‘Baby-faced’ dealer beats jail sentence
Successful appeal sends 20-year-old who bought drugs on ‘dark net’ home to parents
Ayoung man caught operating a “dark net” drug ring from his parents’ home can return to the scene of the crime after a successful appeal against his prison sentence.
Elias Valentin Smith, a baby-faced teenager at the time, was importing drugs from all over the world and paying in bitcoin before police raided his unsuspecting parents’ North Shore home as part of Operation Tiger.
Smith’s parents watched on April 13 in the Auckland District Court as Judge Russell Collins jailed their son for two years and three months on 14 drugs charges.
Yesterday, in the High Court at Auckland, they were again present as their son’s lawyer challenged the sentence. Smith, now 20, was not in court.
Marie Dyhrberg, QC, argued before Justice Pheroze Jagose that the starting point adopted by Judge Collins was too high.
Smith had received a two-year discount for his youth, one year for personal circumstances, one year for his rehabilitation efforts and a 25 per cent discount for his guilty plea. He had no previous convictions.
Justice Jagose asked if Dyhrberg considered a 55 per cent reduction over the guilty plea inadequate.
The barrister, seeking home detention for her client at his parents’ house, said the case was highly unusual and special allowances should be made for Smith’s neurological immaturity.
She said drug dealers who were “in it for the money and the game” should be dealt with by the courts in a harsher way than those with a substance addiction such as Smith.
However, Crown lawyer David Green said Smith’s appeal should not be viewed as a second shot at a sentencing.
“This is extremely serious offending. Mr Smith was, at a young age, very much a drug dealer,” he said.
Dyhrberg had argued at sentencing that Smith was naive but Judge Collins asked: “Would a young gang prospect on the east coast of the North Island, who is looking at prison time for methamphetamine, accept that someone who was purchasing drugs on the dark net and paying in bitcoin was not worldly wise?”
Dyhrberg argued that Smith did not have a criminal mind and his offending was not for commercial purposes.
Of the 14 charges Smith faced, 10 have been defined by Parliament as drug dealing.
His co-offender and best mate, Nicholas Michael Barker, whom Smith recruited to help, was sentenced to eight months’ home detention and 100 hours’ community work last year in the North Shore District Court.
“It is clear that your involvement was significantly more serious than his, in fact I regard it as an aggravating factor that you enlisted him in this criminal enterprise,” Judge Collins told Smith.
Justice Jagose seemingly agreed and said, “Smith appears to be the lead antagonist and enlisted Barker”.
However, he told Smith’s relieved parents he would grant their son’s appeal and sentenced him to 11 months’ home detention.
Justice Jagose added that “covert use of new technologies to break the law has its own level of sophistication”.
As part of the new sentence, the Crown sought a special condition to allow police to access and search Smith’s computer for dark net activity.
Smith and Barker’s arrests came as part of a major police and customs operation, revealed by the Herald last year. Detectives had discovered wealthy Kiwi teens buying illicit drugs off the dark web.
In court documents released to the Herald, police said the rise in imports through the international mail “can be attributed to the advent of the underground global marketplace through what is known as the ‘ dark web’”.
They added: “A comprehensive range of controlled drugs are available, often at prices far cheaper than commonly found on the New Zealand domestic market.”
Smith’s offending began in October 2015 in his last year at high school. The drugs he imported included fentanyl, LSD, amphetamine and “DOM” (2,5-Dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine). It is not known how many items of mail containing illegal drugs slipped through.
This is extremely serious offending. Mr Smith was, at a young age, very much a drug dealer. Crown lawyer David Green