A ‘professional’ drug dealer has been jailed for nine years after he was snared in an elaborate sting by police officers posing as a gang of criminals.

Mohammed Kershid was fooled into boasting he could supply up to 100 kilograms of heroin a week for export to Scandinavia, Bradford Crown Court heard.

He told undercover officers he could get his hands on pure cocaine imported directly from Columbia and offered to get one of them a firearm.

Kershid, 39, a “third strike” drug traffficker, also told the police he could get them cannabis from Spain and Portugal during a lengthy investigation involving secret recording devices.

The judge, Recorder Dean Kershaw, said: “It was not an entrapment. You knew fully what you were doing.”

He branded Kershid an “experienced drug dealer” and “professional life-wrecker” driven on by a lust for profit. “This city was at the real risk of the drugs you were in control of,” he told him.

Kershid, formerly of Parsonage Road, West Bowling, Bradford, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply heroin and to further charges of supplying Class A drugs.

With him in the dock was Mohammed Ayaz, 38, of Waverley Road, Great Horton, Bradford, and a 17-year-old Bradford youth who cannot be identified for legal reasons. Both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply heroin.

Ayaz, a “one-off courier” for Kershid was jailed for three years and four months. The teenager was locked up for 15 months.

Both were involved in October last year in supplying a half kilogram block of heroin, with a £24,000 street value, to undercover officers on behalf of Kershid.

The judge told the youth, who was recruited by Kershid when he was 16: “You did know what you were doing.”

Prosecutor Stephen Wood said yesterday Kershid was “at the top” of the conspiracy and Ayaz was “a close and trusted associate.”

Kershid demonstrated to the undercover officers, who first met up with him in Keighley, “a deep and intimate knowledge of criminality”.

He offered to supply them wholesale quantities of Class A drugs at cheap prices.

Mr Wood said Kershid and the officers discussed firearms and selling counterfeit Coca Cola to shops in the Bradford area.

He warned the officers to be careful in case there were police around, saying his friend got ten years when he was caught by a sting.

Kershid was jailed for three years in 1999 for possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply. In 2006, he was jailed for six years for conspiracy to supply Class A drugs. Ayaz was locked up for two years for his part in that conspiracy.

After the case, Detective Inspector Noel Devine, of the West Yorkshire Police crime division, said: “We are pleased with these sentences and this should stand as a warning to those involved dealing with Class A drugs, no matter what level or part they play in this type of offence. We will not tolerate drug abuse in West Yorkshire, with the damage it causes to local communities.”