Wealthy and white: Private school preppies turned alleged dealers
They are young, rich, and white. They’re also the alleged new breed of cocaine dealers cashing in on the city’s party drug of choice — taking over the alleged trade once plied by Middle Eastern gang members.
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In the world of big league cocaine smuggling, police call them the “whitey wannabes”.
Young, wealthy, caucasian men from affluent parts of Sydney who import massive amounts of drugs to support their glamorous lifestyles.
And their number is growing.
Sydney socialite and budding business entrepreneur Matthew James Doyle is the latest to be accused of being a “WW”.
The Sunday Telegraph revealed Organised Crime Squad police charged Doyle last week over an alleged plot to smuggle 300kg of cocaine into Australia. He is now behind bars, bail refused, and is yet to enter a plea.
His arrest sent shockwaves through the eastern suburbs where 31-year-old Doyle and his PR executive wife Kelsea are fixtures on the social scene, rubbing shoulders with the elite at high-end venues like the Bondi Icebergs.
There is no suggestion Kelsea was involved in any of Doyle’s alleged activities.
One of the most shocking aspects of his arrest is that from the outside — and on social media accounts like Instagram — his life appeared to be the picture of success.
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His previous appearances in the media had been stories focusing on the success of his start-up businesses, which included a mobile massage app, and he had no obvious links to organised crime.
While Doyle, from Woolooware, in Sydney’s south, did not fit the prototype of the typical rags to ill-gotten riches story favoured by Hollywood and immortalised by Al Pacino in the film Scarface, police and experts agree there is a trend of other wealthy, young Sydney men, often from affluent backgrounds, propping up their lifestyles through drug sales.
Nick Bingham, who for six years was boss of the police drug squad before retiring in 2016, said cocaine had traditionally been smuggled and dealt in Sydney by crime figures from a wide variety of ethnic groups, including Middle Eastern, West African and British.
“In terms of Anglo crime figures in the cocaine trade, there has traditionally been what police referred to as the ‘East Coast Mileu’,” Mr Bingham told The Sunday Telegraph.
“In previous decades, that would have been dominated by well-known crime figures like Arthur ‘Neddy’ Smith.”
But Mr Bingham said a more recent phenomenon in the ECM is the emergence of a new generation of WWs.
“Over time, the older generations have been locked up or die so there has been another generation that stepped up and filled the void,” Mr Bingham said.
“Certain generations always kept a low profile. But the latest generation of the 20, 30 or 40-year-old white wannabes all like the trappings of wealth, so they stand out.”
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Where once these young men would have gone no further than buying drugs for recreational use, today they are allegedly trying their hand at wholesale distribution, even importation, which used to be the exclusive domains of the criminal elite.
The theory was echoed by defence lawyer Paul McGirr, who has acted on several high-profile drug cases, who said the rise of WWs can often be linked to their privileged upbringing.
“It will often be the case that they have grown up with affluent parents and been surrounded by wealthy friends — and it’s a lifestyle they have become accustomed to,” Mr McGirr said. “But when they get out into the real world and have to fend for themselves, they have no idea it comes as a result of hard work, which they have not been conditioned to perform.
“And thanks to Hollywood glamorisation, drug smuggling is seen as a fast-track option without putting in the years of hard work.”
Another theory is that effective policing has altered the criminal landscape, allowing the young white cocaine dealers to fill the void as traditional criminals were removed.
A decade ago, illicit drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamines were controlled by Middle Eastern gangsters and outlaw motorcycle gangs who used their muscle to corner the market.
But police have now broken up many of these groups and forced their leaders offshore, allowing the WWs to enter the drug market.
However, many of them are criminally inexperienced and over-reliant on technology, making them easier targets for authorities to catch.
“They haven’t gone through the apprenticeship in this area like the Middle Eastern criminals,” a high-ranking law enforcement official said.
A characteristic of the WWs is that they are young, educated Sydneysiders who have grown up amid privilege and affluence in beachside suburbs.
There are several recent high-profile examples, including the case of Richard Buttrose, the nephew of media icon Ita Buttrose, who served almost 10 years jail for running a cocaine smuggling ring in the Eastern Suburbs.
Police found $10 million worth of cocaine and $1.3 million in cash when they raided Buttrose’s Darling Point apartment.
They also seized his little black book, featuring the names of his customers, which included several high-profile Sydneysiders.
“Buttrose took a high-risk, high-reward approach,” Mr Bingham said. “He bought in kilos and sold in grams.”
Eastern suburbs publicist Lisa Stockbridge told a court she kept her business afloat by selling cocaine from the front seat of her Range Rover.
Stockbridge made about 200 sales to homes and businesses around Sydney’s east before she became aware that police had installed a spy camera in her car, which collected enough evidence to send her to jail for almost three years.
The economic theory behind this was explained in a recent court case by one of Sydney’s most prolific drug dealers, who can’t legally be identified because of an immunity deal he made with authorities.
The theory is simple. The profit margins are higher for a dealer if they sell cocaine by the gram rather than by the ounce or kilo. But so are the risks.
“For cocaine, I sell an ounce for seven grand. So I make $32,000 (profit per kilo of cocaine),” the dealer told police in his indemnity statement.
“Then you gotta move an ounce of the shit 36 times (to sell a kilo). That’s 36 more times you might get caught with it by the coppers or ripped off by the buyer.”
Another notable case was that of former Sydney Grammar school and Sydney University student Bennet Schwartz, who was jailed last year for a maximum of six years after he attempted to smuggle two shipments of cocaine, 25kg in total, into Australia in 2015 and 2016.
Schwartz had recently proposed to his girlfriend and had a lucrative collection of property investments, including in Rushcutters Bay. But it all came crashing down when police arrested him on a plane alongside his girlfriend — who was not accused of wrongdoing — as they were about to fly out of Sydney in 2016.
Sydney is Australia’s biggest market for cocaine and according to figures compiled by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, the city’s love affair with drug has shown no sign of slowing.
In the past five years, charges laid by police for cocaine dealing and trafficking offences jumped 27.4 per cent. Over the same period, cocaine importation offences jumped 19.3 per cent.
A common tactic for newcomers to the illicit drug market is to establish a legitimate business with a plausible cover for importing drugs, said Ryan Jeffcoat, a retired detective sergeant and organised crime investigator who worked on street-level, mid-level and import-level syndicates for the police.
The construction industry offers one such cover, he said. Some of Sydney’s most renowned criminals — Pasquale Barbaro and John Macris for example — held directorships with construction companies. Others such as Khaled Sharrouf, Mick Hawi and Joe Antoun acted as mediators for the sector.
“Someone setting up an import-export business for smuggling drugs will spend two years importing legitimate items before they try bringing in gear,” Mr Jeffcoat said, adding that a benefit these people have is that they’re unlikely to arouse suspicion from the authorities.
“They’re not your typical organised crime crook, they’re a clean-cut crook. They’re above that suspicion.”