Drugs charges for ex-AC/ DC guard and ‘ninja’
Anthony Netzler trained in Japan under a famous ninjutsu grandmaster, but the 2011 tsunami upended his life. He headed home, where he worked as a bodyguard for stars, such as Phil Rudd of AC/DC, before police busted him for a major drugs importation. Tony
BY any measure, Anthony Charles Netzler has lived an unusual life.
Auckland-raised and of German-Samoan descent, he moved to Japan as a teenager and became a master of ninjutsu, the strategies and tactics of the legendary ninja, even appearing on Japanese variety shows.
He worked as a bodyguard for the rich and famous around the world, survived the devastating tsunami that struck Japan in 2011 and returned home a decade ago to continue his security career and martial arts instructing.
Now at 53, he sits in a New Zealand prison cell, contemplating many years of incarceration for importing one of the biggest ever shipments of methamphetamine into his home country.
It’s a huge fall from grace for a family man who was highly respected in two countries.
Netzler moved to Japan in 1986 when he was just 18 and stayed there for 25 years. He became fluent in Japanese and married a local woman, with whom he had two children.
He studied in the Bujinkan school of ninjutsu under the grand master Maasaki Hatsumi, the 89-year-old founder of the organisation, eventually achieving the highest rank of 15th dan, bestowed by Hatsumi himself.
According to his CV, he was the all-Japan Shooto (mixed martial art) amateur heavyweight champion in 1997, the all-Japan Combat Wrestling champion in 1999 and the only non-Japanese to represent Japan in the heavyweight division at the Submission Wrestling world championships in Abu Dhabi.
In the 2000s, he took up MMA fighting, reaching third in the world with the Pancrase organisation.
A former close friend and business partner, Darrell Putt of Taupo¯ , says Netzler worked hard to make a success of himself.
‘‘They’re not so open with foreigners coming in and doing well in their country. You’ve got to fight for it every day to get into a good position, and he’d done that.
‘‘He was doing security work. He’d done some huge jobs – worked for some very exclusive businessmen and dignitaries – he got himself quite a reputation for being a good operator.
‘‘He was less Kiwi and more Japanese by that time.’’
Netzler also became a contact for New Zealanders heading to Japan to further their martial arts training.
But his life was upended by the earthquakes and tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011, causing widespread destruction and killing at least 15,000 people.
He told the New Zealand Herald he was having lunch with a friend in Tokyo when the quake struck.
‘‘I looked up and literally, there were 20-storey buildings just smacking into each other.’’
He walked 15km home and managed to get in touch with his wife and children, who were safe, he told the Herald.
‘‘Our home is on the eighth floor. You could still live in it, but it was just a wreck.
‘‘A woman who lives on a lower floor has nowhere to go. Her home is completely destroyed,’’ he said.
Coincidentally, Putt was thinking about setting up a business providing bodyguard services to VIPs around the world, and he thought of Netzler.
Also a ninjutsu practitioner with his own dojo in Taupo¯ , Putt had known Netzler for 30 years and knew he wanted to return home at some stage.
Putt had just won a contract to provide security services to Phil Rudd, the AC/DC drummer who’d settled in Tauranga.
‘‘I wasn’t about to up my family and shift out of town... to go and look after some rock star, but I could see an opportunity to uplift Anthony, who had gone through the tsunami and had his life wiped out.’’
Putt travelled to Japan, and found his old friend in dire straits.
‘‘There was a period of time where his family were living in a community shelter. He said to me I’d saved his life.’’
Back in New Zealand, the friends started a company, Straight Arrow, providing security to clients around the world.
The Rudd contract became a full-time gig for Netzler, and he set up his life in Mount
‘They’re not so open with foreigners coming in and doing well in their country. You’ve got to fight for it every day to get into a good position, and he’d done that... He was less Kiwi and more Japanese by that time.’ DARRELL PUTT, RIGHT
Maunganui, opening a dojo there and training students. He does not appear to have bought any property in New Zealand, living in modest rentals.
In 2015, he advertised a threeday camp that included firearms training, ‘‘nocturnal tactics’’ and evasion and ambush techniques. Putt says firearms are ‘‘absolutely not part of Bujinkan curriculum – anything he was doing in relation to that was off his own [bat]’’.
The security business went well for a while, Putt says, but things started to unravel.
‘‘I couldn’t see a future moving forward with the way our personalities were clashing.
You shouldn’t go into business with friends, basically.
‘‘After I closed the business down, he was pretty sore about it.
‘‘We stayed away from each other after that.’’
Netzler’s work with Rudd finished around 2014, and it’s understood he began associating with some unsavoury types.
By December 2018, he was hatching plans for a drugs operation, travelling to Bangkok, Thailand, to arrange a huge shipment of methamphetamine.
According to a report in the Bay of Plenty Times in March, the drugs came into the country off the Bay of Plenty coast in
April 2019 on a catamaran.
The load – 500kg of meth with an estimated street value of $150 million – was second only in size to the 501kg brought ashore at 90 Mile Beach in 2016.
An associate, Charles Scott Care, the owner-operator of Charlie’s Fishing Charters, agreed that his vessel Kyla J could be used to collect the drugs, the Times reported.
Netzler, Care and a third man sailed about 185km from Whakata¯ ne to an area known as The Rumbles, where they met the catamaran and offloaded the drugs, the paper said.
After a tip-off, police launched surveillance operations and recovered 410kg of the meth in Auckland and Hamilton.
When police searched Netzler’s address after his arrest in February last year they found five bundles of cash – about $20,000 in New Zealand notes and nearly $30,000 in Australian dollars, the Times reported.
Care, who received between $600,000 and $700,000 from Netzler for his role, pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to 12 years and nine months’ imprisonment.
Netzler pleaded guilty in March to charges including importing methamphetamine for supply and will be sentenced at the end of April.
Putt says Netzler’s drug charges shocked members of the Bujinkan community worldwide, and brought shame on the school.
‘‘The school doesn’t condone any criminal activity. There’s a massive amount of disgrace involved in what’s gone on... we’ve got mud on our face, it’s not a nice situation to be in.’’
He was surprised by the scale of the operation.
‘‘I have no idea how he could have possibly managed what he did. There’s no-one in our joint network of friends that I know that could have helped him with what he got involved in – it was pretty huge.’’
Putt says it’s likely Netzler would have made contacts in Thailand through martial arts.
‘‘When you practice martial arts and travel the world... you meet a lot of people. All martial artists from all backgrounds like the Thai [boxing] – they all jump on a plane and go into a camp at some stage... and look to further their ability as a standup fighter.’’
He could only assume his old friend had been motivated by money and greed.
‘‘He’s not a bad man, he’s just flawed. He’s obviously got some issues.
‘‘If someone said to you ‘I can get you a s... load of meth, do you want to do it’, would you? I wouldn’t. But I guess somebody had that conversation with him, and he thought ‘f... it, I want money, I deserve to be sitting pretty... and I don’t have to work very hard for it.’’