AN eleventh member of a gang which peddled heroin in a North-East market town yesterday joined his counterparts behind bars.

Carlo Fella, 28, said to have "facilitated" in the supply of the class A drug in Chester-le-Street over at least five months, was jailed for four-and-a-half years at Durham Crown Court.

It brings the total sentences imposed as a result of a long-running police inquiry, Operation Cassidy, to more than 50 years.

The investigation was launched following five heroin-related deaths in the Chester-le-Street area in recent years.

An undercover officer, named only as "Ged", posed as a heroin addict and obtained supply from a number of dealers in the town between December 1999 and June last year.

The court was told Fella, of No Place, near Stanley, admitted being concerned in the supply of heroin, on the basis that he helped "Ged" to obtain the drug, on five dates between December 1999 and April last year.

Stephen Duffield, prosecuting, said: "If drugs were required, Fella was the man to be telephoned and then they would be supplied."

Mr Duffield said that, on his arrest after a series of police raids in June last year, £3,915 in Irish pound notes, "for which there was no satisfactory explanation", were recovered from Fella. His Citroen car was also seized.

Peter Schofield, mitigating, said Fella was merely holding the money on someone else's behalf, although he conceded it was the profit of drug dealing.