A Bradford drugs courier who was caught transporting half a million pounds of heroin has been jailed for four years.

Father-of-two Steven Brophy, 26, was told by a judge he had got involved in a very serious crime.

Judge Scott Wolstenholme said: "The primary duty of the courts is to pass sentences designed to deter other people from being tempted into taking part in this."

After the case Detective Sergeant Steve Snow, of West Yorkshire Police's Drugs and Organised Crime unit, said he hoped the jail sentence would send out a message to those involved in such crimes that being a drug courier did not pay.

Timothy Capstick, prosecuting, told Bradford Crown Court today that Brophy, who is married with two young children, had been driving a Volkswagen Touran car in the Bradford area on June 26 this year when he was stopped by police on the slip road of the M1 near to Wakefield.

A cardboard box on the back seat was found to contain nearly 10kg of heroin. The drug was 55 per cent pure and had a potential street value of £489,800.

Mr Capstick said the case was part of an ongoing police investigation and the defendant was linked to a man called Tony Grant who had been jailed for six years for a similar offence of transporting drugs.

The prosecutor said Grant had dumped 4kg of heroin in bushes behind Brophy's house in Mond Avenue, Bradford, although there was no suggestion Brophy was involved in that.

Sanderson Munro, mitigating, said Brophy, who pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to possessing heroin with intent to supply, was weak and vulnerable and was subordinate to those gaining profit from the drugs trade. Mr Munro said Brophy was given instructions to go to an address, pick up the vehicle and take it to another address for which he was paid £80 and had debts rubbed off.

Mr Munro said: "He was chosen because of his vulnerability. He is a person who is easily influenced and took the risk that others with greater financial reward don't take."

The box containing the drugs had been forensically examined and there was no evidence the defendant had touched it.

He said the real victims of the case were Brophy's wife and children, who would have to visit their father in prison for some time.

Judge Wolstenholme said it had been a very large quantity of heroin but he accepted Brophy had played a subordinate role and was not making profit out of the drug trafficking.

"You were at the bottom of the pecking order so far as drug traffickers are concerned," he said.

The court heard that Brophy had no assets but the judge ordered that almost £300 recovered from him by police should go towards the cost of the case. He ordered the confiscation and destruction of the drugs.

Det Sgt Snow said police accepted Brophy's role was that of a courier on behalf of some very significant drug dealers in West Yorkshire.

"We will continue to target those people who utilise couriers on their behalf," he said.

e-mail: steve.wright@bradford.newsquest.co.uk