Drug importer spared jail

Timothy Fearn and two friends imported ecstasy and methamphetamine ordered online from the Netherlands and the United States.

A 33-year-old Christchurch man has avoided prison after he imported ecstasy and methamphetamine ordered on the dark web from the Netherlands and the United States.

Timothy Robert Fearn was sentenced in the Christchurch District Court yesterday to 11 months’ home detention. He had earlier pleaded guilty to two charges of importing the class A drug methamphetamine and the class B drug ecstasy, and selling both drugs.

A series of offences were alleged, and representative charges were laid, indicating repeated offending. Fearn was also sentenced on a number of other charges, including unlawfully taking a motor vehicle, driving while disqualified, unlawfully being in an enclosed yard and failing to answer district court bail.

Fearn was living in Christchurch and working at an engineering firm in mid-2016 when the packages were imported to New Zealand using fake names and different addresses. The drugs had been ordered over the internet using ‘‘dark web’’ underground sites. ‘‘These websites allow people to order a wide variety of illegal items via the internet [and] these orders are sent internationally to an address and name supplied by the importer. Goods are also increasingly being paid for by the use of Bitcoins,’’ the Crown said.

Customs intercepted a total of 27g of methamphetamine and 3.6g of ecstasy.

Judge Raoul Neave warned Fearn that any further offending would inevitably lead to him ending up in jail.