Taxi driver's role in £300,000 Black Country drug rings

Father-of-two Omar Faroq owned one property and rented two others at which the haul was found, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told. The 28-year-old had been renting a flat in Fellows Park Gardens, Pleck, for more than seven months when drug dealer Ruhel Ahmed, aged 23, was spotted leaving the address and arrested on January 3, 2014.

He is now serving a six year jail term. The flat in which heroin and cocaine valued at £62,000 was found, together with £13,500 cash, was described as a 'drug warehouse' that Ahmed, from Wednesbury Road, Walsall managed.

Faroq claimed it was a 'batchelor pad' shared with six or seven friends in which they could take drugs without the knowledge of their family."

He had maintained he stopped using the address and unofficially sub-let it to somebody else before police swooped but now admits being involved.

Faroq bought a house in Foster Street, Darlaston, for £90,000, putting down a £15,000 deposit, in 2012, but did not move his family into the property until 2014. He also started to rent a £500-a-month flat in Ampleforth Drive, Willenhall, on a six-month lease in around June last year.

Police secretly watched two men make regular trips to and from the flat over 12 days in October last year – mainly in a white Audi, a picture of which was stored on Faroq's phone – but the pair were in a Peugeot when stopped by officers outside the address on October 22.

One had a bag, which held 11 street deals of heroin. Four phones were found in the vehicle. Officers also raided the addresses at Ampleforth Drive and Foster Street linked to Faroq. They found £6,000 cash and heroin valued at around £40,000 at the first of these while over £200,000 worth of the drug was in a tub carrying Faroq's fingerprints in the garage of the other property, revealed Mr James Dunstan, prosecuting.

Distinctive wrapping paper marked 'Rolls Royce' and found at both addresses indicated that the drugs were stored in the garage and then moved to the flat at Ampleforth Drive before being repackaged and distributed for sale on Black Country streets.

Faroq claimed the fingerprints were a year old. He confessed to knowing his garage was being used by class A drug dealers but said he did not know the quantity involved.

Judge Kristina Montgomery QC ruled after a trial of issue to test the validity of the defendant's basis of plea: "It would defy common sense to accept that he did not look at what others had placed in his garage and any doubt over this is dispelled by his fingerprints on the tub."

The father of two, from Foster Street, admitted conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine on January 3, 2014 and conspiring to supply heroin between October 12 and October 23 last year.

He was remanded in custody until next month.