Coke for cash: How corrupt DHL insiders smuggled drugs for international syndicate

An international drug syndicate was making so much money via corrupt DHL workers who helped smuggle cocaine to Sydney, they sub-contracted their services to other crime networks.

Corrupt workers at international courier DHL helped to smuggle millions of dollars worth of cocaine into Australia. Artwork: Fuzz Hamzah

One of the world’s biggest drug-smuggling syndicates sold access to corrupt workers inside the Sydney arm of international delivery giant DHL to flood the city with millions of dollars worth of cocaine.

An insider has revealed that the leaders of the overseas-based drug-smuggling operation were making so much money via their connections inside a Sydney branch of the courier company that they made them available for use to other international crime syndicates — for a fee.

The Saturday Telegraph has been told the biggest problem for the kingpins of the multibillion-dollar cocaine smuggling network was hiding the millions they were making from the drugs that were shipped from Europe to Sydney disguised as legitimate industrial shipments via DHL.

One solution, the insider revealed, included stashing millions in cash with trusted contacts around Sydney.

A Western Sydney panel beater had $10 million in cash hidden in the boot of a car at their workplace for one of the bosses of the operation, the insider said.

The DHL depot at Homebush on Friday. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“This was just one of the ways they were getting drugs into Sydney,” one source who is familiar with the workings of the smuggling syndicate said.

“They have got more money than you can imagine.”

It was also a lucrative option for the corrupt DHL workers.

One delivery driver, who shipped drugs around Sydney, claimed to have made almost $500,000 in two years while delivering about 400kg of cocaine.

Local and international police are aware of the operation and have made several arrests in Australia and overseas.

The exact number of Sydney-based DHL employees who were on the syndicate’s payroll is unclear.

But the insider revealed the corrupt employees worked in key jobs that were exploited by the syndicate.

The bosses of the syndicate communicated with a Sydney-based middleman — who subcontracted deliveries to drivers for DHL — via the encrypted messaging app Ciphr.

The middleman would then screen-grab the messages — which included written instructions, delivery tracking codes, and pictures of the boxes containing the drug shipments — and then forward them to the DHL workers.

Critical to the operation, the insider said, was a warehouse worker whose job was to monitor shipments via DHL’s computer systems.

This person could see if shipments containing cocaine had been flagged as suspicious by policing agencies.

The delivery driver was the next person in the process. They had to make it look like the shipments with drugs hidden inside had been delivered to a legitimate address.

A generic picture of the a DHL courier. Picture: Getty Images

The insider said each DHL driver was assigned to deliver to a particular geographical area, so the cocaine shipments had to be addressed to the corrupt driver’s patch.

For this to happen, a third person’s job was to find legitimate businesses in the driver’s delivery area that would likely use the industrial equipment or tools that the cocaine was hidden among inside the shipments.

The drug shipments would then be addressed to these businesses using fake names.

However, the shipments would never be delivered to the legitimate businesses.

“Once the address was set in the system, DHL would assign the shipments to the (corrupt) driver’s delivery bay,” one source said.

The driver then scanned the packages and drove them to a handover point, where the drugs would be received by an organised crime figure.

They then marked the shipments on the DHL system as having been delivered before destroying the boxes and any other documentation.

If the driver ever needed to log in to the DHL system to change details like delivery addresses, they did so with a disposable phone that was not linked to them.

Once the delivery had been completed, the driver sent photos on the Ciphr chat that would be forwarded to the bosses of the operation.

The person in the warehouse would also send photos to the Ciphr chat that detailed what checks they had done on the DHL system to see if a shipment had been flagged.

However, the insider said the deliveries didn’t always go to plan.

One shipment had to be aborted because it had been flagged as suspicious.

Police have made arrests over the smuggling operation. Picture: iStock

The driver dumped the multimillion-dollar shipment of cocaine hidden in boxes at a newsagency using the service where people can pick up deliveries later if they are not home.

To protect against this, the syndicate sent dummy runs, which were shipments that had no drugs inside, to see if they would be flagged by the authorities.

The insider said one of the kingpins of the operation began selling access to the corrupt DHL workers.

“He’s telling people he’s got a service where he can get a shipment into Australia before it hits any X-ray machine,” the source said.

To make the operation look legitimate, the insider said, syndicate bosses would set up business bank accounts overseas using forged details and used them to contract DHL for deliveries.

This included paying taxes on the shipments so the shipments would be cleared as soon as possible when they landed in Australia, reducing the likelihood that they would be examined and seized by local authorities.

There were dangers for all involved when drug shipments went missing.

One delivery driver was convinced they were being followed by an assassin after a cocaine shipment was seized by border police.

Another Australian end member of the operation was kidnapped and bashed over a missing shipment.

Other methods the syndicate used to launder the money included paying a ten per cent fee to a person who offered the service or putting it through poker machines at a Western Sydney pub while the manager was paid to turn a blind eye, the insider said.

Millions of dollars were counted in a Western Sydney safe house, the insider said.

The warehouse computer operator also used the DHL database to catch out others who stole drug shipments and then told the international drug lords that the shipment never showed up or had been seized by authorities.

“This happened to one guy who claimed a freight forwarder stole a cocaine shipment,” the source said. “The fact was that he stole it and sold it to someone else.”

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