How police cracked Damion Flower’s cocaine operation
Damion Flower was part owner of the champion stallion Snitzel which was raking in millions in breeding fees. And he had been one step ahead of the police for decades smuggling in even more in cocaine.
Police & Courts
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In a Mortdale takeaway shop, Damion Flower was as confident as ever as he waited with a friend for the arrival of QF64 from South Africa.
The plane was three hours late but Flower had plenty to occupy his mind. It was February 2017 and the Australia Turf Club had just announced the world’s richest horse race, the Everest, would be run at Royal Randwick and Flower was aiming to buy a prestigious starting slot for the next four years.
He was part owner of the champion stallion Snitzel which was raking in millions in breeding fees. And he had been one step ahead of the police for decades smuggling in even more millions of dollars of cocaine.
He wasn’t waiting to meet anyone from QF64, he was waiting to pick up his latest shipment of the drug.
It was the friend waiting with him who would lead to his downfall.
Known as Witness A, court documents reveal that person, whose identity remains secret, would years later tell police that around 7.05 pm that night, Flower left the takeaway for the airport and returned around 8.05 pm with a duffel bag containing around 19 kg of pure cocaine.
He thought he wasn’t leaving a trail but two years later, in March 2019, when police got a tip off, they were able to trace him through CCTV and through his phone calls and catch the drug smuggler bang to rights.
On that day in February 2017, he had made contact with veteran Qantas baggage handler John Mafiti 33 times. CCTV showed Mafiti leaving the airport through the staff exit at 7.45 pm with the duffel bag that Flower took back to the takeaway shop.
A joint strike force of the Australian Federal Police, NSW Police organised crime detectives and the Australian Border Force painstakingly trawled back through years of Flower’s life to put together the evidence that led to him pleading guilty today to leading one of the country’s biggest ever drug smuggling rings.
According to the police statement of facts tendered to the District Court in Mafiti’s case, police discovered Flower had three falsely subscribed mobile phone services which he used to contact Mafiti. The pair met when Flower worked as a baggage handler at the international airport from 2000 to 2004.
PHOTOS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF DAMION FLOWER
Mafiti began working there in 2000 and remained until his arrest on May 22, 2019.
One of the phones was falsely subscribed to a “Tim James” at an address in Summer Hill, another was in the name of “Dung Cao” at a Waterloo address and the third falsely subscribed to “Thi Do”.
The only times they were used was around the dates of the drug importations — 12 between June 29, 2016, and May 22, 2019 — according to the Mafiti statement of facts.
Mafiti and Flower were both arrested on May 22, 2019.
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