A HARDGATE "gopher" for a cocaine crime gang was jailed for five years today after £290,000 worth of the drug was found at a house-based factory.

Gary McNeil, previously of Auchinleck Terrace, was caught during a police surveillance operation and left his DNA on gloves that were recovered.

A judge told the 27-year-old that his involvement included the supply of five kilos of the Class A drug.

Lord Burns said he proceeded on the basis that McNeil acted as a delivery man on a number of occasions - but had also helped out at the house where the illicit operation was based.

At a hearing at the High Court in Edinburgh, Lord Burns said that the whole circumstances showed that it was "an operation at the higher end of the supply chain".

He told McNeil: "It is accepted that your motivation was the commission of serious organised crime.

"This operation involved the distribution of very large quantities of a Class A drug which would have been distributed in Glasgow and wider."

Lord Burns told McNeil that he would have faced a jail term of seven and a half years had it not been for his early guilty pleas.

McNeil earlier admitted two charges of being concerned in the supply of cocaine. One related to a period between November 2020 and February 2021 at a property in Bearsden Road, Glasgow, and was aggravated by a connection to serious, organised crime.

A press, scales and one and a half kilos of adulterant used to cut cocaine were found during a search.

Defence counsel Geoff Forbes, representing McNeil, said: "Everything he was doing was under the direction of another.

"He was not in control, he was not in any form of profit sharing. He was getting paid piece work."

He said that McNeil mainly acted as a courier and "gopher" in the operation, and was only involved in mixing the drug with adulterant on one occasion.

Mr Forbes said McNeil had been asked if he wanted to make some extra money and agreed to become involved.

He added: "He accepts this will cost him his liberty for a considerable period."

The defence counsel said: "He expresses appropriate regret and remorse and he recognises the impact this type of activity has on the community."