Cairns cocaine kings: How underworld players came undone
Leading a Hollywood-style life complete with fast cars, big boats and glamorous girlfriends, these Cairns cocaine traffickers now have ample time behind bars to contemplate their crimes. LIST OF BIG TIME CAIRNS DEALERS
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A major shift in Far North cocaine use has led to the drug flooding the streets of Cairns in never-before-seen quantities supplied by sophisticated organised crime networks profiting from the misery of the addicted.
No longer a vice for celebrities and rock stars, cocaine traffickers have discovered a lucrative market in the Far North fuelled by a pandemic-driven skyrocketing street price that hovered around the $450 per gram mark in 2020.
The Far North’s proximity to the Papua New Guinea border hit home last year when a “black flight” laden with 500kg of cocaine, bound for Mareeba airport, crashed after take off outside Port Moresby.
According to Court documents the Australian Federal Police allege the cocaine flown into Mareeba may have originated in Peru, while also alleging there were links to the Calabrian mafia.
High-profile prosecutions of flashy Cairns socialite Matt Hilton as head of a cocaine syndicate that sold huge amounts of the drug between 2016 and 2018 revealed an insatiable Far Northern desire for the drug.
And last year ten kilograms of cocaine washed up on a beach at Hinchinbrook Island.
Officer in charge of the Major and Organised Crime Squad Kevin Goan said the prevalence of cocaine had increased and a Cairns cohort using the drug had shifted.
“But I must emphasise that drug use in our community is no different to anywhere else in Queensland and more broadly in the whole county,” he said.
“We have seen the prevalence of cocaine escalate over the years but the important focus we have, is the partnerships with law enforcement agencies to address the harm, that is likely to occur in Far North Queensland.
Detective Acting Inspector Goan said his team was hooked into a network of national agencies focused on the importation of the drug through the Torres Strait and the Far North.
“Those partnerships are managed through the North Queensland Joint Operations Group made up of Border Force, Department of Home Affairs, the Australian Taxation Office and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission,” he said.
“The collective efforts put us in a good position to be able to better address emerging drug issues.
“The failed attempt to bring in 500kg (of cocaine) last year was a job that was supported by the (group) and has reduced any associated harms in North Queensland.
“North Queensland (people have) a certain tolerance, after which they are happy to report movements in the area that are considered suspicious.
“And the other key factor to (our) success is the active crime stoppers volunteer area committees of which there are two in Far North Queensland.”
The following is a list of major players in the Cairns cocaine scene that have come before the courts recently.
Sandeep Dharan
Shadowy Middle Eastern Sydney business figure Sandeep Dharan was enlisted as a ‘warehouseman’, picking up orders of product stored in a Sydney shed for convicted cocaine trafficker Matt Hilton.
From July 2016 to May 2017 he sent four or five Express Post parcels of MDMA, methylamphetamine and cocaine each week to Cairns addresses.
A police raid would later find Dharan’s DNA on a vacuum sealer and ties used to pack the drugs.
Justice Jim Henry in the Cairns Supreme Court said Dharan had been “pivotal” to “a sophisticated criminal venture.”
“This was no momentary lapse of judgment … driven by your shallow selfish interest, content to aid this enterprise without regard to the societal or health damage that you were complicit in,” Justice Henry said.
Dharan pleaded guilty to trafficking dangerous drugs as part of a criminal organisation.
In 2019 he was sentenced to seven years in prison, including 398 days time served.
Dharan was eligible for parole from April 6, 2021.
Ryan Henry Hill
Cairns drug trafficker Ryan Hill was handed a record 14-year jail sentence in 2020 by a senior judge who found he “rained down misery” on the city for almost two years.
Hill sourced the drugs allegedly through Sydney man Kalid Kanj who used courier Sandeep Dharan to bring them into the city, initially through Australia Post and later through Toll.
The convicted trafficker dealt huge quantities of methylamphetamines, MDMA and cocaine in Cairns between March 2016 and January 2018.
Justice Peter Applegarth in the Cairns Supreme Court handed Hill a 13-year sentence for drug trafficking, but added on a further year for retaliating against the family of a witness after he made a drunken Facebook post calling a co-offender a “rat”, publishing sections of his police statement and tagging his girlfriend.
Lee Undy
A one-time Bandidos enforcer and former Port Douglas business owner was jailed for eight years jail in the Cairns Supreme Court in 2021 for supplying more than 1kg of cocaine to a man he met at a baby shower.
Undy was a former Bandido sergeant-at-arms in Melbourne with a 15-year Victorian criminal history, who moved to the coastal Far North town in 2013. He had kept a relatively low criminal profile since the move, aside from his involvement in a violent pub brawl, but was approached by the man, another Port Douglas resident called Christian Webb, for help sourcing better quality cocaine.
Undy, who once trained to be a pastor, rediscovered his religious faith while in custody when he was initially charged.
Defence barrister Robert Richter, a high profile Melbourne lawyer who represented George Pell, represented Undy.
“In prison he will minister to others,” he said.
Undy will be eligible for parole in February 2023.
Matt Hilton
In 2020 flashy Cairns drug dealer Matt Hilton living a “big deal drug dealer about town” lifestyle was handed a 10-and-a-half year jail sentence for his part in one of the city’s biggest drug operations.
Hilton peddled “multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars” of cocaine and testosterone around the city for almost two years between 2016 and 2018.
Cairns Supreme Court heard Hilton was a key customer of syndicate kingpin Ryan Hill, buying huge quantities from him then others while “encouraging and educating” them to become drug dealers.
In December 2021 Hilton’s legal team appealed the severity of his sentence in a belief Justice Jim Henry’s ruling was “infected by error … when considering aggravating features of (his) offending”.
The central issue in dispute at his sentencing hearing was the nature and extent of his cocaine trafficking and re-evaluating the evidence, the Court of Appeal found Hilton engaged in “a significant drug trafficking operation for a 22 month period” and the appeal was dismissed.
Michael Timothy Borgen
Armed up and drug-addicted former stripper Michael Timothy Borgen, known as Australia’s Magic Mike, came before the courts in 2020 for trafficking cocaine in 2018.
The former Bad Boys stripper narrowly avoided going back behind bars because of his efforts to rehabilitate.
Borgen spent just over seven weeks in 2018 selling drugs to at least three people – one of them 33 times – with police finding a shotgun, drugs and cash in his Westcourt home when they raided it in July 2018.
He was also feeding a gram-a-day habit, picked up while stripping in Las Vegas earlier in his career and has a criminal history in both New South Wales and on the Gold Coast.
In handing down his sentence in the Cairns Supreme Court, Justice Jim Henry said he was also torn between wanting to give him a chance of rehabilitation, but wanting to give him the “appropriate sentence” in the interest of the community.
He sentenced him to three years’ jail with immediate parole and fined him $6000 for failing to give police his mobile phone’s PIN number
Jose Lozano Garcia
JOSE Lozano Garcia’s downfall from the podiums of the Spanish boxing world to the gates of Lotus Glen Correctional Centre could have been taken straight from the script of a classic cocaine film.
The four-time national middleweight champion, who unwittingly took an international drug running job from a Spanish crime lord when he fell on tough financial times, was locked away for nine years in prison in 2015.
The 60-year-old at the time was caught by Australian customs officials carrying 2.3kg of cocaine — which experts say would be worth about $1.6 million on the street — through Cairns Airport.
It was the fateful end to a daring journey, which took Lozano Garcia from the Spanish capital of Madrid to Cairns via the US cities of Miami, Houston and Honolulu, and Micronesian island of Guam.
Concealments of cocaine which were sewn into the lining of luggage.
Justice Jim Henry, who said Lozano Garcia struck him as a “smart” and “intelligent” man, gave him the “benefit of the doubt” during sentencing as to whether he genuinely thought he was smuggling cash.
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