Drug dealer who studied small business management like The Wire's Stringer Bell is jailed
A drug dealer from Birmingham has been compared to The Wire's notorious Stringer Bell after it emerged he was studying small business management.
Course books were found among Class A drugs, £10,000 cash and mobile phones found when police raided the hope of Zahir Hussain, who even demanded sales figures from his dealers.
Hussain even named the phone network of drugs contacts after himself, calling it the 'Zee Line'.
Now Hussain, 40, has been jailed for six years and three months after admitting conspiracy to supply drugs at Birmingham Crown Court.
Hussain, of Trafalgar Grove, Yardley, was tracked down after another man, Mohammed Zubair, was arrested with more than 20 wraps of crack cocaine and heroin in Hockley, Birmingham.
Police established that he was receiving diverted calls from the Zee Line.
Pc David Harman, financial investigator at West Midlands Police, said: "This was a sophisticated drugs operation.
"Messages on (Hussain's) phones showed text messages to drug users boasting about the quality of the drugs, advice to runners about how to boost sales and even demands for sales figures.
"Hussain had been studying small business management, similar to Idris Elba's character Stringer Bell in TV's The Wire, and course books were found inside the flat.
"Further messages showed desperate drug users offering personal belongings in exchange for drugs highlighting the misery being brought upon the community."
In The Wire, Stringer Bell plays a leading role in a major drugs network, while attending courses on macroeconomics in an effort to run a more sophisticated operation.
He even manages to unite rival drug dealers into a 'co-operative' to establish ways of working together, as he brushes up on the principle of supply and demand.
Zubair, aged 37, of Whitehall Road, Handsworth, was given a two year jail term, suspended by 24 months, for his role in delivering the drugs.
Hussain's girlfriend Hayley Kirkman, 23, of Yardley, was handed a 12 month community order for possession of Class A drugs.
