Central Coast heroin dealer Robert Calamatta pleads guilty
A man will be sentenced for supplying drugs after a police strike force targeted a family-run heroin syndicate on the Central Coast.
Central Coast
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The alleged “upline supplier” of a family-run heroin syndicate has pleaded guilty to the ongoing supply of prohibited drugs.
Robert Calamatta, of Wamberal, faced Wyong Local Court on Monday where his solicitor formally entered a guilty plea to one charge with a further 48 supply charges to be put on a section 166 certificate and taken into account at sentencing.
His solicitor said Calamatta was guilty of the offences but disputed a set of police facts, tendered to the court, which allege he was the “upline supplier” to a family-run heroin syndicate.
He also disputed the weights of some of the heroin Calamatta supplied.
The facts said police established Strike Force Lamprey in October 2019 to target the ongoing supply of heroin on the Central Coast.
According to the police facts Calamatta sourced heroin from unknown people in Sydney and brought it back up to the Central Coast where he would sell street level quantities to his own customer base.
The police facts allege he also supplied larger quantities to Greg Boyd, 64, of Bateau Bay, who is accused of using his wife Narelle Bailey, 60, and their son Stuart Boyd, 27, to supply their customer base on a daily and sometimes twice-daily basis.
The facts revealed Calamatta would hide heroin in cigarette packets, which he would leave at various locations for his customers to collect.
In a number of intercepted phone conversations customers sometimes asked him to bring “one of them tools” meaning a hypodermic needle.
Calamatta also got one customer to deposit $40 into his Commonwealth bank account and list the transaction as “work tools” in the description.
The police facts said on December 13, 2018, police pulled over Greg Boyd who they noticed had a large bulge in the front of his shorts.
They asked him to remove it and he produced $5350 in cash, which the police facts said “this amount is consistent with the purchase price of one ounce of heroin”.
At one point Calamatta agreed to leave some heroin in a cigarette pack under a piece of plywood behind a car accessories shop at West Gosford.
Police, who were conducting surveillance at the time, seized the drugs before the customer could collect it.
Two days later Calamatta was recorded on a telephone intercept saying “that’s weird” about the missing drugs.
Calamatta was arrested in January after police conducted five simultaneous raids across the Central Coast.
Greg Boyd, his wife Narelle Bailey, their son Stuart Boyd and another man were also arrested and charged with multiple counts of supplying a prohibited drug.
They have not yet entered any pleas and their matters remain before the courts.
Calamatta will be arraigned for sentence in Gosford District Court on December 5.
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