A fraudster who conned Liverpool fans in a £100,000 ticket scam has now been jailed for peddling cocaine and heroin.
Craig O'Donohue hoodwinked supporters who paid hugely-inflated prices to watch their beloved Reds play at Anfield.
When the victims tried to gain entry to the stadium, their tickets were revealed to be fake, leaving them out of pocket.
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O'Donohue was jailed for four years over the mean scam, which left hundreds of victims heartbroken, in November 2015.
The crook, 35, of Dewsbury Road, Anfield, was back in the dock at Liverpool Crown Court today over an incident on August 12, 2019.
Undercover police in an unmarked car spotted a group of suspected drug users in St Anne Street, Everton at around 10.20am.
The court heard they walked past a block of flats towards an area of undergrowth known to be used for drug dealing.
Jo Maxwell, prosecuting, said O'Donohue appeared on a mountain bike but saw the police officers and cycled away.
He then cycled over to a "tree stump" and stayed there a short while before pedalling away, when he was arrested.
In the stump, officers found a plastic bag containing 13 wraps of heroin, weighing 2.11g, and 34 wraps of cocaine, weighing 3.96g.
The Class A drugs were all in £10 street deals and had a total value of £470.
O'Donohue had £628 in cash plus two mobile phones, an iPhone and a Nokia, which later revealed two digital "tick lists".
He was also carrying a small piece of cannabis resin, weighing 0.36g and valued at just £2.
When interviewed, he accepted the cannabis was his, but denied any knowledge of the drugs in the tree stump.
Ms Maxwell said: "He claimed the £628 was cash from bookmakers he had obtained."
However, he also accepted the mobile phones were his and they revealed his involvement in dealing.
O'Donohue admitted cannabis possession but denied possessing both cocaine and heroin with intent to supply.
He was set to stand trial but pleaded guilty last month.
O'Donohue has 14 previous convictions for 24 offences, including two previous Class A drug dealing convictions and dealing Class B cannabis.
At the age of 17, he was locked up for eight months for dealing crack cocaine and heroin in February 2003 , then for two years for dealing the same two drugs in July 2003.
As a "third strike" Class A drug dealer, O'Donohue was subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years in prison, unless there were circumstances which would make this "unjust".
Julian Nutter, defending, argued it would be "unjust" in this case, because O'Donohue's previous two convictions for dealing Class A drugs were "very old" and when he was a juvenile.
He said his client had stayed out of trouble for the last two years and a letter from O'Donohue's girlfriend - who was sitting at the back of court - showed the "sea change" in his life since.
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Mr Nutter said O'Donohue was trying to find work and had reduced his cannabis habit and was "trying desperately to bring it under control".
Judge David Potter agreed it would be unjust to impose the mandatory minimum seven-year sentence because his two previous convictions for Class A drug dealing were "approaching 20 years old".
The judge jailed O'Donohue for four years and eight months, who blew a kiss to his girlfriend and waved to his family as he was sent down.
The court previously heard how O'Donohue masterminded the Liverpool ticket scam with fellow ringleader Paul Murgatroyd.
The pair advertised tickets for high-profile games including fixtures against Real Madrid and Tottenham on the website Craiglist.
Many of the victims were fans from abroad who'd also spent large sums of money on flights to Merseyside and hotel stays.
The crooks would meet the supporters in the city centre and carry out the bogus transactions.
Fans desperate to get inside Anfield paid as much as £260 for tickets as the gang placed 1,315 website adverts during their spree between September, 2014 and April 2015.
Victims who flew to Liverpool from countries including Italy and Iceland were caught up in the fraud, before Merseyside Police got involved when a lawyer from Florida complained he'd been duped when buying a game for a Reds' match against West Brom.
Detectives launched an undercover operation to catch O'Donohue and Murgatroyd, putting them under surveillance, and sending disguised officers to buy fake tickets.
The ringleaders used nine other accomplices to complete their scam, whose bank accounts were used to initially obtain the cash, before the sums were almost immediately withdrawn from ATM machines by the two men in charge.
After getting the fans' money, O'Donohue, then of Harrow Road, Anfield, and Murgatroyd, of Richmond Park, Anfield, were watched by police going into a series of bookies, playing on the casino machines to "put in cash and launder it through", prosecutors said.
When officers searched Murgatroyd's house they seized forged tickets, including ones for Everton matches, and Hewlett Packard printers.
The fraudsters used blank ticket books which they'd intercepted and stolen from Liverpool FC as they were being transported to the shredder.
The crime was "sophisticated" with unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile phones and computers in internet cafes used to avoid detection.
They both admitted fraud and money laundering conspiracies, with Murgatroyd jailed for three and a half years for his part in the scam.
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