Glitzy parties to drugs in undies: Sydney’s convicted dealers
These are the stories of some of Sydney’s convicted drug dealers and what happened when they were forced to face the music. From glamourous parties to deals out of the back of cars, the harbour city has seen it all.
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With drugs hidden in underpants, blue ALDI bags and backpacks, these men and women are infiltrating everything from glitzy festivals and high-flying parties to dodgy drug-dealing in the back of a car all over Sydney.
Social media has also become a hothouse for drug dealers looking to grow their customer bases.
Drugs are peddled via encrypted messaging services like Wickr, as well as on unsuspecting Facebook groups like ‘Vegetables Australia’.
These are the stories of some of Sydney’s convicted drug dealers and what happened when they were forced to face the music.
ANDREW KYRIACOU
A stay-at-home dad from Currans Hill, Andrew Kyriacou was a world away from home when he was busted with a bag of MDMA in his underpants in glitzy Bondi last year.
The 34-year-old was spending a Saturday night selling cocaine from his Mazda 3 near an Eastern Suburbs nightspot when he came to police attention after taking a short drive with a man.
Police later stopped Kyriacou’s car and noticed he was receiving constant messages on an app called Signal, raising the suspicion he was a drug runner.
Seven bags of cocaine and $1250 cash was found in his car, as well as a bag of MDMA in his underwear.
He was convicted of supply a prohibited drug at Waverley Local Court and sentenced to a nine-month prison sentence, to be served by way of intensive correction in the community.
JOSEPH CZUPER
A young builder from Airds was nabbed as part of a “dial-a-dealer” crackdown, found with seven bags of cocaine in the city’s Eastern Suburbs.
Joseph Czuper, who also goes by the name Joseph Kayem, attracted police suspicion when he was spotted hanging with a passenger in a parked rental car on Bondi Beach last July.
Police followed the car for a short time before pulling Czuper over and spotted him shutting down a mobile phone app called Wickr, extensively used in drug supply.
When asked if he was carrying anything illegal, he pulled out a plastic sleeve from his pocket which had seven bags of cocaine inside.
The Airds man was sentenced to seven months jail, also to be served by way of intensive correction in the community, for the supply of a prohibited drug. He also had to complete 50 hours community service.
RONALD JEFFREY HEISE AND BENJAMIN ALLAN SPINKS
Two pals from the Oakdale area were convicted for drug supply after a routine traffic stop in Bondi brought their enterprising operation to an swift end.
The duo were driving along Bondi Beach in a hire car on a Saturday night in late 2018 when the driving of Spinks triggered police attention.
The 27-year-old passed a roadside breath test but the pair were getting “increasingly nervous”, the agreed facts said, causing police to search the car.
Nine bags of cocaine, stuffed into small balloons, were found in a backpack as well as $2350 in $50 notes.
Heise wiped away tears as he was sentenced to nine months jail, to be served by way of intensive correction in the community, for supply of a prohibited drug.
Spinks, who faced further drug supply and proceeds of crime charges, was sentenced to 18 months in jail with a non-parole period of 12 months.
SHANNON MACAULEY
Drugs mastermind Shannon Macauley was sentenced to 11 years jail last year for the commercial supply of cocaine and ice across Sydney’s southwest.
A loot of 105g of ice, 380g of cocaine and $133,970 cash was found by police in a blue ALDI bag stashed under a rock in bushland near Macauley’s Wilton home in 2016.
Nine months later, police arrived at his home to arrest Macauley and found a further 738g of ice and almost $150,000 cash hidden around his house.
The 38-year-old father’s claim he was “warehousing” the drugs was rejected by Judge Jennifer English in Campbelltown District Court in December.
He was sentenced to 11 years jail, with six years non-parole. He is eligible for release in July 2023.
JENNIFER SHEWAN
Teen cocaine dealer Jennifer Shewan was running drugs all over Sydney’s most salubrious suburbs until a fateful deal in a Cronulla back alley brought her undone.
A court heard Shewan, 18, said she was wrapped up in the wrong crowd and using drugs herself when she began dealing cocaine in Sydney’s poshest postcodes.
The Picnic Point teen wanted to study criminology or take over the family business building high security for prisons and other government buildings.
Instead, she wound up selling cocaine door to door in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and inner west until police busted her dealing cocaine from the back of her Toyota Yaris in Cronulla on June 6 last year.
She was convicted of prohibited drug supply after pleading guilty and was sentenced to a two-year community corrections order.
JORDAN FINLAYSON
A former Cronulla Sharks cheerleader and Beauty and the Geek contestant traded pompoms for prison greens when she was caught supplying drugs in inner Sydney in 2018.
A court heard Jordan Finlayson, 29, was addicted to drugs when she was caught with 87.7g of GBL, 23.2g of Xanax and 0.8g of cannabis leaf in her car in Rosebery on November 11 2018.
Days later police also found her with 7.1g of cannabis leaf and six Xanax tablets when they raided her Rosebery home.
She was granted bail after pleading guilty to prohibited drug supply but now remains behind bars on remand after she was charged with additional drug supply offences.
DAVID LEFU
A festival drug dealer was slapped with a full-time jail sentence after he was caught peddling pills at one of Sydney’s most notorious and now-defunct hardstyle music festivals.
Sutherland Local Court Magistrate Jayeann Carney sentenced Alfords Point man David Lefu to nine months’ imprisonment in total for prohibited drug supply after he was found with more than 100 pills at the Penrith festival on September 26 last year.
Two red pills stamped with the Defqon. 1 logo were among 126 capsules in Lefu’s possession at the festival where two people tragically died last year.
Lefu told police he knew he was “busted” after a security guard spotted him in the middle of a deal with a man wearing a Bunnings Warehouse straw hat.
“The bag showed a weight of 13.4g and contained 13 smaller, clear resealable bags with purple strips across the top,” the agreed police facts stated.
“In total, there were 126 units of drugs: 74 capsules containing a yellowish crystal-like substance, 46 grey-coloured triangle shaped tablets, two red-coloured Defqon. 1 shaped tablets and four round white tablets with 0.5g embossed into one side.”
RICHARD SEYMOUR
A man caught red-handed with 69 pills and thousands of dollars in cash at a festival after Sydney’s deadly, drug-fuelled summer of live music has said he only dealt drugs to try and fit in with his peers.
Richard Seymour, 22, narrowly avoided jail after he pleaded guilty to two counts of prohibited drug supply and dealing with the proceeds of crime and was sentenced to a 12-month prison term to be served in the community.
Seymour was about to make a deal with a prospective customer when undercover police swooped on him at Touch Bass at Hordern Pavilion in Moore Park on April 21.
After a brief struggle Seymour relinquished his grip on a single clear capsule of grey material and two $50 notes, and a search of his bag uncovered 69 capsules in total and $2335 cash.
TAYLOR ANGELL
A Sydney woman who killed a young gun lawyer while driving high on ice will likely serve her full sentence as she was caught dealing ice months after she got out of prison.
Taylor Angell, 23, was jailed in 2015 for killing 26-year-old Cronulla man Marc Leabeater when she smashed into his motorbike in Sydney’s south in December 2014 and killed him. She was charged with dangerous driving causing death and sentenced to a maximum of five years and nine months in prison.
She had been on parole for less than six months when police found her unconscious in a running car with 29.12g of methamphetamine, $1026.45 in cash and digital scales in a pale pink handbag at her feet.
SCOTT PFEIFFER
A businessman with a $1000 a week cocaine habit and a stolen “keep left” road sign hung on his wall as a souvenir of a particularly wild bender was selling bags to his friends to support his own habit.
Scott Pfeiffer, 49, was charged with prohibited drug supply and possessing stolen goods after a police raid at his Esplanade apartment in Cronulla on October 19.
Magistrate Michael Love at Sutherland Local Court said the freight sales manager confessed to dealing cocaine to his friends after police found 1.57g of the drug in his unit.
Pfeiffer pleaded guilty to prohibited drug supply and was sentenced to an 18-month community corrections order.
LORETTA ROBINSON
A drug-dealing grandma with a long and sordid criminal history used her Department of Housing home as a local drug den, concealing her weed stash inside dog food bags in the kitchen pantry.
Loretta Robinson, 68, was charged with prohibited drug supply and running a drug premises at her Hurstville home in 2018 following a St George police investigation into local drug supply.
The illicit operation was uncovered when police raided the modest brick cottage on Lyle St on October 11, 2018 and found hundreds of grams of cannabis inside bags of Baxter’s dog food.
Robinson pleaded guilty to prohibited drug supply, prohibited drug possession, dealing with the proceeds of crime and allowing her home to be used as a drug premises.
She will be sentenced in March.
GENEVIEVE HORSLEY
Working under the pseudonym ‘Gucci Grey’ and advertising on Facebook page ‘Vegetables Australia’, Genevieve Horsley dealt MDMA, acid and Xanax out of her Alexandria home.
The 21-year-old narrowly avoided jail time after she was caught dealing drugs online between June 2018 and August 2018, when she was arrested.
The judge in the case Penelope Wass called the offending “unsophisticated” as she “advertised on Facebook with little coding”.
She peddled the substances under the codenames ‘broccoli’ and ‘capsicums’, with capsicums referring to MDMA caps and broccoli to cannabis.
Horsley was caught after she sold more than five grams of MDMA to a registered police informant six times, to a total cost of $1150.
Horsley had also pleaded guilty to one count of growing a prohibited plant – after she voluntarily led police to a cannabis plant she was cultivating in her bedroom wardrobe during her arrest.
She was placed on a 12 month intensive corrections order at Downing Centre District Court last August.
TRENT ELFORD-CIANTAR
Employing the username Mollyforu on the encrypted app Wickr, Trent Elford-Ciantar dealt drugs under the guise of food orders.
Upon uncovering the messages, police found that the large sums of money being discussed which related to purchasing “50 to 60 pizzas” or manoosh for a party were in fact code for drugs.
When police quested the 29-year-old Liverpool man about the Wickr messages, he said: “Do you know how expensive 50 to 60 pizzas are?”
A black Samsung seized by police revealed a horde of contacts who were looking for drugs across Sydney.
Along with these incriminating messages, police discovered 8g of MDMA hidden inside a plastic lunch box.
Judge Gina O’Rourke sentenced the real estate handyman to an 18 month intensive corrections order.
DYLAN SHAW
An undercover police officer organised to purchase drugs from Dylan Shaw off his Wickr and Whatsapp accounts.
The 25-year-old gym junkie from Wyee faced Gosford District Court in September last year after supplying drugs through two of his social media accounts in February 2018.
At one point Shaw told the undercover cop he would have trouble filling an order for 1000 MDMA pills because “my guy got busted” but he would find another supplier.
Shaw directed the undercover officer to transfer the money into his topless waitress girlfriend Nateesha Barlin’s Luxe Lashes business account or cash through Express Post.
The court heard Shaw met people through gym circles and on social media before directing them to an encrypted Whatsapp platform to organise deals.
A further search of his car uncovered $179,000 cash in a hidden compartment.
In his house, police found meth, $20,100, and 10.11g of cocaine hidden in the oven.
He was jailed for at least four years on drug supply charges.
TRENT KEOGH
Trent Levi Keogh used Instagram to recruit two women to conceal drugs in Kinder Surprise casings to walk them into a music festival.
Early last year, three men – Sant Salas, 25, and Matthew Sultana, 24 and Mr Keogh, 26 – pleaded guilty to trying to get 270 capsules of the drug into Sydney Olympic Park’s Knockout Circuz in 2016.
“We’re trying to find someone to take in for us” Mr Keogh wrote to one of the women named as “Miss Martin” in court documents.
“How many,” Miss Martin replied.
“Maybe 150”, Keogh told her.
Miss Martin asked: “Are they small or big caps”. Keogh replied: “Small as”.
The pair haggled over the cost of the service, before Keogh agreed to pay the woman and her friend $150 and eight of the MDMA caps.
Keogh drove to a Baulkham Hills home and picked the women up before pulling into the Kellyville 7 Eleven to pick up a number of Kinder Surprises for the project.
Salas and Sultan were each sentenced to two years and seven months jail and a non-parole period of 20 months, while Keogh got two years and three months jail, with 17 months non-parole.
JESSE HOLLOWAY
An electrician took drug orders from customers through a coded mobile messaging app sourced from the dark web.
The proceeds he used to pay off his $1.1 million Mona Vale mortgage.
Jesse Lindsay Holloway, 29 pleaded guilty to 28 drug-related charges after he was arrested in the Mona Vale Aldi car park in November 2018.
Police said he obtained ecstasy powder, LSD and cannabis from the dark web.
Police said he used the acronym ‘spidermanmj’ to arrange the supply of the illegal drugs via an encrypted instant messaging network app called Wickr.
Police believe he had been supplying prohibited drugs for “several years” and called his operation “highly organised”.
Between September 19 and 20 2018 a series of encrypted communications were recorded as being sent by Holloway where he agreed to supply a witness with MDMA powder and 10 tabs of LSD for a total cost of $1600.
After searching his car, officers found cash totalling $5,515, and in his flat, they seized cannabis leaf, MDMA, Psilocybin mushrooms, LSD and cannabis oil.
Holloway was sentenced in November 2019 to a total of four years in prison, with parole eligibility on August 23, 2021.