‘Mystery drug’ at prison checkpoint

A woman who sold a dangerous party drug at work and from her home more than a hundred times last year was caught with $4400 worth of the drug at a checkpoint near Rimutaka Prison.

When the now-convicted drug dealer, who has permanent name suppression, was arrested she told police she was ‘‘just passing [the drugs] on to someone’’.

But Hutt Valley police had two months earlier got an order to search the woman’s phone records, which showed she had regularly sold and offered to sell a white powder that she called ‘‘MD’’ or ‘‘mystery drug’’, over six months.

Police believe the drugs were likely synthetic cathinones, which are psychoactive. They can cause sweats, dehydration, sleep problems, irritability and low mood. Cathinones have regularly been sold as MDMA.

In the recent Hutt Valley case, court documents obtained by The Dominion Post state that Corrections officers found drugs in the woman’s handbag, when she drove into a checkpoint at Freyberg Rd, Upper Hutt, on October 24, last year.

Police searched the vehicle and discovered snaplock bags containing about 22 grams of white crystals, which tests later showed was eutylone. At the time, cathinones had a street value of about $200 a gram.

Police also found sealable plastic bags, a set of digital scales, a gram of cannabis and $550 in cash and a diving knife.

Analysis of the woman’s text messages uncovered evidence she had committed 183 drug dealing offences between February 9 and August 9, 2020. She sold cathinones on 124 occasions and offered to sell it at least 40 other times, according to police evidence provided to the Hutt Valley District Court.

In total, the cathinones would have weighed at least 65g and been worth approximately $13,000.

On March 17 Judge Stephen Harrop sentenced the woman to 175 hours of community service and one year of intensive supervision for four charges relating to the possession of the class C drugs eutylone and ‘‘MD’’ for supply or sale, selling the class C drug ‘‘MD’’ and offering to sell the class C drug ‘‘MD’’.

The judge also convicted and discharged the woman for possessing a knife in a public place and possessing cannabis.