AN 18-year-old drug dealer who admitted selling crack cocaine in Chippenham was given a two-year suspended jail sentence.

Charlie Magrino, of South Tottenham, London, pleaded guilty when he appeared at Lewes Crown Court on Tuesday charged with supplying class A drugs.

On November 18 last year officers went to the High Street, Chippenham - the home of a man arrested earlier that day on suspicion of drug offences.

They found Magrino there, along with a number of mobile phones, drugs paraphernalia and a quantity of crack cocaine and heroin, worth about £1,100.

Magrino was ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £140 and was sentenced to two years imprisonment, suspended for two years.

PC Simon Margetts, of the Wiltshire Dedicated Crime Team, said: “Drug supply is often, somewhat naively, seen as a victimless crime. However, this could not be further from the truth.

"In reality it represents a chain of vulnerability and exploitation from beginning to end; large organised criminal gangs in large metropolitan cities like London will exploit people who are vulnerable through age or circumstance and cause them to travel into smaller conurbations to sell class A drugs.

“They are often forced to do this through threat of violence, or are groomed by being bought expensive clothes and mobile phones.

“In turn, these people will travel into Wiltshire and other counties and exploit others; those vulnerable through the nature of their addictions.”