Solomon, the safe and the sales

An undercover police officer says he was sold methamphetamine multiple times by a Dannevirke man who denies dealing drugs.

Joseph Avon Mogford, a 54-year-old shearer, is on trial in the Palmerston North District Court, accused of suppling various drugs and unlawfully possessing firearms and ammunition.

During his opening yesterday, Crown prosecutor Joshua Harvey said Mogford had cannabis and LSD for supply, but was mainly a meth dealer.

He was arrested in December 2018 as part of Operation Faux, an investigation into meth dealing in Tararua.

Police found firearms and drugs at his house, as well as a swipe card for a storage facility.

Mogford knew the code for the safe and gave it to police, Harvey said.

Police searched a storage unit at the facility hired by Mogford, finding multiple firearms and cannabis inside.

One of the guns had the Mongrel Mob insignia stamped on it, Harvey said.

A key witness for the Crown was an undercover officer who went by the codename Solomon.

Solomon, giving evidence via an audio-visual link from an unknown location, said he was ordered by his handlers to go to Mogford’s address on Mathew St, Dannevirke, to purchase meth.

He went there multiple times, mostly buying meth in .25g or .5g amounts, although he did once talk to a male there about buying larger quantities.

He picked Mogford as the man who sold him meth after looking at a photo montage.

The man who sold him meth had ‘Ford’ tattooed on his forearm, Solomon said.

If he was wrong with his identification then it was someone different who sold him the meth, he said.

Detective Matt Akuhata, the officer in charge of exhibits, said multiple firearms were found at the property, along with drug paraphernalia like scales.

But nothing was sent to be checked for fingerprints apart from the firearms, he said.

Detective Kelly Day was part of the search of Mogford’s home.

She said a safe, found chained to a house pile, had the storage facility swipe.

Tararua Self Storage owner Helen Monteith said Mogford hired a unit there, which was deemed abandoned in March 2019 due to abandonment.

Swipe cards allowed people into the facility, but each unit had its own lock.

People were required to have their own locks, with security checking units each night to make sure locks were on, she said.

The contents of a storage unit were not checked if one person decided to take over someone else’s unit, she said.

But if someone abandoned a unit it was cleared out and that person’s swipe card disabled.

A relative of Mogford’s did have a unit at Tararua Self Storage, but it was different to Mogford’s, Monteith said.

The trial before Judge Jonathan Krebs alone continues.