A NORTH Yorkshire man who bought a dead man's identity and escaped police capture for three years was today beginning a seven-year prison sentence for supplying and producing drugs.

George Martin Bell, 50, formerly of School Road, Hemingborough, disappeared after police closed the net on his £200,000 designer drugs operation in Hull in 2000.

He was thought to have fled to Spain, but was traced to a farm in Cornwall this month.

He had bought his new life and identity for £250 - but maintained drugs links by beginning a cannabis growing operation at the farm.

Bell admitted three charges of possessing and three of supplying cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines in 2000, cultivating and supplying cannabis in 2000, and cultivating cannabis between 2001 and March 2004.

Tony Stevenson, prosecuting, said Bell was a central figure in the organisation of a major drugs chain in Hull, supplying drugs to a street supplier.

Bell was put under surveillance but he became aware he was being watched, and started to run down the operation.

His street supplier, Anthony Patterson, was arrested and Bell himself was searched, but set free.

He was not seen again for three-and-a-half years.

Police searched the home of Mr Patterson's girlfriend in Cranbrooke Avenue, Hull, and found 14,300 grammes of amphetamine, 5,300 ecstasy tablets, and eight-and-a-half grammes of cocaine, with a street value of £197,000, in a loft used exclusively by Bell.

Bell was traced three years later and had started a small cannabis farm, with around £1,000 worth of the drug already harvested in his possession.

Mitigating, Rodney Ferm said Bell, a former television repair man, had fallen into difficulties when the industry began to fail. Bell was given a seven-year sentence for supplying class A drugs, with two years concurrent for both supplying class B drugs and for cultivating and supplying cannabis.

Updated: 09:31 Saturday, March 27, 2004