Jail for heroin dealer Nana
GOLD Coast drug doyen Nana Puscas has been jailed for nine more years after admitting she returned to heroin trafficking when fighting a gambling addiction and depression.
P u s c a s , 5 8 , became o n e o f Queensland’s most notorious drug traffickers when she was sentenced to 20 years’ jail for the same crime in 1994.
After five years inside she was released and returned to live on the Gold Coast, where she took up her old habits.
Puscas came to the attention of police in 2010 when an undercover operation focused on Romanian drug syndicates with links to the Gold Coast.
The Supreme Court in Brisbane yesterday was told phone taps showed Puscas, who was still serving her 20-year term on parole in the community, was trafficking wholesale amounts of heroin almost daily.
Her supplier was a Romanian man who would fly up from Sydney and deliver large amounts of the drug in compressed powder form. The two were caught on tape arguing about the quality, which was not up to Puscas’ standards at times.
Puscas would then cut it with sugar and on-sell it to two main Gold Coast customers, making up to $1000 each time.
A raid on her Ormeau Hills home in July 2010, uncovered $140,000 cash and large amounts of rock her- oin hidden in a camera case and other locations around the house.
Yesterday she pleaded guilty to trafficking about half a kilogram of heroin over about six months.
Defence lawyers said Puscas was now an ageing and ill woman who fell back into the drug trade due to depression, a pathological gambling habit and panic disorder.
Barrister Michael Byrne, QC, detailed how Puscas had grown up abused by her mother and husband in Romania before escaping as a young woman by swimming the Danube.
She was imprisoned in then Yugoslavia before coming to Australia.
The court was told she had no children and limited family and social support, with only distant relatives in Melbourne.
Justice Martin Daubney ordered the nine-year sentence be served cumulatively, meaning Puscas must first serve out the balance of her 20-year term, which expires in 2013.
She will be eligible for parole again in September 2015.
In allowing her early parole eligibility, Justice Daubney noted Puscas had admitted her role to police.