A major dealer who controlled Basingstoke's drug scene has been jailed.

Tyrone Potter, who went by the street name Nemo, was one of the leading figures in a cartel of county lines drug networks that operated in the town.

His line operated for almost three years, with links to Kingston and Reading, and was responsible for selling 10 kilograms of Class A drugs - equivalent to a street value of £1 million.

Potter, 25 from Earley, Reading, started a cartel with his Nemo line alongside Ahmed Abdullah and Antonio Abayomi, who ran the Monster and Bestie lines in the town.

Potter was jailed for 11 and a half years on Friday whilst Abdullah and Abayomi were jailed for nine and a half years and seven and a half years respectively at an earlier hearing.

The court was told how the three lines would pool resources to ensure there was a constant supply of Class A drugs in the town.

This included sharing safe houses, a common supplier and even restocking each other if one line was to run out of drugs.

They would even ensure that street-level violence was kept to a minimum to reduce the amount of police attention on them.

An investigation was launched by Hampshire Constabulary after the murder of Taylor Williams in Basingstoke in August 2019.

He was killed in a drug robbery gone wrong, with Olamide Soyege and Terence Maccabee convicted of murder and manslaughter respectively.

"The investigation revealed that those running the Monster drug line had close and long-standing allegiances with other drugs lines in Basingstoke," prosecutor Mark Ruffell told Portsmouth Crown Court on Friday, speaking about the Bestie and Nemo lines.

"They operated on an almost daily basis from January 1, 2018.

"The investigation revealed that Tyrone Potter, Ahmed Abdullah and Antonio Abayomi were working with each other and other drugs line organisers.

"The evidence suggests that a cartel operated, perhaps intermittently between the drugs lines.

"The cartel also sought to limit street level-violence and rivalry."

However, the court heard how they would be ruthless when new competition arrived.

On August 31, 2019, Nemo learned that two other drugs lines were attempting to start-up in Basingstoke - one called Coco and the other named Ray.

As previously reported, that evening saw a drugs runner from the Coco line brutally robbed in Bermuda Park, Popley, before an attempted robbery of the Ray line at Kingfisher House on Shooters Way.