A drug dealer found with almost £1,000-worth of class As up his backside has been jailed for two-and-a-half years.

Jailing Elijah Adeniji at Swindon Crown Court, Judge Peter Crabtree said: “Anyone who is involved in the supply of class A drugs is involved in criminality which wrecks lives and undermines the fabric of society.”

Police were called to a block of flats on Audley Road, Chippenham, on October 22, 2018, after the homeowner returned from church to find then 19-year-old Adeniji in her flat.

She did not know who he was, but thought he may have been there to see a man – named in court only as Paul – who was staying with her.

Adeniji fled the flats but was caught a short time later by police. He had a small amount of herbal cannabis and two cling-film wraps in his pockets.

Suspecting he may have other drugs hidden in his orifices, police kept him in the cells overnight and the following day he produced from his bottom a cling-film wrapped package containing almost 50 wraps each of heroin and crack cocaine. The drugs had an estimated street value of £950.

He had an unregistered mobile phone, which he was banned from owning under the terms of a criminal behaviour order made earlier that year at Bristol Crown Court after he was convicted of supplying drugs in Somerset.

When detectives analysed Adeniji’s bank accounts they found that £7,600 had been paid in over the previous 11 months at banks across the south west and £6,850 withdrawn mostly in south London.

Interviewed by police, he said he had developed a cannabis debt and was working for the County Lines dealers in order to work off what he owed.

He had acted under instruction, withdrawing cash from his bank account and handing it on to another.

Prosecutor Hannah Squire said: “He was concerned if he failed to do what he was asked he might get hurt.”

The defendant had been subject to a community order when he was picked up in Wiltshire.

Adeniji, now 21, of Bromley, Kent, pleaded guilty to two counts of possession with intent to supply class A drugs, breaching a criminal behaviour order, money laundering and possession of cannabis.

Rob Ross, defending, said his client was preyed upon: “This was a young man from a troubled background who was using cannabis and was used by others, more sophisticated criminals, to carry out their work to deal with a debt that he’d built up.”

In the two years since the offences were committee he had matured, had become a father and reconciled with his family. He was just 19 when he was arrested in Chippenham.

Sending Adeniji to prison for two-and-a-half years, Judge Crabtree said he would not have given a suspended sentence even if he had been able to. “Your involvement in further drug offences in what appears to have been a County Lines operation when you were already subject to a community order for other drugs offences, whatever the pressure it’s simply too serious in my view for any sentence other than a custodial one.”