Story of SA’s biggest meth lab bust – why Troy Alviti, Mark Middleton and Nicholas Wardle needed the cash
Hidden away in a Croydon backyard shed was SA’s biggest meth lab, capable of making 15kg of the drug in one hit. One of the men involved was trying to help his cousin’s pub. Another just wanted to have a child.
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One man was trying to prop up a failing hotel, another was in it for the cash and a third man was trying to save money to pay for his wife’s IVF treatment.
A court heard that together they ran the state’s largest methamphetamine lab, capable of cooking kilos of the drug in a single batch.
When police finally kicked down the door of the Scotia St, Croydon, property last year they found lab equipment capable of cooking 15kg of meth in one hit and enough precursor chemicals to create $20 million worth of the illicit drug.
Arrested at the scene was Troy Alviti, 47, a professional plumber by trade who was being paid to allow the laboratory to operate on his property.
The District Court heard that he also lent his skills in running the lab, which was found in a backyard shed.
As police were pouring through the property, Mark Middleton, 58, a former armed robber who had returned to his old ways to try to save his cousin’s northern NSW hotel, arrived with a batch of precursor chemicals.
The third man, Nicholas Wardle, 39, was arrested in NSW three months later.
Police maintain he arrived at the scene and then sped off on a motorbike, however he denies this happened.
All three have pleaded guilty for their roles in maintaining the lab but all have remained silent on where the drugs they produced went.
They were each charged with manufacturing a large commercial quantity of a controlled drug.
Over months of sentencing submissions and negotiations, the motivations of the three men came to light. Alviti was paid $1500 as well as an allowance of meth to have the lab at his house.
The court heard that what started as a small welding job, became a large welding job, before the qualified plumber realised he was involved with day-to-day maintenance of the lab.
Precursor chemicals were found in his home as well as a small amount of the finished product and a meth pipe.
Police found shopping lists, schematics for the lab as well as envelopes stuffed with money marked “for bills”, “float” and “money to spend”.
Wardle had experience in the commercial production of methamphetamine. In 2010, he was sentenced to nine years in prison in NSW with a non-parole period of five years.
He was already on bail for other drug offending when he was arrested for his involvement in the lab. His lawyer Adam Kimber, SC, told the court Wardle’s offending was motivated by the need to raise money for his wife to have IVF treatment.
While Mr Kimber did not go into detail, counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions said bank account records showed there was enough money flowing through Wardle’s accounts to pay for the procedure.
Middleton’s cousin Brendan McCoy travelled from NSW to tell the court how the one-time armed robber had become involved in his hotel.
When Middleton was released from Cessnock Prison, north of Sydney, in 2007, after serving a decade for armed robbery, he went to stay with Mr McCoy who owned and operated a hotel on the outskirts of nearby Maitland.
“I gave him a couple of dollars to keep him going and he started work straight away. He’s a people person, very likeable,” Mr McCoy said.
For a decade, Middleton worked at there, pouring drinks and doing odd jobs while living out the back of the hotel.
“No one knew he had been locked up for the first three years he worked there,” Mr McCoy said.
“I said there’s no use us promoting that you’ve been locked up.
“He fit into the community. On his day off he socialised with people at the hotel.
“One day, by chance, someone who served time with him at Silverwater walked into the hotel. Mark served him a beer.
“The bloke was in shock and told more or less everyone in the whole hotel that Mark had done time.”
But after a peaceful time in Middleton’s life, debt collectors came looking for Mr McCoy.
“I had a couple of hundred thousand in credit card debt, five or six lenders, I owed suppliers and had debt collectors looking for me,” he said. “No one in the whole community knew that I had no money. But Mark knew.
“I used to be stressed and go to Mark saying, ‘I don’t know how I am going to get out of this’.”
Middleton made a fateful choice, which has once again landed him behind bars.
“He took long-service leave and said, ‘I’m going to get us some money, I’m going to get us out of this sh– hole’,” Mr McCoy said.
“I said ‘don’t be stupid’, but he disappeared.”
Middleton reopened the channels to his long-dormant criminal contacts and said he was once again available to work.
Middleton’s lawyer Tim Dibden said that Middleton “made it known to criminal authorities that he was available for work, whatever was going”, however he specifically declined any work involving violence.
He was brought to Adelaide, given an encrypted phone and put to work repairing and maintaining the enormous drug set-up. The next thing Mr McCoy heard from Middleton was a letter from Port Augusta prison saying he had been arrested.
Alviti, Middleton and Wardle will be sentenced this week.
Originally published as Story of SA’s biggest meth lab bust – why Troy Alviti, Mark Middleton and Nicholas Wardle needed the cash