The leader of a Holyhead drugs supply gang, which sought to control the heroin and cocaine market throughout North Wales, has been jailed for ten years.

Aled Gray, 35 of Holyhead, who owned two pubs in the town, admitted conspiring to supply both class A drugs.

His sentence means that total prison sentences of 182 years and 11 months have now been imposed on 27 conspirators.

Mold Crown Court heard how he was the head of the Holyhead drug supply group which joined forces with a similar gang in Llandudno - and they sources their "industrial quantities" of drugs from gangs in Liverpool and Manchester.

Judge Niclas Parry said that conspirators had worked together to gain control of the supply of heroin and to a far greater degree the supply of cocaine throughout North Wales, "operating as a consortium."

They intended to saturate North Wales with class A drugs, he said.

Gray effectively owned two public houses, The Boston Arms and the Dublin Packet.

The judge said he used pubs as the headquarters of the crime group, a sophisticated network, and he led those who had management roles and who were involved in the storage and downstream distribution of the drugs.

They traded with groups in Liverpool and Manchester and Gray was "at the top of your particular crime group."

Judge Parry said that the conspiracy went on for two years and there had been five drugs seizures by police - and once exceptionally large seizure of a cutting agent, some 50 k.g.

That, he said, showed the scale of the conspiracy.

If the cutting agent had been used it could have produced cocaine to the value of some £2 million.

The judge said that Gray was not being sentence as a violent enforcer.

Some weapons had been seized but there was no evidence to support that.

He had led a criminal life-style and had previous convictions.

His greatest mitigation was his guilty pleas.

Judge Parry commended North Wales Police for their painstaking investigation - the officers who led the operation were D.I.Lee Boycott, DS Paul Byron and DC Glen Miller.

The court hearrd the gang was responsible for substances and cutting agents that combined could potentially flood the region with class A drugs, primarily cocaine, worth more than £2m.

Prosecuting barrister Andrew Jones said that the gangs from Holyhead and Llandudno joined forces with associates in the Rhyl and Colwyn Bay areas, to deal with suppliers in Manchester and Liverpool.

During the investigation police recovered Class A drugs and a large amount of Benzocaine, commonly used to bulk out drugs in order to maximise the profit, indicating the scale of setup. Police estimated the value of drug transactions they were aware of to be in the region of £2.7m.

There was the whole-sale distribution of drugs in North Wales and Gray was placed at the top of the hierarchy.

He was the controlling mind of the western organised crime group and master minded all aspects of the operation from sourcing through to logistics and distribution, networks, in two different geographic locations.

Gray had a convert storage facility at a residential address which the prosecutor described as a drug dealer's Alladin's Cave and operated from two public houses that he owned, although technically owned by others. That, he said, was an example of the sophisticated manner he structured his empire.

Gray, he said, was shrewd and kept himself at arm's length from the "dirty end of the business."

Jim Sturman, QC, defending, said that his client accepted playing a leading role but he was not the pre-eminent figure.

He was the black sheep of his family whose parents had died young and left money and a business to him and his family.

"Unfortunately, he sniffed it up his nose, rather than do something useful with it," he said.

He had tried to go straight but fell off the wagon.

Others had spoken of cocaine leading to his head going and going schizo.

"He does accept that he was one of the pre-eminent people in the Holyhead group," he said.

While a large amount of cutting agent had been seized it was his case that it was not ordered but turned up.

What did turn up was of very poor quality and would not have been used.

People who knew him did not regard him as the king pin, he said.

The defendant was off drugs, had entered his guilty pleas back in January of last year, was hoping to return to the engineering business his brother ran and lead a productive life.

Mr Sturman said that at a previous court hearing it was alleged that police had childishly placed a bilingual note which read "years?" and "blynyddoedd?" on a car windscreen outside court which he said did not do them any credit.

The prosecutor said that none of the officers in the case were involved with that.