Operation Seraph: How a police listening device led to the dismantling of an intricate and highly organised suburban drug syndicate

Uber Eats bags, hidden compartments and kilos of cocaine and methamphetamine: how police dismantled a suburban drug ring one dealer at a time.

Uber Eats bag in hand, Jayden Mitchell walked up the front path of countless houses, apartments and units across suburban Adelaide.

Occasionally his BlackBerry would ping, he would open a hidden compartment in his Mitsubishi Lancer and pull out a small package wrapped in toilet paper.

Within the tightly bound paper were vacuum-sealed bags of methamphetamine and cocaine.

Mitchell was codenamed Skater by other members of the intricate drug syndicate for whom he worked because of his skateboard prowess, which had previously taken him to the US.

The drugs flowed from an innocuous South Plympton shed owned by Wesley Pascoe – codenamed the Blacksmith for his smelting skills – or Tall.

Wesley, 39, and his brother Joshua Pascoe, 37, would receive kilos of illicit drugs, which they would “step on”, cutting with baking powder or other agents before giving to their couriers or others users to sell on the streets.

The sales were lucrative, making tens of thousands of dollars at a time, but the brothers were also users of the drugs passing through the shed.

But as the brothers bickered, discussed the drug syndicate’s finances and got high on their own supply, police were listening to every damning word and confession.

Between July 2017 and June 2018, detectives from Operation Seraph had the South Plympton property under constant surveillance through listening devices hidden in the shed.

The operation, which initially focused on the Pascoe brothers, soon expanded to capture other dealers, couriers and users, all of whom would find themselves in the crosshairs of police.

The syndicate had become so successful they hired their own courier, 25-year-old Mitchell, and set him up with a car containing a hidden compartment and BlackBerry phone so they could stay in contact.

Court released photos taken by police as part of Operation Seraph, a crack down on a suburban methamphetamine and cocaine trafficking ring. Picture: Supplied.

Text messages and phone calls would use only the nicknames of other syndicate members, including Choco, Mechanic and Chubb.

Wesley Pascoe’s role was hands-on. Police listened to him talking about cutting 250g of methamphetamine with baking powder and making up deal bags out of the “scraps” of his earlier work. Joshua Pascoe, on the other hand, was the business brain behind the operation.

When told by his brother they were down to their last 294g of drugs, or 14 street deals, Joshua Pascoe said: “It won’t last us a week.”

Andrew John Fraser, 48, a successful businessman, was one of the visitors to the shed.

With a $1500-a-week cocaine habit, Fraser would bring large quantities of the drug to the shed, where it was cut, before returning to the streets to sell it.

The Uber Eats bag. Picture: Supplied.

“The more crystal and shiny you make it, the more pretty it looks,” Fraser was recorded as saying to Wesley Pascoe as he cut down the cocaine, which they called “mother of pearl”. “Suckers, they’ll never suspect a thing,” Wesley Pascoe replied.

Andrew Robert Williams, 43, codenamed Turbo, was a habitual methamphetamine user who had a knack for selling the drug.

On June 18, 2018, police watched as Williams got in Joshua Pascoe’s car and handed over $8000 in cash.

Joshua Pascoe gave Williams a package and sent him on his way.

Trevor Morris, 57, codenamed Builder, met the Pascoe brothers at a pool hall and started selling drugs for them.

He would buy ounces of drugs from the Pascoes, using money pooled by associates, and then sell them.

Andrew John Fraser. Picture Facebook.

When police raided Morris’s home, they found $2650 cash, which was suspected to have been pooled together for another bulk purchase. Justin Peter Patterson – the only syndicate member yet to be sentenced – helped the Pascoe brothers cut and package the drugs in exchange for some hits of his own.

Police watched as deals went down in the carpark of a BWS in Plympton, a Foodland in Marion, Blackwood Fitness and Xroad Fitness in Edwardstown.

On February 27, 2018, police raided Mitchell’s home after recording him talking about having methamphetamine hidden in his backyard.

Court-released images of some of the drugs seized in the police operation. Picture: Supplied.

Officers found the drugs and further packages in a box in the secret compartment of his car. The box was addressed to Joshua Pascoe.

Days later, Mitchell sent a desperate message to Joshua Pascoe. “S..t has hit the fan,” the message read.

The pair met at Marion Homemaker Centre that afternoon for a crisis talks.

But police were not waiting for the syndicate to find their feet. A day later, officers swooped on Wesley Pascoe’s house, raiding the shed and seizing cash and numerous Uber Eats bags.

Operation Seraph reached its resolution on June 20, 2018, when more than 450 items of evidence were seized and multiple arrests made by police at locations across Adelaide.

By the time the dust settled, the District Court had sentenced the main players to a combination of more than 30 years in prison.

The web of the operation had spread from Angle Vale in the north to Hackham in the south, netting seven direct players and linking police to other users and dealers.