MR Reliable. That’s how Mr X wanted to be regarded by the clients who bought his drugs.
“I had a reputation for selling top notch gear,” he said in his statement to police that was tendered to court. His gear of choice was cocaine and heroin.
“I was one of the most successful as in ... if you bought heroin and I told you it was 90 per cent (pure), it’d be 90 per cent. It’s not going to be less than that,” he told police in the statement.
“I only ever dealt in kilos and ounces (of cocaine and heroin) ...,” he said in the statement.
“ ... I never sold a gram in my life.”
The spoils were bountiful. As well as funding his own raging cocaine habit, Mr X drove around in his Audi, gambled like a high roller and dropped thousands on prostitutes. All while maintaining his family. At one stage, he was in the market for a $142,000 Bentley.
Recalling when he was at the peak of his powers, Mr X told the investigators: “There was no one in Sydney who I knew that was supplying cocaine or heroin at a better rate or more successfully than me.”
Mr X’s entry into the drug trade was as a teenager. He dropped out of his trades apprenticeship to deal heroin with a family member. He told the court he was soon elevated to be the manager of the operation and was mixing drugs while directing runners from a safe house.
By the armed robbery trial, Mr X was a seasoned campaigner and had done three years in jail over the syndicate. Mr X talked the talk.
This is how his operation worked.
“There are 36 ounces in a kilo, actually 35 and a half but we always say 36,” he told police.
“For cocaine, I sell an ounce for seven grand. Thirty six times seven is 252. So I make $32,000 (profit per kilo of cocaine).
“(But) that’s after driving halfway across Sydney with a kilo of coke in my car, which if I get caught with, I’m doing 10 years.
“Then you gotta move an ounce of the sh*t 36 times. That’s 36 times more times you might get caught with it by the coppers or ripped (off) by the buyer,” he said.
The next factor to consider is the time it takes to sell in ounces.
“ ... You don’t move that sh*t in a week. It can take two months to move a kilo,” he told police. “The risk (in selling ounces) is too big for an 11.5 per cent profit margin.”
The profit margins selling by the ounce were better but the risks of more sales saw him settle for making “between five and 10 grand in one hit” in selling by the kilo.
Keeping his customers happy was key.
“You gotta worry about the quality of the gear and make sure you keep your customers,” he told police. “You don’t want to jump on it too much or you will get a reputation for supplying sh*t gear and lose them. I had a reputation for selling top notch gear.
“I always told the buyer the purity and you gotta be a man of your word in that game,” he said. “If they find out the purity is lower than what you sold them they’ll return it and you’re stuck with it.”
In 2009, he paid $220,000 per kilo of cocaine. Before investing, he tested the purity of a two gram sample. “To do this I would get a gram of gear and put it in a small glass bottle, like a paprika bottle or a test tube bottle ...” he said. He then cooked the mix until he was left with “a rock”.
“Then you weigh the rock and it will be a percentage of the original gram,” he explained. “If the rock weighed 0.9 of one gram ... the gear was 91 per cent pure.”
Heroin was simpler.
“ ... You normally just give a bloke a gram and he would go away and test it, usually on some junkie, then come back and you would sort something out,” he said.
“You had to be real careful when jumping on heroin,” he said.
“Once you add too much glucose you can’t bring it back, it congeals like cement. With coke you can bring it back by adding more pure coke.”
In Sydney’s drug scene, Mr X was a few steps below the importers — one of the most competitive sections in the market.
“Everyone thinks that you make heaps off (cocaine) but that’s bullsh*t,” he told police.
“The guys that import it (make money). The importers pay between $10,000 to $30,000 a kilo and wear the cost of getting it to Australia.
The next level is the wholesalers that buy it off the importers.
“Then you got guys like me, buying in kilos and selling on,” he said.
“You don’t really get any higher than me unless you’re born into it. Who’s gonna say to you ‘You know what, you’re a good bloke. I’ll introduce you to my guy who is importing this sh*t and you can cut me out of my level of profit’.”
***
SO how did Mr X become the star witness in the armed robbery trial?
It’s Kings Cross Police Station, and hours after Mr X was arrested outside Ramzey Choker’s apartment and he is racking his brain. He needs a story.
Quickly.
Sitting opposite him is Detective Senior Constable Justin Murray. The officer hands Mr X a cigarette.
The experienced detective is an officer from the Robbery and Serious Crime Squad.
How he came to be talking to Mr X is unclear. One possibility is because there was evidence recovered from the apartment block containing Mr X’s drug operation that may have been connected to the robberies. It’s a grim situation, but Mr X is cunning. It becomes his ticket out of a lengthy prison term.
He cuts a deal with the authorities: he’ll tell them about the armed robberies in exchange for immunity for his role in them and a discount on his jail sentence for the heroin and weapons. The authorities agree and Mr X gives them three statements. He points the finger at four men he said were responsible for the armed hold-ups.
Mr X paints himself as a side player who only had minor involvement, like claiming he only allowed the men to use the apartments to count the stolen cash. From the witness stand, Det Murray told the court Mr X suggested the idea.
“I didn’t really need to pursue or press the point too much with him, he was a fellow who immediately understood the difficulties of his situation,” Det Murray told the court.
“And when I mentioned that I was involved in the investigation of a series of armoured van armed robberies, he immediately said ‘I think I can help you’.”
Mr X disputed this, claiming police asked him.
Whatever the circumstance, Mr X seemed like the dream witness. When the defence barristers in the case started picking apart Mr X’s evidence, it became clear the jury didn’t buy his story. After a 98-day trial, the four men were found not guilty. They can’t be named because of non-publication orders.
Their defence lawyers told the jury Mr X was responsible for the robberies, which explained the outrageous sums of money he spent in 2009. Mr X claimed he made all of his money from drugs and had about $40,000 coming into 2009, which was topped up with small earnings. Barrister Julia Hickleton told the jury Mr X had spent $824,900 in just seven months of 2009 on guns, prostitutes, luxury vehicles and an apartment for his mistress.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want to be flippant, but this man has better cash flow than the state of Tasmania,” she said.
***
OF the six armed robberies, where more than $6 million was stolen and only $500,000 recovered, the largest and most daring was the raid on the Lane Cove Chubb base on April 20, 2009. Roy Azzalini had just arrived to work at the Lane Cove Chubb base when a gun was thrust into his throat.
“Get in the f*cking truck or I’ll blow your head off,” the man holding the shotgun said.
It was just after 3.30am on April 20, 2009. Mr Azzalini and driver Daniel Edmunson did as the robbers demanded, smashing the truck through the security fence before driving it to a silver Audi RS4. The robbers leapt out and began loading all $2.3 million into the car.
The other robberies occurred at Potts Point, North Sydney, Epping and Cranbrook School.
The modus operandi was similar across all of the robberies: a armoured truck hijacked by men armed with weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle, who made their getaway in stolen sports cars, including BMWs and Audis.
Police formed a strike force known as Castlemaine to investigate the robberies — and it was this investigation that led them to Mr X.
***
WHAT happened to Mr X after the armed robbery trial? Mr X came out of jail and landed on his feet. He opened a restaurant in one of Sydney’s premium dining locations but business records show it closed its doors about a year later.