ACT Supreme Court jails Andrew James O’Keefe for commercial drug trafficking

A marathon runner and award-winning university student is set to spend “wasted” years behind bars after his old life as a “dispensable” drug mule came back to bite him. This is how he was busted.

Bags containing methamphetamine, which police found in Andrew James O’Keefe’s van. Picture: ACT Policing

A marathon runner and award-winning university student is set to spend “wasted” years behind bars after his old life as a “dispensable” drug mule came back to bite him.

Andrew James O’Keefe, 34, was “caught red-handed” driving into Canberra with about $963,500 worth of methamphetamine in June 2023, the ACT Supreme Court heard on Friday.

It was a traffic stop targeted to catch O’Keefe, who had earlier been captured by CCTV cameras packaging cocaine valued at roughly $672,000 inside a Canberra auto shop.

For his role as a “trusted associate” of an organised drug network, with links to the Middle East, O’Keefe was sentenced to six years in jail.

Justice Louise Taylor imposed a non-parole period of two years and 10 months.

A vacuum-sealed bag of methamphetamine found in Andrew James O’Keefe’s van. Picture: ACT Policing

O’Keefe, from Phillip in the ACT, had previously pleaded guilty to charges of trafficking in a commercial quantity of cocaine and methamphetamine.

The court heard police were surveilling another member of an encrypted messaging group called “press rack” when O’Keefe joined in June last year, with the username “back down”.

The other members included “no limit”, who police believe to be a person living in Lebanon.

Justice Taylor said the group’s members had exchanged messages, which included pictures of drugs, at the same time CCTV footage from the auto shop showed O’Keefe and another man going through a 90-minute process to cut 3.284kg of cocaine and package it for sale.

The user called “no limit” also used the encrypted app, Threema, to arrange for O’Keefe to pick up methamphetamine from Melbourne and drive it to the ACT in exchange for $6000.

O’Keefe had just crossed the ACT border when police stopped his Ford Transit van and discovered 4.1kg of meth in “a sophisticated hydraulic concealment” beneath a seat.

The ACT Supreme Court, where Andrew James O’Keefe was sentenced. Picture: Blake Foden

Following his arrest, he spent eight days remanded in custody before being granted bail.

Justice Taylor detailed how O’Keefe’s construction company had been failing at the time of his crimes, leaving him “in financial freefall”.

As O’Keefe’s stress increased, so did the cocaine addict’s consumption of the illicit drug.

The court heard he had accrued about $30,000 in debt to his supplier, and he had offended in order to pay this amount back because he feared the consequences of not doing so.

Justice Taylor said O’Keefe’s latest arrest appeared to have been the catalyst for him to finally learn the lesson he should have in 2014, when he received a good behaviour order for being an accessory after the fact to the cultivation of cannabis.

The judge detailed how, since being granted bail over his most recent offending, O’Keefe had abstained from illicit drugs, completed a recovery program and run a marathon.

She said O’Keefe had also been studying at university, where his academic transcript showed he had received a “Dean’s excellence award” in September 2023.

Justice Taylor was ultimately satisfied O’Keefe had “excellent prospects” of rehabilitation, and that he posed a low risk of reoffending.

However, she said there was no dispute about the fact the 34-year-old’s crimes demanded a significant sentence of full-time imprisonment.

While the judge accepted O’Keefe had been an “entirely dispensable” courier, she said he had still played a key role in the kind of enterprise that wreaked harm and created misery.

And though he seemed to have rehabilitated himself, he still had to spend years behind bars.

“These are years of his life that he will never get back, years of life effectively wasted,” Justice Taylor said.

With time already served on remand, O’Keefe will become eligible for parole in April 2027.

Justice Taylor urged O’Keefe to approach his sentence like a marathon and “push through when you really feel the pain of it”.

“I wish you the best of luck,” she told the 34-year-old before he was taken into custody.