A MAN has been jailed for 12 years after he pleaded guilty to possessing heroin for sale or supply after he was caught with the drug by gardaí on three occasions.
Robert Garvin (32) was described by Judge Patrick Moran at Cork Circuit Criminal Court yesterday as “a major drug dealer” after he heard how Garvin had been caught by gardaí with heroin in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Det Sgt Jason Lynch of the Cork City Divisional Drugs Squad told how Garvin tried to block gardaí getting into a house in Knocknaheeny on December 13th, 2008, as he tried to dispose of heroin.
They found Garvin in a bathroom where he had just flushed the toilet and had both taps running in the bath. Gardaí found an electronic weighing scales, latex gloves and traces of heroin on plastic bags as well as two grammes of the drug worth €300.
In August 2009, gardaí stopped his car at Leemount and searched a house at Sunville in Cloghroe near Blarney where they found heroin worth €173,000. In July 2010, Garda surveillance led to the recovery of a coffee jar stuffed inside a sock which contained 138 grammes of heroin with a street value of €20,000.
Garvin was arrested on each occasion and made admissions that he was supplying drugs. He told gardaí he did not have a heroin addiction but he could not stop because of the large amounts of money that he was making.
The judge noted that Garvin, with addresses at the Paddocks, Mahon and Pine Street in Cork city centre, pleaded guilty to possessing heroin for sale or supply on all three occasions and that the final offence occurred after he had been charged with one of the earlier offences.
“It seems to me on the pattern of these offences to which you have pleaded guilty that you must be a major drug dealer in the city – you were obviously in this business for the purpose of making money,” he said.
The judge said he had seen the havoc that drugs like heroin had caused from the cases coming before him and he sentenced Garvin to three years and seven years concurrent for the first two offences and five years consecutive for the third offence.