TONY Felloni is one of Dublin's best-known heroin dealers and was one of the main suppliers of the drug in Dublin's north inner city. He is also well used to the inside of a courtroom, having amassed more than 20 convictions - many for serious offences - in the course of a long criminal career.
Felloni (53) became involved in crime in the late 1950s. His earliest convictions included assault, and a previous court hearing was told that many of the assaults were on his wife, Ann Flynn. The couple had six children.
In 1980, after being convicted of assaulting his wife, Felloni moved to Britain. There he built up contacts in the criminal underworld which would help him set up supplies of heroin on his return to the Republic. But in 1981 he was arrested in Surrey and given a four-year prison sentence on a drugs conspiracy charge. He was released in March, 1984, and returned to Dublin, where he quickly set up his drugs business.
At the height of his activities in the 1980s Felloni was one of the few major dealers in the city who sold drugs directly to street pushers. He was usually to be found around the top of Dominick Street near his home in Palmerston Place. He kept most of his heroin in a flat in Ballymun.
As a major street dealer, he became a focus of attention for the Concerned Parents movement, which on one occasion disrupted his roadside trade by surrounding him on O'Connell Street and using a loud-hailer to alert passers-by to his activities. The resulting media attention helped to push more Garda resources towards combating drug-dealers.
Felloni was successfully targeted by a group of gardai known as the "Mockeys", young plainclothes detectives who posed as drug addicts to gather intelligence on dealers.
In January, 1986, gardai placed Felloni's home at Palmerston Place under surveillance. He was seen going into the garden next door and removing a black sock from the garden shed. He put it back later, and when the gardai retrieved it they found it contained heroin with a street value of £6,500.
The following evening they arrested Felloni and he appeared in court later that year charged with having £100,000 worth of heroin in Ballymun.
The court was told that Felloni diluted his heroin with glucose and that gardai had found a jar of glucose with heroin traces in his home.
In July, 1986, Felloni received a 10-year sentence. There were rowdy scenes when the sentence was pronounced in court, as a group of women from the Concerned Parents movement began to cheer and clap.
Felloni was not long out of jail before he was in trouble again. He found himself in court pleading guilty to possession of heroin on four occasions in 1994 and 1995. The August, 1994, haul was estimated by gardai to have a street value of more than £100,000.