A PAIR of heroin dealers netted themselves nearly £140,000, but the taxpayer will only get £3,100 of it, York Crown Court heard.

Alfred Philip Dear, 37, and Thomas Lee Tunney, 28, had heroin worth between £12,000 and £14,000 on them when detectives caught them bringing it to York from Doncaster at the end of a major undercover operation to break their drug ring.

Jailing each for seven years in January, Judge Roger Ibbotson told them: “I am satisfied you were conducting a commercial and established operation of selling drugs. Neither of you claim to be drug addicts – your purpose was purely to make money.”

But when police financial experts investigated, they could only trace assets worth £3,126.45, including a Passat vehicle belonging to Tunney and valued at £3,000.

A Ford Transit van police thought was owned by Dear turned out to belong to someone else. The Crown Prosecution Service told Recorder Andrew Lees QC Tunney, of Osbaldwick Caravan Site, had benefited by £41,379 from the drug trade and Dear, of Clifton Caravan Site, by £97,693.67.

The judge made orders confiscating the Passat and £120 seized by the police from Tunney and £6.95 seized from Dear.

Both men pleaded guilty last December to possessing heroin with intent to supply it in January 2009 and two charges of supplying heroin in April and May 2008.

They both told York Crown Court they did not use the drug.

In January, Mark McKone, for the prosecution, said police tracked Tunney’s Passat van from Doncaster to York.

As it passed near Hemingbrough, 0.25kg of heroin worth between £12,000 and £14,000 was discarded in a roll of clothing.

The van was stopped at Fulford Interchange with the A64 with Tunney and Dear inside.