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MIKE MULLEN
TELEGRAPH-JoURNAL

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SAINT JOHN - With no previous criminal record, John Robert Lloyd wasn't even on the Saint John Police Force's radar when its street crime unit launched a covert drug sting known as Operation Portland in early April.

But that quickly changed once three undercover cops started calling a number of reputed drug dealers, Crown prosecutor Patrick Wilbur told provincial court on Wednesday.

It also heard from the Willow Grove man's lawyer, David Kelly, how the 53-year-old former painter and ship deckhand fell from grace.

Kelly said his sickly client turned to dealing drugs to supplement a meagre disability pension of just over $400. Lloyd underwent a lung transplant in 2004, suffers from chronic diabetes and may need a liver transplant.

"He's only got five or 10 years to live," Kelly told the court after Lloyd entered guilty pleas to three counts of trafficking in hydromorphone, a derivative of Dilaudid.

Accepting a joint submission from Crown prosecutor Patrick Wilbur and Kelly, Judge Alfred Brien sentenced Lloyd to a two-year federal penitentiary term on one charge and to a pair of two-year terms, to be served at the same time, on the others.

John Lloyd was among five men, including his nephew Timothy Lloyd, 28, of St. James Street, who were charged Wednesday with drug offences stemming directly from Operation Portland.

The two relatives were charged jointly with two counts of selling hydromorphone pills to undercover police officers out of a car. Unlike his uncle, Timothy Lloyd entered not guilty pleas to both charges before being remanded into custody for a bail hearing on Friday morning.

Three men charged earlier Monday with varying counts of trafficking in cocaine were also remanded into custody for Friday bail hearings after electing to be tried by a Court of Queen's Bench judge and jury. They are: Ross Joseph Jesso, 34, of Hazen Street; Emmanuel Kotsabasakis, 62, of O'Brien Street; and Anthony Northrup, 19, of Courtenay Avenue.

Since Monday, 22 men and one woman have now been charged with dozens of drug-related offences directly linked to Operation Portland. Six have already ended up with federal penitentiary terms of between two and four years, while an 18-year-old escaped with a 10-month jail term.

Before sentencing, John Lloyd told the judge he did deal in Dilaudid, but had stopped before his arrest.

The judge said it was too bad he hadn't stopped earlier because by dealing drugs, "what you're doing is spreading grief around"¦selling poison."

The criminal agreed.

"I've seen what it does," he said. "It scares me."