An Albanian drug dealer has been found guilty of driving a consignment of cocaine to Devon where is was going to be sold on the streets of Exeter and Exmouth.

Denis Lami was stopped by police on the M5 near Exeter Airport in East Devon as he headed from South Wales to Exeter on his third delivery trip in five days.

He was the driver of a Citroen car in which his friend Valter Kabilo was the passenger. Kabilo had a package of 51.65 grams of cocaine worth £2,400 in his coat pocket.

The two men had been in telephone contact during their journey with a suspected drug dealer who was based in St Thomas, Exeter, but who had travelled to Exmouth on the morning of the drugs run.

Lami was an illegal immigrant who was smuggled into Britain in 2020 and had been living all over the country before moving to Rumney, near Cardiff, where he was working unofficially as a cleaner and on a building site.

He spoke no English and when police asked him for his details he handed over the business card of a criminal law firm in London which he already had in his pocket.

Lami, aged 30, of Warwick Road, Middlesbrough, denied possession of cocaine with intent to supply but was found guilty by a jury at Exeter Crown Court.

He was remanded in custody by Judge David Evans so he can be sentenced alongside Kabilo, who admitted the same offence at a previous hearing in March.

The Judge asked the prosecution to update him about the immigration status of both men.

During a two-day trial, Mr Thomas Faulkner, prosecuting, said police stopped a car driven by Lami on the M5 Southbound between Junctions 28 and 29 on February 7 this year.

Checks on the masts used by the two men’s mobile phones and from numberplate recognition cameras showed they had come from Rumney in South Wales and had made identical trips on February 2 and 5.

Lami was found to be an Albanian national who said he had been trafficked into Britain in 2020 and who gave an old address in Burton on Trent rather than his current one in Rumney.

He also handed police the business card of a criminal law firm in London and asked them to contact them.

Both Lami and Kabilo had been in touch with an unidentified contact in Exeter, whose phone was shown moving to and from Exmouth before going to Rumney, presumably after learning of their arrest. The man returned to Exeter almost immediately.

Lami told the jury he knew nothing about the drugs in the car and drove his friend Kabilo for a day out. He said it as a fine day and he wanted to go to the seaside.

He said he had worked as a delivery driver and for a gambling company in Albania but was not allowed to claim benefits or work while in Britain awaiting an asylum adjudication.

He said that he had worked illegally as a builder, removals man and cleaner and one of his reasons for visiting Exeter was that he was thinking of moving there.

He said he had the law firm’s business card because he hoped to use them for an application for settled status in Britain.