REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Friday November 19, 2004

ALMOST $4 million worth of ecstasy tablets destined for Schoolies and the busy Gold Coast summer nightclub scene were intercepted on a highway north of Sydney.

Four men, including three from the Gold Coast and Tweed Heads area, were arrested, and officers on the joint Queensland Police-Australian Federal Police operation were confident they had closed a major Australiawide, drug distribution centre on the Gold Coast which had international connections being investigated.

Queensland drug squad boss Superintendent Steve Grant said there was no direct evidence that the massive haul of 91,800 designer drug tablets were meant for Schoolies alone.

“But they were due to arrive on the Gold Coast on Thursday afternoon, so the size and timing of the seizure means that the availability of this dangerous drug will be significantly reduced over the Schoolies holiday period,” he said.

The joint operation, named Charlie Yield, began in April 2004 and culminated with surveillance on two cars, finding the drugs and almost $250,000 in cash.

AFP agents, Brisbane-based drug squad detectives and NSW police watched as a 40-year-old Victorian man stopped his car in a Gosford street, on the central NSW coast, and met two Gold Coast men who were driving a sedan hired on the Gold Coast.

At 7.15am the men drove the vehicles into a dead-end street and exchanged drugs for cash.

NSW police stopped the Melbourne man near Sydney as he drove south back to Victoria and they uncovered more than $200,000 in cash.