A teenage drug dealer was dragged from the dock at Preston Crown Court after a foul-mouthed outburst in which he called a judge a "f***ing helmet".
Corey Young, 19, lost his temper during the opening of a major drugs conspiracy case when Judge Philip Parry asked if he found something funny, having seen him apparently smirking in the dock.
Young insisted he had only been biting his lip and, after muttering under his breath, replied along the lines of, "no, there isn’t, lad" when the judge pressed him on whether he had something to say.
Judge Parry ordered him to be taken down, telling him not to address him as "lad", and Young shouted that he was a "f***ing helmet" as he was led back to the cells.
Young, who turns 20 later this week, returned to court partway through the hearing and apologised, as the court heard he was part of the so-called 'Crazy' drugs line, which flooded Lancashire and other areas of the north with class A drugs.
He was one of four Burnley men jailed for their involvement in the conspiracy, which ran from December 2021 to June 2025 and was linked to more than 6.6 kilograms combined of heroin and crack cocaine.
Ringleader Saeed Aziz, 25, of Whalley Street, was jailed for 10 years and nine months; Uzair Nasir, 24, of Milner Street, was jailed for five years and five months; and Young was sentenced to four-and-a-half years' detention in a young offenders' institution, all after pleading guilty to conspiracy to supply heroin and crack cocaine.
The fourth defendant, Mohammed Haroon, 24, of Lindsay Street, was sentenced to two years and six months in prison after pleading guilty to being concerned in the supply of the same drugs, after it was accepted he was not actively involved in the conspiracy.
The court heard the Crazy line sent out thousands of bulk flare messages to customers from its base in Burnley, selling to users in the town as well as across Bradford, Oldham, Manchester, and even as far as Windermere in the Lake District.
Judge Parry said Aziz was the senior member of the operation, with Nasir and Young working closely alongside him, while Haroon played a more limited role as the "custodian" of one of the phones.
Police linked the line to significant quantities of class A drugs, as well as weapons, including machetes, knives, a meat cleaver, and a sword.
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Daniel Bramhall, prosecuting, made reference to an incident on May 9 last year, where several of these men were involved in an altercation in Burnley that saw weapons produced.
Aziz later received a 12-month prison sentence for possessing a bladed article.
Haroon’s role in the case was confined to a three-week spell after he was released from custody in May 2025, when he took control of a Crazy line handset to work off an £800 alcohol debt.
He sent 58 messages in a single day, advertising that the line was "back on" with "fat sizes" of heroin and crack cocaine.
Mark Stephenson, mitigating for Haroon, said his client carried out a limited, debt-driven role and now wanted help to turn his life around.
Preet-Paul Tutt, for Nasir, said his client initially became involved to fund his cannabis habit and pay off his debts, with a letter to the court showing remorse and a desire to change.
Mohammed Rafiq, for Young, said his client was a "low player" in the plot and had begun to grasp that continuing this lifestyle would see him "in and out of prison".
Piarra Singh, for Aziz, said his client’s role was "intermittent, fluid, and non-continuous", and pointed out that Aziz spent substantial periods out of the UK in Pakistan, but the line "continued to operate seamlessly" without him.
It was accepted that he was not overseeing or directing the operation from abroad.
Passing sentence, Judge Parry said: "Drugs bring misery and despair to users who are desperate to feed their addictions.
"Society is fed up of people like you putting profit before people."
Young was also sentenced for a separate incident of theft committed when he was 17, which involved his group pursuing another person from a McDonald’s restaurant and getting them to hand over their mobile phone.
He received a one-month sentence to run concurrently with the drug conspiracy sentence.
Other members of his group, it was heard, were given youth rehabilitation orders in the lower court.
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