Illegal drugs are
everywhere these days – especially in the storeroom at police HQ.In the past year, local law enforcement has seized approximately 1.8 tonnes of illegal substances – an increase of over 500kg on last year. Aussies are hungrier for drugs than ever, and our tastes are changing. Ecstasy is out; designer drugs like GBH, DMT and BZP are in. The crims have access to the latest counter surveillance gadgets, expert logistics and qualified chemists. The Australian Federal Police and Customs are struggling to keep up, but sometimes they get lucky. These are the scores they’re bragging about at the pub while sinking perfectly legal brewskis…
What’s Behind Door #295?
The biggest heroin haul in Australia in eight years involved a mother and son team and a boatload of Malaysian doors. In October last year, local authorities foiled an attempt to smuggle a shipment of smack with a potential street value of $400 million. A 55-year-old mother, her 28-year-old son and a 33-year-old Hong Kong national were arrested in Campsie, in Sydney’s southwest, charged with attempting to possess a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug. Customs and Border Protection Officers at Port Botany found the drugs concealed among a shipment of 295 house doors sent from Malaysia to Sydney. X-rays revealed packets of heroin – dipped in wax and wrapped in plastic – concealed inside 10 of the doors. A total of 230 drug packages were found, with 24 packets of white powder inside nine of the doors and 14 packets in the tenth. After discovering the cache of drugs, the narcs commenced a controlled delivery, following the consignment to a warehouse in Guildford, where they made the bust. According to police, the 168kg of heroin was worth $58.8 million in its current form, but when cut it could fetch up to $410 million on the street. It was the biggest seizure of junk in Australia since 2002, when 380kg was discovered in Brisbane.
All Meth’d Up
Australia’s biggest methamphetamine bust happened in April this year, when the AFP seized 239kg of the stuff in a series of raids across Sydney and Perth. The drugs – which had an estimated street value of $50 million – were allegedly smuggled through the ports by a European-based crime syndicate. Authorities believe a 41-year-old Belgian man and a 43-year-old Dutch dude were running the operation out of safe houses in Sydney’s east. Most of the meth was found in a van parked at an apartment block in Clovelly, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Police also seized cash and a loaded 9mm semi-automatic pistol with the registration numbers shaved off. The suspects were charged with trafficking commercial quantities of controlled drugs. An alleged accomplice was also charged with trafficking and firearms offences, and a fourth unnamed man was arrested in Perth and charged with possession. The previous largest meth bust was 219kg, which was in Melbourne in 2008.
Bumper Crop
The Darling Downs in southern Queensland is one of Australia’s premier farming regions, so it’s little wonder it was the scene of one truly massive weed bust. Kinvarra is a 1700-hectare property between Inglewood and Stanthorpe on the Darling Downs. A sign there warned visitors, “No shooters, no piggers, no firewood, no nothing.” They apparently forgot to add cops to that list. About 6km from the property’s main weatherboard cottage, police found a dope crop of epic proportions – an estimated $500 million – in July 2008, making it Queensland’s, and possibly Australia’s, biggest bust. At least 34,000 mature marijuana plants, eight tonnes of dried cannabis and guns were found in the raid. Makes your eyes red just thinking about it! “There’s more leftover cannabis lying on the ground than you’d find in a big seizure,” Detective Acting Inspector Kerry Johnson said. Authorities also seized generators, farming equipment, four-wheel drives and two empty trunks hidden in a cave. A father and son who lived on the property were charged, though locals believed as many as six “crop-sitters” had fled and could be hiding out in the caves in the area.
There She Blows
In October 2010, AFP and Customs collected 464kg of cocaine from a luxury yacht moored at Scarborough, a sleepy marina north of Brisbane. A German mechanic and a Costa Rican diving instructor were alleged to have sailed a catamaran full of coke from South America and transferred it mid-ocean to a 12m yacht. Following a tip-off from narcotics agents in the US, the AFP tracked the sloop by aerial surveillance from 800km off the Queensland coast. Authorities charged 45-year-old German Holger Sander, who gave his occupation as mechanic, and 50-year-old Gilberto Aristizabal Serna, a Costa Rican national born in Colombia whose occupation was listed as dive instructor. Two NSW men were also charged with attempted importation of a commercial quantity of cocaine and a third NSW man was charged with possession. Their arrests came after an extensive police operation that saw raids on 12 properties in NSW and Queensland and the discovery of a drug lab at Eden, near the Victorian border. The bust was Australia’s third largest coke haul, and the biggest in Queensland.
Keystone Cops Find Ecstasy
Our biggest ecstasy haul happened by sheer luck when cops playing the good Samaritan card practically tripped over 340L of liquid MDMA. Pak Lam Li, 54, from Padstow in Sydney’s south-west, and Singaporean national Keng Chuan Koh, 30, were arrested on December 18, 2006, after police stopped to help with their broken down hire van. Inside the vehicle they found the huge stash of liquid ecstasy – estimated to be worth more than $50 million. Li was later jailed for a minimum of four-and-a-half years, while Koh got four years. That initial haul eventually led the cops to a warehouse in Castle Hill, where they found a further 1900L of the hug-inducing liquid – capable of producing 18 million ecstasy tablets with an estimated street value of about $540 million. Li was charged with supply a large commercial quantity of a prohibited drug, possess a large commercial quantity of a prohibited drug, participate or contribute to a criminal activity, make a false statement and use a false instrument. Koh faced similar charges. They really should have stumped up the cash for a decent van.
The Facebook Drug Lord
While most crime syndicates operate under a cloak of secrecy, Hakan Ayik likes to do business a different way. The bloke has made headlines over the past year as an accused drug overlord, an international jetsetter and one of Australia’s most elusive criminals. He’s also a fan of social media, posting a pic of himself on Facebook with his $300,000 supercar. Hakan – who is of Turkish background but grew up in Sydney’s south – owns several legit businesses, including a Chinatown karaoke bar and two brothels, but he is wanted by authorities in connection to his alleged involvement in the importation of 175kg of heroin that arrived at Port Botany from steamy Bangkok in July 2010. New South Wales police first began investigating “The Facebook Gangster” after receiving a tip-off about the purchase of a large money-counting machine, which led to the discovery of a vast crime network. Ayik fled Australia in August 2010, and in November was shot at by Turkish Cypriot police while attempting to cross the Turkish border. He fled north before the local authorities realised there was an international arrest warrant out for him. He was eventually ambushed in a hotel room in northern Cyprus on December 20. Police seized equipment used to make narcotics, steroids, a laptop and eight mobile phones. He was charged with illegal possession of medicines and pharmaceutical products, then freed on $63,000 bail. He could either be extradited to Australia or put on trial, but authorities will have to find him again before that happens. His Facebook page has since been closed, but one of the last messages he left said, in Turkish, “Catch me if you can.”
photos: AAP IMAge, afp, corbis, getty images, picture media
