Brenton Victor Boden pleads guilty in Mackay court to meth trafficking

An ambitious drug dealer attempted to take advantage of a supposed Covid-19-related meth supply shortage, trying to turn a caravan into a drug lab.

An ambitious Dysart meth dealer saw a hole in the drug market and tried to fill it, attempting to gain the knowledge and apparatus to build his own meth lab.

Brenton Victor Boden was selling methamphetamine and marijuana to the region between September 29 2020 and November 21, 2020.

Crown prosecutor Maryam Yousufzai told Mackay Supreme Court Boden had become ambitious, and wanted to start making his own methamphetamine for sale.

The court heard the plans for his business expansion came about because Covid-19 had created of a shortage of the drug’s availability,

A Dysart man has been sentenced for drug trafficking.

Ms Yousufzai said Boden had spoken to six different people on how to produce the drug, even going so far as to get transformer oil, a substance which he believed could to make methylamphetamine.

“He received instructions on how to extract the relevant drug and shared the information with others,” she said.

Ms Yousufzai said Boden went so far as to try and source cold and flu tablets in an attempt to make the drug through the “sudoefrogen route” and tried to recover a caravan with the intention of turning it into a “meth lab”.

During one of his business ventures to Mackay to source drugs to sell, Boden was pulled over on the Peak Downs Highway where he confessed to police he had marijuana on him, but said it was less than one gram.

But when police searched the car, they found 165 grams of marijuana hidden in a false floor covering.

Ms Yousufzai said the father let his daughter take the blame, and it was later revealed in phone conversations that the marijuana did belong to Boden.

Boden’s defence lawyer Matthew Heelan relied on the argument his client would not have succeeded in creating methylamphetamine.

“All his discussions are fielded in an urban myth it would have worked out,” Mr Heelan said.

In particular, Mr Heelan noted Boden’s inability to create methylamphetamine out of transformer oil.

Boden pleaded guilty to trafficking a dangerous drug, possessing marijuana and using a phone in relation to drug offences.

The court heard Boden was on a suspended sentence from a Rockhampton court and had already spent 466 days in custody.

Justice David North condemned the effect methamphetamine had on the community, noting its relevance in much of the region’s crimes.

“Those early attempts to enter a production enterprise, you were ambitious to make money out of trafficking drugs,” Justice North said.

Justice North sentenced Boden to four years in jail with an immediate parole.