A DRUG dealer operated a graft phone hotline and was arrested at an airport after flying home from Thailand.
Matthew Crehan had returned to supplying drugs just months after he had been previously arrested and found with more than £11,000 in cash.
Liverpool Crown Court heard he was in control of a phone that advertised drugs including cocaine and ketamine.
Judge Katherine Pierpoint said Crehan had played a “significant role in the peddling of misery” as she handed the 22-year-old, who was already in jail for his earlier offending, another prison sentence.
Jonathan Rogers, prosecuting, told the court in a sentencing hearing on Friday afternoon, February 6, that the defendant had committed the offences between October 2024 and January 2025.
Crehan operated a “busy” graft phone line that advertised the sale of drugs during this period.
The phone sent a significant number of “flare broadcast messages” to customers.
Mr Rogers said the phone had received or sent around 62,000 calls, texts and messages, in a two-month period.
One stated: “On every day. FNL”, which was said to be a reference to “high purity cocaine and ketamine”.
The Star had previously reported after Crehan was arrested by police on February 8 2025 at Manchester Airport after arriving back in the country from Thailand, and later charged.
Appearing in court over video link from custody, Crehan was already serving a 40-month jail sentence he was given in July last year for possession of cocaine and cannabis resin with intent to supply, and possession of criminal property.
These offences were committed in April and May, 2024, and Crehan was caught dealing drugs from a motor vehicle.
He remained under investigation over these earlier offences when he returned to drugs trafficking.
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Defending Crehan, Julian Nutter said: “He was not a stakeholder in this enterprise, he was doing it for money.
“It is very easy for those in this position to supply drugs to which they are addicted. He didn’t do that, he explained he was doing it for the money.”
Mr Nutter added his client was 21 when he committed his first offences and is “still immature”.
“You can hard boil them in the place he is in and get something worse if it’s left for too long.”
Crehan, of Dentons Green Lane, Dentons Green, had pleaded guilty to supplying cocaine, cannabis, ketamine and nitrous oxide.
Passing sentence, judge Pierpoint said that aggravating factors included that Crehan was “released under investigation in relation to serious drugs matters” when he committed the offences, adding she had regard “to the sale of the operation”.
She noted, in mitigation, Crehan’s age and gave him 15 per cent reduction to his sentence for his guilty pleas.
“However, drugs have a very serious impact on this community,” the judge added.
“You only need to spend a few days in these courts to see that impact.
“That is why anybody involved in the supply of drugs, particularly the supply of Class A drugs, are dealt with harshly by these courts.
“You had an important and significant role in the peddling of misery.”
The judge said she would pass a sentence consecutive to the one Crehan was already serving as these were a “separate set of offences”.
She said, after trial, she would have passed a term of 56 months, but reduced this to consider the principle of totality.
She handed Crehan a three-year sentence.
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