Joshua Russell Best sentenced for running jail drug ring allegedly involving his mother

The 32-year-old helped smuggle $26,000 worth of an opioid drug into Lotus Glen Correctional Centre over eight months.

Joshua Russell Best. Picture: Facebook

A man already serving time for drug offences has faced court charged with running a “sophisticated” drug operation with four others, including his mother, from inside a prison.

Joshua Russell Best, 32, of Cairns, was charged with one count of trafficking Buprenorphine into the Lotus Glen Correctional Centre over an eight-month period from January until September 2021.

Buprenorphine is an opioid used to treat opioid use disorder, acute pain, and chronic pain.

The court heard that Mr Best, who has previously been convicted of 54 offences, was one of three individuals inside the drug ring allegedly running the consortium.

The trio had multiple “employees” outside of the prison who helped smuggle around a total of $26,000 worth of the drug inside the prison on 19 occasions.

Crown prosecutor Seamus McManus told the court the seven “employees” were paid $3907 for their part in the operation.

Joshua Russell Best after he was arrested in 2015.

The court heard the drug was sold to approximately 39 people inside the prison – and they deduced this amount by examining Mr Best’s mother’s bank account.

Mr McManus told the court he enlisted the help of his mother to get drugs into the jail, and they inferred the size of the customer base through “drug-related payments made to his mother’s bank account”.

No other details of her involvement were mentioned in court.

The prosecutor said that it was an “aggravating feature” that Mr Best was supposed to be serving time to rehabilitate from his drug offending and that selling the drug – which a street name of Bupe – “was not a victimless crime.”

Best’s defence lawyer, James Sheridan, said his client had a post-traumatic stress disorder from matters relating to his child and an anti-social personality disorder but was planning to undertake a tertiary preparation program.

Detectives charged 12 people as part of a joint investigation between Queensland Police Service and Queensland Corrective Services into the trafficking of dangerous and prescription drugs at the Lotus Glen Correctional Centre.

In sentencing him, Judge Joshua Trevino KC said the operation was “sophisticated” and struck “not just at prison system discipline but at the heart of justice itself.”

But he considered the man’s difficult childhood, that he was looking at taking tertiary education and that Mr Best pleaded guilty.

He sentenced him to five and a half years with an immediate parole edibility date.

Best was arrested as part of a joint investigation between police and Queensland Corrective Services which shut down the drug trafficking ring and seized more than $337,000 in steroids and cannabis and large quantities of suboxone strips.

Operation Tango Artesian closed in March 2022 following an extensive investigation by investigators from the Crime and Intelligence Command’s Major and Organised Crime Squad Far Northern and Queensland Corrective Services.

Of the 12 people charged, six were prisoners.

Originally published as Joshua Russell Best sentenced for running jail drug ring allegedly involving his mother