Cairns drug dealers: 16 traffickers and dealers named and shamed
Cannabis, methylamphetamine and MDMA have long dominated the drug market in FNQ and the number of cocaine seizures of late has boomed. Here are some of Cairns’ drug dealers who the law caught up with.
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THEY destroy livelihoods, tear apart families and do untold harm to the community.
But that doesn’t stop people from selling and distributing drugs.
Cannabis, methylamphetamine and MDMA have long dominated the local drug market in Cairns and the number of cocaine seizures of late has boomed.
Here are some of Cairns’ drug dealers who the law caught up with.
Christopher Steven Bowtell
IT was described to the court as a sophisticated mail order business selling cannabidiol (CBD), with a range of branded products available through a slick e-commerce style website.
It earned Christopher Steven Bowtell just shy of $170k profit, and a 28 month stint in jail, the Cairns District Court heard in October 2021.
Bowtell pleaded guilty to possession and trafficking of prohibited Schedule 2 drug cannabidiol for 12 months between March 1, 2019 and March 17, 2020.
He also pleaded guilty to possession of a flick knife and two counts of unlawful possession of prescription drugs.
Crown legal officer Emily Thambyah told the court Bowtell supplied to a broad customer base and was not selective about who he sold to over the course of the trafficking period.
“People cannot just go selling CBD oil to whoever they please … whether or not the defendant knew CBD oil was (illegal) is irrelevant, ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
CBD is used to treat anxiety, depression and pain but requires a prescription in Australia.
“He went through great lengths to avoid detection. For example, requesting importers (falsely) label bottles of products and using falsified return addresses on parcels,” Ms Thambyah said.
Defence barrister Michael Dalton said his client had acknowledged he had “done the wrong thing”.
“CBD has been contained in the Drug Misuse Act since 1986 along with cannabis when all drugs were scheduled in that act.
“But we have come a long way, in my submission, since 1986.”
The court heard it was the first time trafficking of CBD had been prosecuted and no legal precedent had been set.
Judge Dean Morzone QC sentenced Bowtell to 28 months jail. He took into account an early plea and (his) self-medicating with CBD to treat a back injury sustained while serving a five-year stint in the navy.
“You do offer so much. You are a remarkable businessman,” he said.
“I have no doubt that you will … by the time you are released (you will) have hatched an entrepreneurial business plan, which will catapult you back into our community.”
Judge Morzone set Bowtell a parole release date of April 13 2022.
Gaetano Antonio Del Giglio
OVER the course of 10 months in 2017, some 39 boxes were delivered to Fasta Pasta on Sheridan Street in Cairns via Officeworks’ pre-paid mail service.
Gaetano Antonio Del Giglio, 50, told the restaurant owner they were boxes of lures for his fishing business, the court heard.
It couldn’t have been further from the truth.
The boxes were in fact stashed with cannabis – lots of it.
Between January and November 2017, Del Giglio turned over about $1.2 million by having more than 350 pounds of cannabis couriered from South Australia to the restaurant in what was described to the court as a “significant commercial enterprise”.
And it wasn’t just cannabis that Del Giglio had on the boil at the now-defunct restaurant, the court was told.
During the same period the 50-year-old supplied one of his major cannabis customers with 19 ounces of cocaine, also delivered to the restaurant and to his own home, the court was told.
Del Giglio pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking, one count of burglary in company with property damage, dealing with the proceeds of crime – $100,000 or more, as well as four counts of supplying cocaine and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Del Giglio, who Judge Fantin said was a wholesale distributor of cannabis across the Cairns District, was eventually arrested in March 2018 when police executed search warrants at his home and on his suppliers in Adelaide.
He was charged and extradited to Cairns, where he was released on bail.
A charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice arose when he visited the home of a man who had already given a statement to police, where police had installed a recording device.
While Del Giglio was wearing a GPS tracker on his ankle, he told the man he needed to complete a statutory declaration saying he’d never seen any cocaine or any cannabis nor any money, the court heard.
Two days after that, Del Giglio was arrested and remanded into custody, where he spent 826 days before being sentenced.
Judge Fantin described Del Giglio as a mature man who was motivated to sell drugs for a profit.
In sentencing him to eight and a half years jail, she set a parole eligibility date of May 26, 2022.
John Durham Willey
LOSING a pound of methylamphetamine and $2450 cash when his alleged business partner was caught up in a traffic intercept wasn’t enough to dissuade John Durham Willey from his drug trafficking enterprise.
Nor was it enough to raise his suspicions that this was more than a case of a bumbling business partner who was flapping his gums about town.
In actual fact, both their phones had been tapped by police during Operation Sierra Footrope.
So it was truly remarkable that after his alleged partner was arrested at Brisbane Airport with $84,100 in cryo-vacced cash on his person a month later in June 2020, Willey still carried on trafficking drugs.
“It seems to suggest a mix of brazen criminal arrogance but also a degree of ignorance, or stupidity in failing to apprehend that eyes were upon you,” Justice Jim Henry observed when sentencing Willey to seven years imprisonment in the Cairns Supreme Court, with a parole eligibility date of December 20, 2022.
The 39-year-old pleaded guilty in February 2022 to trafficking methylamphetamine and cannabis, and refusing to hand over the pin code to his mobile phone.
The court heard Willey trafficked methylamphetamine to a range of customers around the Far North, across a five month period, in amounts ranging from a point to a ball – 3.5g of meth.
Willey, a former meat worker, banana farmer and bottle shop attendant when not in jail, began consuming methylamphetamine at the age of 14, the court heard.
His history included an array of offending involving violence.
While serving 546 days in pre-sentence custody, he had conducted himself productively, Justice Henry said.
Innisfail detectives spearheaded Operation Sierra Footrope, backed by the major and organised crime squads of Cairns and Townsville, the dog squad and the outlaw motorcycle gang-centred Taskforce Maxima — although police said there were no links to bikie gangs.
Mark David Gladwin
Already serving out a sentence for possessing more than $30,000 worth of methylamphetamine, the way in which a successful Far North businessman came to have the drugs in the first place earned him some extra time in jail.
Mark David Gladwin pleaded guilty to trafficking methylamphetamine in the Cairns Supreme Court in February 2022.
The court heard the former military man trafficked methylamphetamine around Cairns between February 1, 2020, and April 21, 2020.
He was eventually picked up in his hotel room on April 20, 2020, with more than 100g of pure methylamphetamine, which the court heard he had previously received a five-year prison sentence for.
The seizure of Gladwin’s telephone revealed to police the extent of his drug trafficking over the period.
Justice Jim Henry said given the volume of the drug involved, Gladwin was clearly selling to people who were dealing.
He sentenced him to seven years’ in jail, taking into account 652 days already served.
Gladwin will be eligible for parole on August 19, 2022.
Wayne Peter Stapleton
A REPUTABLE Port Douglas businessman and racehorse owner whose life spiralled into uncontrollable drug use, Wayne Peter Stapleton was jailed in November 2021 for trafficking meth.
Stapleton, 56, pleaded guilty to trafficking methamphetamine in the Cairns Supreme Court.
The court heard the former owner of Macrossan St business Under Wraps trafficked meth for a three month period in 2018 and 2019.
Despite considering Stapleton “highly gifted” and “successful” for “a period of time” Justice Susan Brown said any sentence must reflect the seriousness of the crime.
“You are spreading the misery caused by methamphetamines. How would you feel if someone was selling it to your boys?” she said.
Justice Brown jailed Stapleton for 15 months to be released without having to apply for parole. On his release Stapleton must not commit a jailable offence for five years.
“You have every incentive to make sure this is a dark patch of your life you have put away,” she said.
Wayne Michael Davis
He continued to supply methamphetamine just over six months on from when he was busted by police selling two-ounce quantities.
It earned Michael Wayne Davis, 40, a significant term of imprisonment.
Davis pleaded guilty to a number of drugs charges, including supplying and possessing methamphetamine, in the Cairns Supreme Court in October 2021.
Crown prosecutor Nathan Crane told the court that on March 14, 2020, police were conducting random drug testing when Davis was stopped and returned a positive result.
Police formed a reasonable suspicion there could be drugs in the car and conducted a search.
“The suspicion was a good one, they found drugs,” Mr Crane told the court.
The officers found $16,000 of cash in a toiletry bag in addition to 3g of methylamphetamine.
Police accessed Davis’ phone, where they found messages on an encrypted platform which were designed to delete after a period of time, the court heard.
Police found messages relating to three commercial supplies the previous week, each relating to two ounces of methylamphetamine at a price of $11,600.
“With that quantity Your Honour, it would have been clear to Mr Davis that supplying to (the purchaser) would have meant on-supplying to the Cairns community,” Mr Crane said.
Davis was charged and seven months later was on bail at the time that police executed a search warrant at his address on October 28, 2020.
Mr Crane told the court police found minor quantities of drugs in Davis’ bedroom while in his garage the drug detection dog found 238.5g of substance with a purity of 54 per cent.
The court heard Davis had paid $186,000 for the amount, which he considered to be poor quality and had tried to return but was unsuccessful.
Police also found the “accoutrements” of a sophisticated methylamphetamine operation at Davis’ home.
Defence barrister James Sheridan told the court jail had been a wake-up call for his client, who he said “understands and accepts the misery he was part of” and who since being incarcerated had been a “model prisoner”.
Justice Peter Applegarth sentenced Davis to seven years imprisonment, with a parole eligibility date of October 27, 2022.
Lee Undy
He now bills himself on his Instagram page as a motivational speaker who found God in a prison cell and preaches the gospel.
But Lee Undy, a former Bandidos sergeant-at-arms, was in February 2021 sentenced in the Cairns Supreme Court to eight years jail for supplying more than 1kg of cocaine to a man he met at a baby shower.
He pleaded guilty to two counts of drug supply and one count of contravening an order after refusing to give police access to his mobile phone.
The court heard Undy used his Melbourne contacts to provide 1kg to Port Douglas resident Christian Webb, who travelled to Victoria to collect it in 2017.
Mr Webb was sentenced for drug trafficking in Brisbane in 2019 and received three years jail with immediate parole.
Undy had kept a relatively low criminal profile since moving to Port Douglas in 2013, aside from his involvement in a violent pub brawl.
Crown Prosecutor Nathan Crane told the court that even though Undy had a “historically silent five years, he was readily able to call on contacts to source 1kg of cocaine … and then do it again”.
“He was leading a law abiding life to the point where he decided to jump straight back in.”
Defence barrister Robert Richter, a high profile Melbourne lawyer who represented George Pell, represented Undy and said he was declared bankrupt in 2019.
He said Undy, who once trained to be a pastor, rediscovered his religious faith while in custody when he was initially charged and was reformed.
“In prison he will minister to others,” he said.
“Having lost his faith (when he was younger) he descended into a life of petty criminality.
“Having regained his faith … he’s going to be a productive member of the community (when released) you can be sure.”
Undy will be eligible for parole in February 2023.
Brooke Fitzgerald
She got six years in jail for her six-month heroin trafficking stint which took place between June and December 2019.
But during that time, Brooke Fitzgerald, 29, proved to be more of a hindrance than a help to her alleged syndicate boss boyfriend Wade Wigram, because she kept taking the drugs they were meant to be selling, a court heard.
Wigram was sentenced to 8.5 years in imprisonment in October 2021.
She pleaded guilty in February 2021 to trafficking and three counts of drug possession.
Fitzgerald, a former South Australian resident with a lengthy criminal history in two states and a family who became tied up in the grisly Snowtown murder case as witnesses, had been using the drug since she was 16, the court heard.
Justice Jim Henry said text messages between her and alleged trafficking boss and partner of 10 years, showed there were many instances of her using the heroin she had brought from interstate.
He said she went on nine interstate trips under fake names, including “Samantha Mason”, to pick up or pay for the drugs, then would often book a hotel room in Cairns on her return where the heroin would be divided into smaller packages for sale.
Justice Henry gave her a parole eligibility date of July this year and urged the parole board to consider her need to address the “underlying issues” of her offending regarding her mental health.
Surena Devillers
Her large-scale, high-turnover cannabis trafficking business was promoted through several innocuous-sounding Facebook groups – and it was her penchant for running online raffles for people she supplied to which brought her undone.
Innisfail woman Surena Devillers, 40, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and other drug-related charges in the Cairns District Court in June.
Police were able to work out that based on the number of tickets in her raffles, she had supplied drugs at least 300 times over a four-month period between July 2019 and October 2019 when her house was raided.
The Facebook groups she promoted her wares on were described to the court as “private, invite-only affairs that involved coded discussions about drug supply across Australia and North Queensland”.
She was also a slow learner.
The court heard that after police executed their first search warrant, police returned to Devillers’ home to find she had another 374g of cannabis, in addition to utensils.
A third search warrant executed on February 12, 2020, uncovered a mobile phone with messages indicating she was sourcing cannabis to onsell to another person.
Judge Tracy Fantin said it was an aggravating feature that Devillers used the freedom of her bail to continue offending.
Devillers was sentenced to three years imprisonment, with a parole release date of March 31, 2022.
Travis James Bell
It turns out there’s more to Snapchat than firing off mundane photos and videos of your food or your day at the beach to your mates.
Cairns’ Travis James Bell proved to be quite “industrious and efficient” at turning the social media application into an advertising platform that netted him $205,000 in cash in 10 months from the sale of MDMA, cannabis, ketamine and LSD.
Bell, 24, who met his buyers inside his 4WD across various sites in Cairns — including fast-food stores and supermarkets — pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and other charges in the Cairns Supreme Court in March.
The court heard Bell’s operation between March 2019 and January 2020 involved 48 instances of him advertising on the social media platform in which he would organise meetings with buyers.
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The downfall of Bell’s operation started after he met an undercover police officer at Salt House where the officer saw the Snapchat stories and obtained MDMA, ecstasy pills and LSD from Bell.
In his sentencing remarks, Justice Jim Henry said Bell’s offending was “extremely serious” and he had the “brains to succeed in life” if he lived lawfully.
Justice Henry sentenced the former part-time Coles worker to six years’ jail with a significantly reduced parole eligibility date of June 25, 2022.
The judge said he considered Bell’s lack of criminal history, young age, care for his son, and likelihood of deportation to New Zealand upon release because Bell is not an Australian Citizen after living in Townsville and Cairns since he was 10.
Ryan Henry Hill
He splashed his ill-gotten gains on lavish overseas holidays with his model girlfriend, designer bags and watches, jewellery, and dining out, all while his extensive drug trafficking activities “rained down misery” on Cairns for almost two years.
But it all came unstuck when Ryan Henry Hill, 27 pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in the Supreme Court in Cairns.
Justice Peter Applegarth in September 2020 handed Hill 13 years for the drug trafficking, but added on a further year for retaliating against the family of a witness after he made a drunken Facebook post calling a co-offender a “rat”, publishing sections of his police statement.
Hill dealt huge quantities of methylamphetamines, MDMA and cocaine in Cairns between March 2016 and January 2018.
He sourced the drugs allegedly through Sydney man Kalid Kanj who used courier Sandeep Dharan to bring them into the city, initially through Australia Post and later through Toll.
Mr Kanj left Australia in September 2018 after police executed a warrant at his address and has not returned.
Dharan, 32, pleaded guilty to trafficking dangerous drugs as part of a criminal organisation and was sentenced to seven years in prison, and was eligible for parole on April 6 of this year.
Hill must serve at least 80 per cent of that sentence under current legislation which targets those convicted of serious offending and punished to terms of more than 10 years.
Yu Fai Suen
The father-of-three came from Hong Kong to North Queensland to earn money on a working holiday visa to support his family in 2018.
But after acquiring a taste for illicit substances at a party, he began selling drugs to backpackers and acquaintances to cover the cost of his own drug habit, as well as sending money home to his family.
He pleaded guilty in June to drug trafficking over an eight-month period.
Crown prosecutor Nathan Crane told the court it was Suen’s posting of messages on Facebook advertising his drug business which first drew the attention of police.
Police obtained a warrant to intercept his phone, and Suen even sold drugs to an undercover police officer.
He was sentenced to three and a half years jail time, suspended after 12 months.
Narelle Kathleen Malone
She was the “benevolent matriarch” who peddled huge quantities of methylamphetamines from her Earlville granny flat for more than a year – and it earned her one of the most severe drug sentences in Far North history.
The court heard Malone, 47, lived in a converted shed at the back of an Earlville residence and one of her main customers was a woman living in the main house on the property with her young children.
It was estimated she turned over a profit of $300,000 and sold at least 8kg of meth during the 15 months she was operating the drug business between April 2017 and July 2018.
Over the course of several visits to her property, police collectively seized around $120,000 in cash hidden in “fake books”, a wall cavity, a safe, and behind a roller door during her trafficking operation.
“You were profiting from the offending of pumping a huge amount of methylamphetamines into the Cairns community,” Justice Jim Henry said.
The only major purchase made during the period was a $38,000 2014 model SS Holden Commodore she paid for in cash.
Malone appealed the 12-year sentence, but it was upheld in May 2021 by the Court of Appeal.
Matt Hilton
Living the “flash lifestyle” of the “big time drug dealer about town” was all well and good until it all came crashing down in February 2020, when cocaine trafficker Matt Hilton was sentenced to 10 years and six months jail.
Hilton pleaded guilty to trafficking steroids, cocaine, crystal meth and ecstasy pills between March 1, 2016 and January 3, 2018.
Judge Henry said “damning evidence” was gathered by a listening device planted by police in his luxury Chrysler sedan during a covert two-year sting.
“Cocaine, that’s my game, there’s lots more profit in it, and it moves quicker,’’ Hilton was recorded saying on secret tapes.
He also encouraged and educated others on how to sell the drugs they were buying from him.
The Cairns fitness trainer, former hairdresser and nightclub security company owner – with more than 13,000 followers on Instagram – is one of a new generation of party drug traffickers more “business than gangster’’.
He’s now languishing in jail.
After appeal, the Court of Appeal in December 2021 determined Hilton had been adequately sentenced.
Wieslaw and Bryan Stasiak
The lure of an “easy money mindset” saw father and son duo Wieslaw and Bryan Stasiak traffic ice into Cairns between February 2016 and September 2017.
Their operation came to light when authorities’ surveillance and detection of their phones in June found the trafficking was already in “full swing”.
After arrests were made, Bryan had an unexplained income of $513,000 while Wieslaw had $15,000.
The court also heard that the older of the pair was sentenced in Argentina previously for smuggling drugs into the country and that the punishment did not deter him.
The court heard that Gold Coast – based Bryan was the brains of the operation while his Sydney-based father was the “principal transporter and collector”.
Sentencing the men in August 2020, Justice Jim Henry blasted them, saying it was “unquestionably cynical commercial offending”.
They both pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking the dangerous drug ice.
Bryan, who had already served 691 days pre-sentence, was sentenced to 11 years and four months’ jail.
His father had served 1057 days pre-sentence custody and was given a term of 9.5 years.
Originally published as Cairns drug dealers: 16 traffickers and dealers named and shamed
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