Brisbane real estate agent Peter John Yeh’s ‘catastrophic’ drug trafficking downfall

The former Brisbane agent went from a prominent job to selling street-level quantities of ice and GHB to about 70 customers.

Peter John Yeh went from high-flying real estate agent to drug trafficker in a “catastrophic” downfall.

The “catastrophic” downfall of an ex real estate agent in some of Brisbane’s leafiest neighbourhoods to an ice and party drug GHB trafficker and an addict was a tragedy, a court has heard.

Newly-sworn Justice Michael Copley told Peter John Yeh in the Supreme Court on Wednesday that up until 2017 Yeh had a very good work history.

“It is a tragedy to see a man in his mid-50s who starts possessing small quantities of these drugs and the tragedy is compounded when that man decides because of the effects of addiction that the way to solve his problem is to start buying and selling drugs as a business,” Justice Copley said.

Yeh is a former real estate agent with Ray White Paddington, as well as Harcourts in Bulimba and LJ Hooker in Coorparoo and he turned to drugs when he lost out on a lucrative work opportunity, the court heard.

In court on Wednesday, Yeh pleaded guilty to trafficking in the drugs ice and gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) over nearly ten months between September 3, 2021 and June 23, 2022.

He was trafficking while on parole.

The now 60-year-old father of two was a drug addict himself when he mostly sold “street level” quantities of the drugs to about 70 customers in inner-city Brisbane, the court heard.

He tried to avoid detection by selling via the encrypted message app known as Signal, by Facebook Messenger but also by regular SMS messages, the court heard.

When police accessed his phone messages they learned that Yeh was selling up to 200mL of GHB in a single deal and he commonly sold up to 3.5g of the drug ice for $1100.

He was receiving payments from customers up to $2500, his bank records showed, all while receiving the JobSeeker payment.

Crown prosecutor Katrina Overell submitted that she could not determine the profit Yeh made from selling drugs, but his bank records showed he had $174,562 in “unexplained income”.

“There were hundreds of transactions disclosed in messages and bank records,” Ms Overell said.

“He asked customers to delete their messages to avoid detection … he offered credit and pursued debts,” she said.

Defence counsel Elliot Boddice told the court that Yeh’s life fell apart when he began using drugs but he is now “clean” of drugs while in prison prior to his sentencing hearing on Wednesday.

Mr Boddice said psychologist Peter Stoker had diagnosed Yeh as suffering depression and methamphetamine dependency disorder at the time he was trafficking in drugs.

“His second wife’s father owned an LJ Hooker franchise in Coorparoo, and he worked for his ex-wife’s father for four years,” Mr Boddice submitted.

“He understood that the father promised to sell him the business, that did not happen. After that he started working for Harcourts in Bulimba and him and his wife started fighting and the relationship disintegrated,” Mr Boddice said.

“The disintegration of his marriage in combination with losing the directorship at LJ Hooker was the catalyst for Mr Yeh’s catastrophic downward spiral,” he said.

“Previously he would use drugs recreationally, and then from 2017 following those personal stresses his drug use just spiralled out of control. Clearly it developed into a crippling addiction where a man who had otherwise led a blameless life and was a contributing member of society is breaching court orders and trafficking in dangerous drugs while on parole,” he said.

Justice Copley told Sydney-born Yeh that his guilty pleas indicated he was remorseful for his crimes.

“You have been doing, it would appear, courses in areas that you have not worked in before which perhaps is an indication that you might not feel very confident that with your criminal record you will be able to go back into real estate industry. I don’t know,” Justice Copley said.

“(Your) criminal history … strongly suggests that you have been using drugs since the time when your relationship broke down and you suffered the reverse in the business with the man who had led you to believe that he was going to sell it to you, you became an addict,” he said.

Yeh pleaded guilty to seven charges including one count of trafficking, two counts of supply as well as possession of 1-4-butanediol – a precursor chemical for GHB production – possession of drug making glassware, a glass pipe and a mobile phone.

One of the supply charges related to him offering to supply 2g of ice to an undercover cop for $800.

Justice Copley sentenced him to four years’ jail for trafficking and one month jail for possession of the glassware and other drug implements.

But the 505 days he has spent in custody was declared as time served by Justice Copley, who also granted Yeh immediate parole which allows him to apply to the parole board on his return to prison.

Convictions were recorded on all charges.