Man accused of being drug baron ‘WANTED’ fights to avoid fingerprinting
A Brisbane man alleged to be the ringleader of a botched plan to import 900kg of cocaine into Australia is fighting to avoid being fingerprinted by police.
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A Brisbane man alleged to be the ringleader of a botched plan to import 900kg of cocaine into Australia is fighting to avoid being fingerprinted by police, who plan to use the fresh prints as a key plank against him in their prosecution, a court has heard.
The Australian Federal Police allege Daniel Wayne John Roberts is a shadowy online figure who uses the WANTED “handle” on his encrypted phone to direct and control a sophisticated criminal enterprise involving money laundering, drugs and actual violence from his Queensland base.
Roberts is alleged to be behind the import of 450kg of cocaine off the West Australian coast, a failed 900kg import off Moreton Island in November last year, and a plan to import 20 tonnes of cocaine, ice and heroin.
More than 120 bricks of the Moreton Island drugs washed up on beaches along the NSW coast in 2023 and 2024 after bad weather ruined their alleged plans.
Roberts has been in custody since his arrest in April.
Commonwealth prosecutor Daniel Trigger told a Brisbane Supreme Court bail application last week the 36-year-old was also alleged to be the man in a photograph sent from his encrypted phone with the handle WANTED.
The photograph shows a man’s hand holding a Richard Mille watch, and in response a message says “You actually wear that dick bro it work?” Mr Trigger told the court.
“The reference to ‘dick’ would be a reference to a Richard Mille watch,” Mr Trigger told Justice Declan Kelly.
The court heard that the AFP have already matched the palm of the hand shown in the digital photograph to historical fingerprints belonging to Roberts, who was offering a $1.5 million surety.
But fingerprint experts have suggested police get fresh prints as there may not be sufficient historical fingerprint data to conduct a reliable analysis for evidence at any future trial, the court heard.
Deputy Chief Magistrate Anthony Gett has ordered Roberts give his fingerprints to police but on October 10 Roberts’ lawyers filed an appeal in the Federal Court in Brisbane, in a bid to overturn it.
This appeal is yet to be heard.
“It seems to me that is a particularly important piece of evidence,” Justice Kelly said of the fingerprints, after hearing submissions from Mr Trigger and defence barrister Angus Edwards KC.
Mr Edwards conceded there was enough evidence to show that Roberts “is an associate of WANTED’s” but that even if the photo of the hand holding the watch is proven to be Roberts it does not prove Roberts is the person WANTED who was using the encrypted phone.
“The hand in the photograph is holding a watch, not a bag of drugs or a wad of money, or a note about doing an arson or anything else,” Mr Edwards said.
Mr Edwards agreed to adjourn the bail application until next year when the AFP is set to provide further identification evidence in the fourth and final tranche of the prosecution brief.
The majority of the brief of evidence has already been handed over, the court heard.
Justice Kelly told Mr Edwards that if the prosecution can prove the hand in the photo is Roberts’ hand, any future jury may also accept that photos of a brown teddy bear fabric are part of “strands” in the prosecution’s circumstantial case against Roberts.
At a previous unsuccessful bail application in July Mr Trigger told the court that an encrypted message sent from WANTED asking someone to break another person’s legs included a photo of a toy bear, and the same sort of bear was seized from Roberts’ home during a raid and would be subject to forensic testing.
Mr Trigger also told the court on Wednesday that several phone communications allegedly showed Roberts “communicating with his partner on the day of the arrest” in April “including messages being deleted and some messages that support the allegation that he discovered he was being surveilled by police and requests to destroy evidence”.
He said that phone data set to be included in the brief handed over next year indicated Roberts’ personal phone and the WANTED encrypted phone were travelling together in his car for a “significant period of time”.
“Some of members of chats were police officers, so there will be statements from those,” Mr Trigger told the court.
Roberts’ charges include two counts of importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug, one count of conspiracy to import a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug, one count of trafficking a commercial quantity of controlled drugs, one count of directing activities of a criminal organisation, one count of dealing in the proceeds of crime, and one count of using a telecommunications network with the intention to commit a serious offence.
No date has been set for the Federal Court hearing.
Justice Kelly adjourned Roberts’ bail application to a date to be fixed when he can better
Roberts is due back in Brisbane Magistrates Court on the charges on February 7, and the “voluminous” fourth tranche of the prosecution brief of evidence is due to be handed over to his lawyers prior to this hearing.
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