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A couple of fur traders ran two County Lines drug rings from the same room. Tomás Araya, 23, and Nathaniel Temesgen, 21, of Birmingham, sold cocaine and heroin to the ‘Meeks’ line throughout the city, as well as the ‘Pablo’ line in Stratford-upon-Avon using brokers to deliver them. .

They switched drugs for a period of four months. Both men were said to have been brought to the UK under difficult circumstances before falling for the deal, the Birmingham Crown Court heard.

Araya, of Rogers Road, Ward End, denied two charges of involvement in the supply of Class A substances but was found guilty after trial. He was sentenced to seven years on Wednesday, March 15.

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Temesgen, of Baldmoor Lake Road, Erdington, admitted to the same offenses and received four years. They ran County Lines operations between December 2021 and April last year.

Prosecutor Edmund Blackman said: “Police surrounded his accommodation and found various paraphernalia, scales, cling film, customer notes and the two lines of drugs, as well as weapons – a machete and a zombie knife.”

He said Pablo’s line appeared to have four runners, while there was no specific number attached to Meeks’ line, although Araya was able to make deals in Birmingham while in Derby with the phone. Blackman told the court that Araya was “higher up the scale” after being in possession of lines of drugs and client notes in his apartment.

He later claimed that he was simply running a ‘gold tooth business’ that was exposed as a cover story. Temesgen was described as a ‘right-hand lieutenant’ who faced more risks by storing drugs in his room, but was ‘significantly more involved than just a runner’.

Indy Bhomra, defending Araya, claimed that he escaped his native Eritrea ‘under gunfire’ at the age of eight and lived in a concentration camp near Libya before coming to Leeds, where he earned a degree in psychology and started a business. He said: “These two young men lived in one room. Their bank accounts were checked and no large amounts of money came in.”

“They basically lived in each other’s rooms. There were letters from Mr. Araya that suggested he was in debt to local agencies. He wasn’t living a lavish lifestyle on drug money. He himself said he didn’t have enough credit for himself “. mobile phone.”

Joseph Keating, from Temesgen, said he ended up in care after he also came to the country at a young age when his father was granted political asylum. The lawyer went on to say that his temporary identification documents were withdrawn and he lost his job due to the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving him to pay off family debts with benefits.

Mr Keating added: “He often spent most of the day in his room in an HMO and ended up getting desperate because other people in the household were saying about an easy way to make money. He decided to get involved in this offending

“It was meant to be a short-term way to pay lawyers, get citizenship, get an ID card, and get a job.”

Handing down the sentence, Judge Roderick Henderson said: “Both are still young and have not been in trouble before. Both have real potential and have had difficult backgrounds.”

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