Drug dealer Zac Gatica unlikely to see jail time despite 693 MDMA pills, $30k cash in police raid
Police found more than 600 pills, scales, $30,000 in cash and bags of cocaine when they raided Zac Gatica’s house.
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A party drug dealer is unlikely to see the inside of a jail cell after a police raid on his home found more than 600 MDMA tablets and bundles of cash in a safe.
Former public servant Zac Alex Gatica, of Wright in the ACT, had 693 pills packaged up and stashed inside two metal tins on his ironing board when police raided his house in September 2018.
Gatica pleaded guilty to trafficking MDMA and dealing in the proceeds in crime in March this year.
Justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson said Gatica would likely be handed an intensive corrections order when his case returns to court in February.
“You’re a young man with a good future in front of you so long as you stay on the right path,” Justice Loukas-Karlsson said.
Court documents reveal Gatica was at home with his girlfriend, Eliza Ride, when police came knocking.
Gatica pointed police to where his drug stash was, and to a safe in a wardrobe where more than $35,000 in cash was found in rolls held together with rubber bands.
Police also found six bags of cocaine, and, in his car, a $20 note with white powder residue on it.
In a message to a customer found on an encrypted messaging app on Gatica’s phone a customer of Gatica’s said: “Bumping up the order to 30 bruz, I’ll have cash on me, am getting Versace or Playboys”.
Detectives believed the reference to “Playboys” was a reference to the 437 tablets Gatica had bagged up with the Playboy bunny stamped onto them.
Another message from a customer said: “I might be pushing the order up today bruz, I will probably get 50 tbh but will only be able to give you money for 40 today”.
Ms Ride, who has not been charged and is not accused of any wrongdoing, told police in an interview the money in the safe was her boyfriend’s and that people came to their house to buy drugs from him, but that she would leave the room whenever Gatica was doing deals.
Gatica, who has no criminal history, spent a night in the police lockup.
The court heard on Tuesday he quit his job after “seeing the writing on the wall” when he was stood down without pay after being charged.
Justice Loukas-Karlsson said Gatica was lucky to have two “wonderful women” — Ms Ride and his mother — supporting him as he tried to kick his drug habit.