AFP surveillance shows crooks moments before attempts to dig up almost 300kg of meth

Handing over shovels, two Sydney men thought they were about to dig up their retirement fund. Little did they know the AFP were watching their every move. See the footage.

This is the moment two Sydney men thought they were about to dig up a retirement fund worth of drugs – only to have the Australian Federal Police watching them, tools in hand.

Handing over shovels to each other, ready to dig up almost 300kg of meth, they couldn’t have been more casual.

In a suburban car park they haul away the tools they had just bought from Bunnings and headed for the makeshift storage house for the drugs – an Arndell Park warehouse.

In one surveillance picture one of the trio smiles for the security camera as he enters the warehouse.

Little did they know they would spend a combined maximum of 22 years in prison over their foiled plot, which would have scored them $184 million.

Say cheese … one of the trio on AFP surveillance footage.

Arifa Sailba, 32, Antonio De Luca, 28, and Raymond Saab 27 were last month jailed in the District Court after they pleaded guilty to shipping the commercial quantity of meth from Hong Kong.

While news of their demise into drug traffickers has been documented, never before has the AFP revealed how it stung the group.

Surveillance which captured two of the men buying tools for what ended up being a two-day dig for the drugs.

Their plan was almost foolproof, they had hidden the drugs inside an excavator before concealing it in lead, steel and concrete to avoid detection at the border.

Police already had intelligence the shipment was coming, so when it landed at Port Botany in July 2021 a simple test of the machinery came back with a positive reading for meth.

All they had to do then was follow who picked it up, but when they did the group’s efforts had only just begun.

It would take them several tools and two days’ worth of hard work to actually locate the drugs.

They arrived hidden in the counterweight of this digger.

The AFP already knew it was about to dock in Botany.

“All this hard yakka for what?” De Luca was heard saying on covert devices planted by police.

At one point the group almost believed the drugs were missing.

“That’s what I mean bro someone has dobbed on someone,” the listening device picked up one of the men saying.

By the time police had enough to charge the men in October 2021, they raided De Luca, Saab and Saliba’s homes and charged them.

Only last month did they finally learn their fate, with De Luca jailed for a maximum seven years, Saliba a maximum six years and Saab to a maximum of nine years in prison.

This is the jackpot the trio thought they hit after two days of digging.

Until they were arrested in sweeping raids across western Sydney in October 2021.

The trio will be eligible for parole on several dates between 2026 and 2027.

“Criminals have little regard for how these harmful drugs impact people, their families, and the community around them,” AFP Detective Superintendent Kristie Cressy said.

“This significant seizure demonstrates the importance of the collaboration between the AFP and our law enforcement partners to disrupt attempts by organised crime to import illicit drugs.

“Criminals will continue to find crafty ways to get harmful drugs into Australia, but that won’t stop the AFP from putting them behind bars.”

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