A HEROIN-dealing taxi driver who is serving eight years in prison has had his assets confiscated.

Howard Simon Yockney who was convicted of running a Class A drugs ring following a police operation which monitored his journeys has to pay back only £268.42 of the estimated £203,745.63 he made.

Prosecutor Simon Batiste said Yockney had made 66 journeys from York to Leeds, and claimed that on 40 of these occasions he had likely been transporting drugs.

Mr Batiste said Yockney had likely benefited from £203,745.63 from these trips, but since his arrest and conviction had had his house repossessed, and was in the middle of a divorce.

Mr Batiste, and Edward Moss, for Yockney, agreed that the sum total available to the court would be £268.42, £72 of which would be paid from money found in Yockney’s taxi on his arrest.

Yockney, 44, formerly of Hart Hill Crescent, Full Sutton, was sentenced to eight years in prison last December, after he stood trial with two other men, Benjamin James Enwright and Nigel Kenneth Elders, on conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine.

The two other men were acquitted, but Elders is due to be sentenced in relation to a separate drug conspiracy charge, which he pleaded guilty to at York Crown Court earlier this year.

Speaking after the hearing, Mr Yockney’s sister claimed he had borrowed £20,000 from loan sharks who had demanded £40,000 in return, threatening him and his family if he did not help them by making the journeys.

She said: “We are hoping to contest what has happened, and our firm belief is that Howard is a taxi driver who was under pressure. We believe he is innocent.

“He’s not a bad person; he was just scared of losing his wife and put his family first. He didn’t want to lose them.”