A JUDGE has likened using loan sharks to drug abuse for the misery they can bring to people's lives.

Recorder Malcolm Morse was speaking at the sentencing of Nathan Lakin, who admitted collecting money for a loan shark from a disabled man.

Lakin also admitted punching the man because he had told the police about him.

Giving the 27-year-old a nine-month jail sentence, suspended for 18 months, Recorder Morse said: "People who get into the hands of unlicensed money-lenders have the greatest difficulty getting out again and some never do."

He said that money-lenders were able to cause people in their clutches "something like the misery of a drug-addiction without any of the momentary pleasure".

Recorder Morse added that what Lakin had done was "particularly unpleasant and bad".

He said: "The man was partly paralysed and dependent on his benefit to live and what you were doing was enforcing his repayments."

As well as the suspended sentence, Lakin, of Co-operative Street, Derby, was given a 12-month supervision order and told to do 100 hours of unpaid work, when he appeared at Derby Crown Court yesterday.

Lakin's sentencing was the first prosecution to come out of the investigations of an organisation set up a year ago to tackle the problem of loan sharks in the East Midlands.

Steve Ward, of the Government-funded Public Protection Project Team, said it had been a successful first case and sent out a clear message to people that illegal money-lending would not be tolerated.

He said: "We are pleased Nathan Lakin has got a prison sentence, albeit suspended."

Iain MacDonald, prosecuting, said Lakin had punched the disabled man after he saw him in Phoenix Street, Derby, on August 1 this year.

Lakin had discovered that the man had told officers, working for the Public Protection Project Team, that he had collected debt from him in 2004.

The court was told that Lakin worked for money lenders who were also arrested and face trial accused of operating illegally. Lakin's job was to wait for the man to draw out his benefits from the post office.

The man would then hand over double the amount he had borrowed, which Lakin would take back to the money-lender.

Lakin admitted assault, harming a person assisting in an investigation, and assisting in debt collection without the right licence.

Stephen Cooper, in mitigation, said that, before the assault, Lakin had stayed out of trouble for two years and had thrown the punch out of frustration that his past was coming back to haunt him.

Mr Cooper said: "In 2004, Nathan was in the same position as the victim. He owed mon-ey and had a drug habit for heroin and crack cocaine."