Stephen Russell, 33, was caught with more than £4,000- worth of the Class A drug when police raided Blackwell Grange Golf Club, in Darlington.

Stephen Russell, 33, was caught with more than £4,000- worth of the Class A drug when police raided Blackwell Grange Golf Club, in Darlington.Russell, who has been an addict for four years, was supplying the cocaine to friends and making up deals for a drug dealer he owed money to.Russell received weekly deliveries at the club, where he had worked for 16 years since leaving school, and rose to acting head greenkeeper.When drugs squad police raided the club with a magistrates’ warrant on September 3 last year, Russell took them straight to his locker where they found 15 bags of cocaine, worth £4,076.When they searched his home in the town they found scales with traces of cocaine and self-sealing bags, said Jenny Haigh, prosecuting.Russell, of Marwood Close, Darlington, who pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine with intent to supply and possession of cocaine, admitted that he had been in the business for eight months and was paid £300-a-week, as well as in cocaine.He now faces a Proceeds of Crime confiscation Order.Miss Haigh told Teesside Crown Court: “He said that he would share the cocaine with his friends and, on occasion, he would sell it to his friends.”Russell’s lawyer, Joseph Spencer, said: “My client’s cocaine habit lasted for four years and was getting worse and worse, but he has managed to kick that for himself.“He is a hardworking, polite and friendly person, who is well-liked throughout the community.“His colleagues, and indeed the greens’ chairman from the golf club, are still in contact with him.“They phoned him last week wishing him the best of luck.“He is a hardworking man who wants to pay his debts to society. The shame that he feels to his family is at a maximum and he is also concerned about how he has let the golf club down.“He accepts that he acted naively and stupidly and, basically, he is a nice person that drug dealers prey upon.”After his arrest, Russell got a job with a property development company, and he plans to set up a landscaping business when he is released from prison.The judge, Recorder Paul Sloan, told him: “You played an ongoing and active role in the commercial and largescale supply of cocaine over a long period and, while I, of course, bear in mind your personal circumstances, I also have to bear in mind the public interest.”