High priest of meth jailed
Gary Colin O’connell ran a highly lucrative methamphetamine ring from his Shannon home, netting $4 million in five years. Jono Galuszka reports on O’connell’s rise from slinging weed in the schoolyard to one of Horowhenua’s leading meth dealers.
Picking potatoes is hard work. Down in the dirt, digging into Horowhenua’s silt loams, yanking out the starchy spuds destined for Christmas roasts and the local fish’n’chip shop. It is hardly glamorous stuff.
It is little wonder Gary O’connell, a high school dropout, wanted an easier way to make money.
The Shannon resident knew exactly where to turn to make a buck: drugs.
He was familiar from a young age with the cannabis trade due to helping his dad deal from their Shannon home-cum-tinny house, fetching tinnies for customers and helping find buried stashes.
He was nicking cannabis from his father to supply people at school by the time he was 14.
But the arrival of methamphetamine led to
O’connell’s rise in the Horowhenua drug scene.
Now 43, he was sentenced in the Palmerston North District Court yesterday to nine years’ jail for his involvement in a drug ring police dubbed Operation Abbey.
Three otherswere also sentenced yesterday, but O’connell was Abbey’s high priest, the man responsible for leading a group of people, many with no previous convictions, into a multimillion-dollar drug enterprise.
O’connell’s career path predictable
Canterbury criminologist Dr Jarrod Gilbert talked to O’connell before the sentencing.
In a report to the court, Gilbert said O’connell’s path was unsurprising given his past.
His fatherwas a full-time drug dealer and bookie.
He was also an alcoholic, spending most his earnings at the pub, leaving the family deprived of basics.
Being raised by a drug dealer made O’connell think dealing was normal, so expanding to methamphetamine was expected, Gilbert said.
O’connell’s drug use was also a factor.
But he also told another presentence report writer he was motivated by one thing – easy money.
Judge Stephanie Edwards said O’connell’s pastwas relevant, but drug addiction could not explain why he ran one of the biggestknown methamphetamine operations in Horowhenua’s history. “You are an intelligent man who ran a lucrative and well-organised commercial organisation thatmade $4m profit in five years,” the judge told O’connell.
Drug money funded the high life
The 26-page court summary of the offending,given to Stuff yesterday, describes how O’connell ran his business from
January 2014 to September last year.
Given the price of meth, police estimate O’connell supplied 12.86 kilograms of the class A drug.
The ring only broke when police busted him in Sanson, on the way to a drug deal, plastic ziplock bags containing meth, cocaine andmdmahidden between his buttocks.
O’connell dealing meth is no real shock – hewas jailed in 2005 for eight years for being part of a conspiracy to supply methamphetamine – but the profitability of his latest venture, $4m in five years, was extreme.
That big profit margin was a blessing and a curse for O’connell.
On one hand, it gave him an extremely lavish lifestyle.
Travel agencieswere used to book $34,882 of travel between August 2015 and September 2017, while he used $19,982 cash to buy four Tu¯roa skifield life passes in April last year.
His drug money was also used to fund a Queenstown holiday in July last year for 20 people.
Four rentals cars cost $4605, accommodation added up to $15,448, whilemeals on two consecutive nights cost $1857 and $1566, respectively.
Not bad for someone with no legitimate job and living in Shannon, a town known for anything but opulence.
Dirty money cleaned with bets, bikes, vehicles and home improvements
Figuring out where to keep his money was the hard part.
After all, questions will be asked if you walk into a bank with tens of thousands of dollars cash on a regular basis.
It seems questions are not asked at the Levin Sports Bar though, where a female associate made numerous large cash bets on his behalf.
The bets started low, but quickly increased to more than
$10,000 a time, made with cash bundled in $1000 lots carried in toilet or shopping bags.
The woman, not named in the court summary, told staff she placed the bets for O’connell because he was too lazy to do it himself.
The police’s asset recovery unit estimated $2.5m was laundered through the Levin Sports Bar.
O’connell also created a diverse asset portfolio, investing in an attempt to hide his ill-gotten gains.
Vehicles ranging from a 2003 Toyota Corolla to a 1973 Dodge Challenger he paid $75,000 for were among the fleet he bought.
The Dodge deal involved handing over $71,500 cash in $50 and $100 bills, packed into a small overnight bag, at the Picton Ferry Terminal.
The vehicles were put in the names of various associates, including 38-year-old Stephenheta Puhipuhi.
Despite having no income, Puhipuhi, who was sentenced to two months’ community detention yesterday for money laundering, was the registered owner of two HarleyDavidson motorcycles bought for $57,4000.
He bought $10,596 of sovereign rings from Michael Hill Jeweller in Palmerston North in July last year.
O’connell also put money into two businesses.
Although the owners of the businesses deny any wrongdoing and have pleaded not guilty to money laundering, the court summary stated O’connell invested $150,000 in one and $57,500 in the other.
Mother raised children ‘‘off the back of people’smisery’’
He invested in home improvements, which his long-term partner Emma Jane Armstrong benefited from. He pumped $265,000 into improvements to the home they and their three young children lived in on Stansell St, Shannon.
Despite pleading guilty to money laundering and being sentenced to 71⁄ months’ home detention, Armstrong, 35, told a pre-sentence report writer she thought the money was from legal sources.
The judge told her yesterday that made no sense. ‘‘Youwere able to be a full-timemumand provide for your children’s material needs... off the back of people’s misery.’’
She might have noticed other children in worse situations while helping at school or kindergarten events, knowing they suffered due to drug abuse, the judge said.
The final person sentenced yesterday, Alice Irene Andrews, let O’connell use her home in Petticoat Lane, Shannon, to store drugs.
He visited there dozens of times in different vehicles at various times of the day and night. A secret compartment found by police held 997 grams of methamphetamine ,61 g of cocaine and 17g of N-ethypentylone. She was sentenced to eight months’ home detention for letting her property be used for drug dealing.