The extraordinary details of the Queensland Police Service sting can be revealed by The Sunday Mail for the first time which details the frantic 36 hours police had to swap 766kg of MDMA for brown sugar, and the incredible access to the syndicate’s communication right under their nose.

It was the biggest MDMA seizure ever in Queensland worth more than $500 million, and the third largest in the country. It was also the purest they’ve ever come across in the state.

Police infiltrated the syndicate and gained unprecedented access to their encrypted messages, where it used code words for drugs, and got a front-row seat to all their plans and the head honchos running the operations.

The mammoth, high-tempo four-week operation involved countless hours of police work, around the clock surveillance, and led to the arrest of several people in Queensland, New Zealand and Slovakia.

“It was a bit like Survivor: outwit, outlast, but they definitely didn’t outwit us,” Detective Acting Chief Superintendent Craig McGrath told The Sunday Mail.

In July, 2019, the state’s Crime and Intelligence Command began sniffing out word of an import into Brisbane in late 2018.

Superintendent McGrath - one of the detectives working on the case - suspected drugs had been hidden inside a Boundary St apartment but had limited information.

At the time, they had no idea just how big this job would become.

“That’s one of the things that we had to address, is go too early and you miss everything, go too late, you miss everything,” Superintendent McGrath said.

Police stormed the unit on July 29, yelling “drop the phone, drop the phone” to a man inside the room - a pivotal moment that will be the beginning of the syndicate’s downfall.

They didn’t miss a thing.

Inside the apartment police find 32 cardboard boxes stacked high in a wardrobe and wrapped in orange packing tape - unassuming and easily passed as moving boxes.

They crack them open and their suspicions are well and truly confirmed - 766kg of MDMA. Nine million doses worth more than $500 million on the streets.

Officers have a decision to make - arrest the drug sitter and make the biggest ecstasy bust in the state, or try and catch the bigger fish.

“We continue - basically the charade - and try to identify who here in Australia is responsible for this,” Supt McGrath said.

It’s the beginning of a whirlwind four weeks of intense police work, which now includes the co-operation of the drug sitter, and unrestricted access to encrypted messaging app, Ciphr, on his mobile phone.

It was one of the first times police had dealt with Ciphr, which closed operations in Australia after the massive Anom sting in 2021.

Police had now infiltrated the syndicate, and they had a front-row seat on what was going to happen next.

They quickly devised a plan to swap the 766kg of drugs out for brown sugar - something that had never been done in Queensland before on such a massive scale.

“We had to quickly find where we could source brown sugar, and I think we ended up buying a tonne of brown sugar,” Supt McGrath said.

Everything had to be exactly as they found it - double-cryovaced, wrapped the same way, with the same tape, in the same boxes, in the exact same position.

But their plan took a turn when the syndicate indicated they wanted to move the drugs.

They learned a syndicate member was about to fly into Brisbane from Thailand and was heading straight for them.

They had 36 hours to complete the swap.

Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Kim Nunn was one of these detectives, saying their whole investigation hinged on this plan.

“We were literally running to do it … he was in Brisbane International Airport, ready to get to the apartment, when we were still running up and down the lift trying to get 32 boxes back in,” Detective Nunn said.

“We’re working to their clock that quite simply, if they go to the unit and there’s nothing there, we drop everything and we lose that opportunity,” Supt McGrath said.

With just minutes to spare they placed the last box in the room, with the addition of tracking devices hidden inside.

The syndicate member - David Smith - arrives on July 31, 2019 to take over guarding the boxes - now filled with sugar - inside the apartment.

He meets the other member - who is co-operating with police - in the foyer of the motel.

They discretely hand over the room key in a handshake with Smith and head for a taxi outside which has been commandeered by police.

“This is organised crime at its highest level, so we had officers in place, specialist police in neighbouring units monitoring, should they be needed,” Supt McGrath said.

Smith then takes up his post as drug-sitter inside the unit - which is now filled with covert cameras - and for more than two hours, he paces.

Police watch on, uneasy and unsure what is going to happen next. But eventually Smith settles, and becomes the next person who waits for instructions.

Smith sits and waits - only leaving the unit for food - while police work around the clock to connect more dots.

“We had a mountain of work going on with CCTV and other technologies, and then we identified a truck - a Pantech truck,” another officer, Detective Inspector Jason Hindmarsh said.

“That truck’s registered to a false company, with false names, false addresses, false everything … and then we figure out the product is going to be moved.”

It’s four days later, August 4, 2019 - moving day.

Police now have eyes on everything, and they see the Pantech truck driving into Queensland from New South Wales.

The driver - Benjamin David Englefield - heads for the apartment, but the truck is too large to fit in the underground car park.

Another man - Viliami Kisina - arrives in a smaller van and heads up to the unit.

CCTV footage captures Kisina, dressed in high-vis and a cap, and Smith entering the lift with trolleys loaded with the boxes. They looked like normal removalists.

They load up Kisina’s van with all 32 boxes and he drives away.

Police then deploy a drone and follow him from a distance to a warehouse in Coorparoo where he meets Englefield.

Calmly, they swap the boxes. Kisina drives away. Then Englefield.

They have no idea their every move is being watched.

But strangely, Englefield does something police didn’t expect. He parks the truck at a house in Lennox Head and leaves it there, before flying to Sydney.

“This threw all that out the window when he pulled up out the front of his house and then left it there,” Superintendent McGrath said.

Police watched Englefield’s movements for three days, but nothing happened. Things seemed odd.

On August 6, Englefield mysteriously vanished.

On August 8, Smith dumped his phone in a hotel bin and tried to flee the country back to Thailand.

Police had to move their move, arresting Smith at Brisbane International Airport and locating his dumped phone.

“We turned the phone back on, and he’s meant to be 15,000ft in the air in transit.

“So we get “??” (on Ciphr), because they’d identified his phone had gone back on.”

The syndicate had finally figured it out. Police were closing in.

“People we had under surveillance, their behaviour changed as if they’d been told “we’re hot”,” Superintendent McGrath said.

“Someone threw their phone out the window as they were driving.

“It was just like everyone downed tools, everyone got rid of everything.”

On August 13, police seized all the vehicles involved, including the truck full of boxes at Lennox Head.

But when they opened the truck, there were no boxes in sight.

“Everything said the boxes were in the back there, so we ended up measuring the truck … we realised there was a hidden void there,” Detective Hindmarsh said.

Behind the back wall of the moving truck - filled with furniture to suit the narrative - was a secret compartment opened only by a remote found at Englefield’s home.

“It was a very sophisticated set-up.”

Englefield showed up at Brisbane Watchhouse with his lawyer in September, 2019, after disappearing for a month.

Four people were charged and sentenced - Englefield was sentenced over supplying dangerous drugs, Smith was sentenced with trafficking dangerous drugs, Kisina was sentenced for supplying dangerous drugs and another member, Ashley Cooper, was sentenced with supplying and possessing dangerous drugs.