A YORK man acquitted of being a drug dealer has admitted being part of a gang supplying heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine on the city’s streets.

Last December, Nigel Kenneth Elders shouted “yes!” in the dock of York Crown Court after a jury believed his tale that he was only a customer of heroin-dealing taxi driver Howard Simon Yockney, and not part of the taximan’s cocaine and heroin ring.

He had told them he had no idea how his fingerprints were on a bag containing 5oz of heroin in Yockney’s garage and he had claimed text messages on his phone referring to small weights for sale were about gold sales, not drugs, because he pawned gold for cash.

He was a long-time heroin addict, he told the jury, but had come off drugs and at the time of his trial was “clean”.

But the jury were unaware that Elders was part of a different drug conspiracy that had started five months before the trial and continued until the following month.

Police were on Elders’ trail and after his acquittal they sent him back to the courts charged in connection with the second conspiracy.

When he appeared again in York Crown Court, Elders, 27, of Park Place, Huntington, pleaded guilty to conspiring to supply heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine between July 1 last year and January 31 this year. He was granted bail while probation officers prepare a pre-sentence report. He is due to be sentenced next month, along with fellow conspirators David Shepherd-Ward, 41, of Thief Lane, York, and Jason Anthony Bates, 39, of Micklegate, York, both of whom had already pleaded guilty to the same offence.

Between December 6 and December 15 last year Elders stood trial at York Crown Court accused of conspiring with Yockney and others to supply heroin and cocaine between January and July 2009.

He also said he had been on drugs since he was 20, but then his “best friend” had “shown him another way of life”.

Yockney, 44, of Hart Hill Crescent, Full Sutton, is currently serving eight years in jail after the jury convicted him of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.

He claimed he knew nothing about the drugs in his garage and only knew Elders as a customer for his taxi.