Truckie John Stephen Stevenson, caught with 10kg of meth, worth up to $17.5m, ’horrified’ to be drawn into Operation Ironside

A truckie thought he was picking up a bag of cannabis as a favour – instead he was caught in Operation Ironside with 10kg of meth, a court has heard.

A truck driver who thought he was picking up a shopping bag containing cannabis was instead intercepted with 10kg of methylamphetamine, worth up to $17.5 million, and caught up in Operation Ironside, a court has heard.

John Stephen Stevenson, 25, is the first South Australian arrested as part of Operation Ironside to reach the sentencing process, after earlier pleading guilty to a charge of trafficking a large commercial quantity of a controlled drug.

On Monday he appeared in the District Court, which was told he was given an encrypted AN0M device after agreeing to collect the bag as an unpaid favour for his friend during one of his legitimate and regular weekly interstate routes.

Heath Barklay QC, for Stevenson, told the court his client was running a successful trucking business when he was approached by a friend who repeatedly asked him to pick up a “small shopping bag” as a favour in New South Wales.

He said Stevenson, of Grace Plains, was unaware that person was involved in a drug trafficking syndicate.

“He actually thought it was most likely going to be a relatively small amount of cannabis,” Mr Barklay said.

“He did not think for a moment he would collecting kilograms of methylamphetamine. He was not offered anything in return, he didn’t ask for anything in return and in the end agreed to do it as a favour for this person.”

After agreeing to pick up the package, Stevenson was given an AN0M device to discuss the pick-up location of the drugs.

Mr Barklay said Stevenson had “felt sick” when he picked up the bag and realised he was “conveying a considerable amount of methylamphetamine”.

“Not in his wildest dreams did he ever think he would be picking up 10kg of methylamphetamine … at the time he realised that he was too far in it and couldn’t see a way out,” he said.

He said he was “horrified by what he’d been drawn into”.

Mr Barklay said Stevenson felt he had “let everyone down, including himself” and would “spend some of the best years of his life in prison”.

“Ultimately Mr Stevenson is a young man who made a very poor decision … never in a million years did he think he was going to be drawn into something like this,” Mr Barklay said.

He urged the court to impose a “merciful” non-parole period due to his young age, co-operation, genuine remorse, lack of prior convictions and because he said the offending was a once off, isolated incident.

But a prosecutor said Stevenson’s role as a courier was only isolated because he was intercepted at Yamba, in the eastern Riverland, on his first drug run in May this year.

The prosecutor said there was a “fair old chance” Stevenson would have continued to be a courier had he not been intercepted.

He said Stevenson must have realised he was involved in significant operation when he was given an encrypted AN0M device.

“When he was presented with a phone that has a special app that only allows you to communicate with certain persons that have a phone that has that app – that app not being commercially available – he must have realised that he was involving himself in something more than simply picking up a bag that, in all likelihood, was cannabis.”

He said, at the time of Stevenson’s arrest, 10kg of methylamphetamine sold in single street deals would have been worth between $5 million and $17.5 million.

The prosecutor said related asset confiscation proceedings had also reached a “very swift conclusion”, with Stevenson forfeiting $97,673.91 from the sale of a truck, a second truck and $51,708.31 from a bank account.

Stevenson, who faces a maximum penalty of life in prison, will be sentenced next month.

Originally published as Truckie John Stephen Stevenson, caught with 10kg of meth, worth up to $17.5m, ’horrified’ to be drawn into Operation Ironside