Double killer caught in DEA cocaine sting
Inmate who tried to set up drug deal from prison took his own life, coroner finds
Adouble murderer fooled by an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent was allegedly conspiring with the Hells Angels to smuggle 400kg of cocaine into New Zealand. He later committed suicide in his prison cell.
Wen Hui Cui, 40, was sentenced to serve at least 19 years in prison after stabbing his ex-girlfriend and one of her friends to death on Auckland’s North Shore in 2003.
The Chinese national was found in a pool of blood at Auckland South Corrections Facility in Wiri in June 2021, where he was a low-security inmate, and died at Middlemore Hospital soon after.
The death was confirmed as a suicide by Coroner Tracey Fitzgibbon, who said in her ruling released yesterday that Cui had been experiencing insomnia and anxiety for several months.
Cui was an inmate in a residential unit at the private prison, run by Serco, and was scheduled to appear before the Parole Board for the first time in 2022.
Fitzgibbon said she considered Cui’s contact with health staff between April and May 2021, and was satisfied no further recommendations were necessary to prevent further deaths in similar circumstances.
However, there was no mention in the evidence before the coroner of Cui’s role in an undercover DEA sting shortly before his death, which could have led to his extradition to the United States to face drug charges with three other New Zealand criminals.
Aucklander Miles John McKelvy, a convicted fraudster and drug importer, was arrested in Auckland in November 2020 for his alleged role in the drug conspiracy.
US authorities want McKelvy to stand trial in Texas alongside two other New Zealanders — Murray Michael Matthews and Marc Patrick Johnson — who were arrested by Romanian police along with the president of the Bucharest chapter of the Hells Angels.
The trio were caught in a sting operation in a raid orchestrated by the DEA in the United States.
Matthews is a patched member of the Auckland chapter of the Hells Angels, while Johnson is a trained chemist with a long history as a meth cook.
Both men are now fugitives after being released on bail by the Romanian courts last year.
Their alleged co-conspirator McKelvy continues to fight the extradition order granted in the Auckland District Court last year.
The ruling of Judge Peter Winter to send McKelvy to the United States contains new details of the extraordinary DEA operation, including how Wen Hui Cui set the whole chain of events in motion.
Using a smartphone smuggled into prison, Cui started communicating in May 2020 with someone he believed to be a large-scale drug trafficker based in the US.
The pair contacted each other through Wickr, an encrypted app favoured by the criminal fraternity because law enforcement cannot intercept the communications.
However, the purported drug supplier was in fact an undercover DEA agent.
Cui told the undercover agent he was interested in purchasing a large quantity of cocaine for shipment to New Zealand to supply the Hells Angels motorcycle club.
The double murderer then introduced his business partner, Murray Matthews, and the trio continued to negotiate by Wickr.
As a result of those discussions, more than $1 million was transferred into a US bank account — controlled by the DEA — as a deposit for the purported 400kg of cocaine.
Then on September 16, 2020, Matthews gave the undercover agent the contact details of a “broker” Miles McKelvy, who would work on behalf of the Hells Angels.
McKelvy allegedly communicated with the undercover agent about delivering the cocaine shipment to New Zealand.