Adam Hunter: Queanbeyan dad guilty over cocaine excavator bust
Adam Hunter was so broke he couldn’t buy his kids McDonalds for dinner when he risked it all to help shady organised crime figures import 384kg of cocaine concealed in an excavator.
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The key figure in the failed attempt to import 384kg of cocaine inside a second-hand excavator was landscaping supplies salesman who was so broke he couldn’t put food on the table.
Adam Phillip Hunter on Monday pleaded guilty to attempting to import $140 million of cocaine inside an clapped out excavator.
According to court documents, Hunter, of Queanbeyan, was recruited by others to bring the drug-laden piece of machinery into Australia, but did not know precisely how much, or how pure the drugs were.
A series of encrypted messages recovered from his phone show him discussing the importation with contacts named Bilderberger, Ghost, Kaynen and Notorious.
The documents, tendered at the Queanbeyan Local Court, reveal Hunter was virtually penniless, that his business, Bungendore Landscape Supplies had mounting debts and that he was frequently fielding calls to pay off overdue bills.
In one tapped phonecall, Hunter’s wife Tracey tells her husband that their kids were upset she didn’t have enough money to buy McDonalds for dinner and that they would have to have toasted cheese sandwiches instead.
In another call, Tracey asks Hunter what they are going to do for dinner, since she had no money and Hunter had minus $11 in his savings account.
At one point, Hunter drove to Bendigo Bank to take money out of his kids’ savings accounts.
“I don’t want to, but desperate times,” he wrote in a text message to his business partner and alleged co-offender, Timothy Engstrom.
Engstrom replied: “We’ll get through it, mate”.
Engstrom has pleaded not guilty to importing a commercial quantity of cocaine, denies having anything to do with the drugs, and is set to face trial in the NSW District Court at a date to be fixed in 2021.
The documents also reveal two of Hunter’s mates knocked back offers of up to $30,000 to help cut open the excavator arm and retrieve the cocaine.
Border Force officials detected the cocaine inside the digger when it arrived in Australia from South Africa, and AFP officers started an elaborate surveillance operation, tapping phone calls and setting up hidden cameras to film Hunter in the warehouse as the excavator was cut open when it finally arrived at the warehouse in Bungendore.
The delivery of the excavator had been delayed for weeks under the pretence of it needing to be steam cleaned before clearing quarantine, and phone calls reveal Hunter becoming increasingly anxious for the machine to be released.
Hunter told his family he would have to spend the day driving a truck as an excuse to spend Sunday, 14 July last year at his warehouse removing the drugs from the excavator.
Within minutes of the excavator being cut open with an angle grinder, and Hunter exchanging a fist-bump with another man, officers swarmed.
Hunter will next appear in the Goulburn District Court by video link from Goulburn prison on November 11.
Engstrom will appear on the same date for a listing hearing.