealt with.

James had been released from prison just weeks earlier after serving a two-and-a-half year sentence for cannabis dealing.

The gang had sold drugs worth millions of pounds, mainly in Aberystwyth, Llanelli and north Wales, with 38 people dying from heroin misuse over the 42 months that the police’s Operation Ulysses was running.

Carina Hughes, representing James, said his mother had died in a road accident when he was just 10 years old and he had turned to cannabis to help him cope.

After leaving prison following his sentence for cannabis dealing, James still had a drug debt to pay off and had turned to dealing again.

Speaking after the first eight defendants, who were all from north Wales, were jailed, Detective Sergeant Rhys Jones of Dyfed-Powys Police’s Serious and Organised Crime Team said: “The investigation and deployments of officers spanned Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, north Wales and Liverpool and extremely large amounts of heroin, cocaine, ketamine and cannabis were seized. These defendants operated covertly and executed their criminal enterprise with precision. The amounts involved are staggering in terms of the drugs that were distributed onto and flooded the streets of Aberystwyth and Llanelli.”