An abandoned Mercedes C-Class led police to a big-time drug dealer who was knocking out cocaine so fast he had £200,000 running through his account.
The discovery ultimately led police to the door of former IT student Kalendar Canpolat, 28, who was nowhere to be seen when officers found the luxury Merc in Saxon Place, Heworth.
Police found the abandoned car – whose engine was still running – on the morning of 6 January, 2023, York Crown Court heard.
They seized over 50 zip-lock bags full of cocaine worth about £2,000 and an iPhone from within the vehicle, said prosecutor Kelly Clarke.
She said police also found £70 cash in a nearby alleyway which appeared to have been dropped by someone in a hurry.
A check on the police database revealed that the vehicle was registered under the name of another man who was on an electronic curfew. But Canpolat was also linked to the Mercedes and the iPhone which was awash with text messages relating to the sale of high-purity cocaine.
Kanpolat, of Whenby Grove, Huntington, was duly arrested but claimed he had “nothing to do with the vehicle or the mobile”.
Unfortunately for him, police seized another phone from him which was littered with drug-related messages. They also seized £215 cash from him.
“Financial enquiries made into his bank account found he had a NatWest account and close to £200,000 had gone through this account related to third-party credits over the offending period,” said Ms Clarke.
The court heard that the £200,000 was “turnover”, not profit, and that this was money which had run through Canpolat’s account throughout the 16-month drug-dealing enterprise between August 2021 and January 2023.
Kanpolat was charged with supplying cocaine but initially denied the offence, only to plead guilty ahead of a scheduled trial. He appeared for sentence yesterday (Tuesday, 12 May).
Ms Clarke said that Canpolat’s criminal record comprised mainly violence including battery and affray, but also public disorder, carrying a knife and breaching court orders.
Defence barrister Andrew Semple said that Kanpolat, who had a degree in IT, had started offending relatively recently after he started drinking and taking drugs.
He said that Kanpolat, who had a “difficult background”, thought that “the world might have opened up to him” after he graduated with a degree, but “jobs-wise it didn’t” and he ended up in a “short-term, dead-end job”.
This led to a “flash of offending” from 2021 onwards when Kanpolat started “going out, getting into fights”.
His career having stalled before it had even begun, he turned to drug-dealing and “sending out his name to a lot of people”.
Judge Sean Morris told Canpolat: “You were dealing in cocaine and you enjoyed the kudos of a drug dealer.”
Canpolat received a three-year jail sentence but was told he would serve less than half of that behind bars before being released on prison licence.
