Mongols bikie kicked out of club for selling drugs on credit sent to jail

A BIKIE with a less-than-profitable drug-dealing business has been given a jail sentence after pleading guilty to drug trafficking. But not before his club handed out its own punishment.

Clarence Kercher during an earlier court appearance. File picture

A MONGOLS bikie who was kicked out of the motorcycle club for accruing too much debt as a drug dealer has been jailed for more than two years.

Clarence Joseph Kercher was today sentenced for trafficking wholesale amounts of drugs for about 18 months during his time as a senior member of the Mongols Motorcycle Club on the Gold Coast.

Prosecutor Mark Green said Kercher racked up “significant debt” during his time as a dealer because he would sell clients drugs on credit and fail to recover the cash, despite regularly using threats of violence and in one case physically attacking a customer

Mr Green said Kercher was arrested in 2015 after Taskforce Maxima police launched an investigation into the club trafficking in a range of drugs including methamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA, steroids and cannabis.

“(Kercher) did frequently sell drugs on credit and he sourced his drugs from other senior members of the Mongols and also worked with a number of associates both within and outside the Mongols to assist in not only his business but in pursuing debts and avoiding detection,” Mr Green said.

“A feature of his trafficking business is that he did use threats and intimidation in order to recover debts (and) there were frequent examples of implicit and explicit threats of violence (and) on one occasion there was a use of actual violence.

“However it also can be said that he himself had been subject to threats that increased over a period of time because of the fact he owed money to those from whom he had obtained drugs.

“Because of the number of customers that he (had supplied drugs on credit and who had not paid him) he found himself in a position where he was not only subject to those threats but also had been threatened with having his motorbike confiscated and being kicked out of the club because of the way in which he conducted his business.”

Mr Green said the trafficking was “organised and secretive” and the group used encrypted messaging applications to communicate.

“(Kercher’s business) could not accurately be described as necessarily a profitable enterprise and it was certainly significant the evidence that he was in significant debt at the time the operation was concluded,” Mr Green said.

Defence barrister Scott Lynch said Kercher, who pleaded guilty in the Brisbane Supreme Court to drug trafficking, had a good upbringing, came from a good family, volunteered for his local coastguard service and was a loving father whose life had veered off course after a divorce.

“It’s somewhat perplexing when someone looks at his criminal history and his age to see how he got himself into this,” he said.

“He is horribly contrite about what he has put his family through.”

Mr Lynch said his 45-year-old client was a good family man who had fallen into drugs after taking up a fly-in fly-out mining position.

Justice Jean Dalton said Kercher seemed to almost be living a “double life” both as a family man and a bikie drug dealer and that she had “some scepticism” about his rehabilitation.

Kercher was sentenced to eight years imprisonment with parole eligibility after he has served two years and two months behind bars.