ANOTHER drug dealer who was part of a cocaine racket worth hundreds of thousands of pounds has been put behind bars.

Earlier this year, members of Jamie Oldroyd’s drugs gang and a linked organised crime group run by Jamie Simpson – who was caught with £20million of cocaine during a police sting on the M6 – were jailed for a combined total of more than 140 years at Liverpool Crown Court.

Today, Friday, Ryan Quinnell was jailed for more than nine years for his part in the Warrington-based operation.

The 25-year-old drove his blue Volkswagen Golf from his home in Surrey to the car park of the Coach and Horses pub in Cadishead in April 2018, in convoy with a white Renault van driven by co-conspirator Jordan Read.

Warrington Guardian:

Jordan Read

There, they met Lewis Johnson – a key figure in class A drugs syndicate run by Oldroyd – and bought at least a kilo of cocaine from him.

But Read and Quinell were arrested during a raid in Sussex in November last year, with 330g of cocaine and cutting agents being found in a storage unit leased by the former.

Quinnell handed a nine year and seven month stretch at Lewes Crown Court this morning alongside his brothers Reece and Ross Quinnell – who all lived in a wing of their dad’s mansion near Horley – after admitting conspiracy to supply cocaine.

The trio and Read were all involved in the sale of class A drugs in the Sussex area.

Ryan Quinell’s sentence means that those caged as part of the 14-month covert police investigation codenamed Operation Dreadnought have been jailed for 150 years.

Oldroyd, of Rennie Drive in Latchford, was given 14 years and three months behind bars while Simpson, of Delery Drive in Padgate, was imprisoned for 11 years and six months.

Both were heads of rackets which shipped huge amounts of cocaine across the country from Warrington.

Twenty-one-year-old Johnson, of Elizabeth Drive in Padgate, ran a gang safehouse on Liverpool Road in Sankey Bridges.

He was jailed for nine years.

And 27-year-old Read, from Sussex, was last week imprisoned for a total of nine years and seven months after admitting conspiracy to supply cocaine and possession of cocaine with intent to supply.