Thomas Booker pleads guilty to running enormous dark-web drug syndicate ‘Underline Cost’
A former police officer has pleaded guilty to more than 50 charges relating to a dark-web drug syndicate making $25k a day from his Adelaide apartment. See the full list.
Police & Courts
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Former police officer Thomas Booker has pleaded guilty to more than 50 drug trafficking and money laundering charges stemming from a dark-web drug syndicate making $25,000 a day.
Booker, 27, has pleaded guilty to trafficking huge amounts of LSD and cocaine in exchange for seven other charges being dropped.
Police also froze hundreds of thousands of dollars in Monero and Bitcoin – South Australia’s largest ever cryptocurrency seizure.
The plea means that Booker will lose more than a million dollars in assets frozen by the courts and is facing a lengthy prison sentence for running the syndicate from his Adelaide apartment.
On Tuesday, Booker entered into a plea agreement via his lawyer James Caldicott.
On pleading guilty to 53 charges, seven charges would be dropped.
Booker will join his two co-accused – girlfriend Erin Gold and Ryan Suri-Tucker – in court in August when they expected to be committed to the District Court.
Booker was arrested in November last year along with Ms Gold and Mr Suri-Tucker.
Ms Gold, an accountant by trade, was arrested at her workplace where multiple items were seized by police.
Booker and Suri-Tucker were arrested at a King Park property where police alleged they were in the middle of shipping orders of drugs purchased online.
Police have previously alleged boxes of drugs in various stages of packaging were on a table at the property and a spread sheet of drug orders open on the computer in front of them.
Booker was running a dark web drug selling enterprise under the name “Underline Cost”.
Police first begun watching Booker when they intercepted a shipment of 8000 LSD tablets sent from the Netherlands to an address in Adelaide.
Booker came to pick up the package from a PO box and led police to dismantle the entire enterprise.
Booker was initially charged with a handful of offences relating to the importation of the LSD and the drugs and money found at the Kings Park house and his Adelaide address.
But in May this year prosecutors laid a further 49 charges against Booker relating to previous sales of drugs online.
The new set of charges downgraded Ms Gold’s involvement in the enterprise and limited Mr Suri-Tucker’s offences to those relating to the drugs found at Kings Park.
The District Court froze $466,752 in bitcoin, $122,123.42 in Monero, $820,000 in cash seized during police raids, $174,703 in bank accounts, a 1kg silver ingot and an extensive collection of luxury alcohol.
Police have also frozen an apartment in Booker and Ms Gold’s name as well as an Athol Park property owned by Ms Gold.
With Booker’s plea, a significant amount of these assets are likely to be forfeited to the Crown as the proceeds of drug crimes.
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