Gambling addict-cum drug dealer fronts court

A wannabe drug dealer drew the heat on himself when he failed to pay the rent on the storage unit where he stashed his deadly cargo.

Tee Xiao Kang stored and sold commercial quantities of meth and butanediol to help pay his gambling, drug and alcohol addiction. Picture: Adventure_Photo / iStock

A young drug dealer who fell behind in the rent for storage units he used to hide a large commercial quantity of illicit drugs was brought undone when the landlord moved in and subsequently called police.

Malaysian national Tee Xiao Kang was arrested when he arrived at Kennards Self Storage to pay the outstanding rent on two storage units on La Trobe St in which he stored 7.3kg of methlyamphetamine and 5.6kg of butanediol.

He used an estimated 650 packets of toilet rolls to conceal the drugs stored in cardboxes in those units.

The 24-year-old was on Wednesday sentenced by the County Court to 14 years in prison with a minimum non parole period of eight years and 10 months.

He pleaded guilty to charges of trafficking in commercial quantities of methylamphetamine and butanediol.

Kang decided to traffick the drugs to pay debts accumulated by his friends and to pay for his own drugs, alcohol and gambling at Crown Casino.

It was the very addiction in Malaysia where he created significant gambling debts and dafaulted on loans that prompted his father to send him to Australia in 2017 when he was 17 years old.

Part of Tee Xiao Wang’s decision to sell hard drugs was to fund his drug addiction.

After working in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, he returned to Victoria in 2021 and began selling meth and butanediol an year later while staying in an apartment on La Trobe St.

Kang leased two storage unit from Kennards Self Storage in Abbotsford in August 2022 and a month later, he received delivery of an estimated 650 packets of toilet paper which was taken to the storage units to be used to conceal future consignment of drugs.

Judge Kevin Doyle said Kang then received 51 cardboard boxes and each box contained 30 red plastic bottles labelled fuel injector cleaner believed to contain butanediol in liquid form. From the end of September, he failed to make any storage fee payments, despite receiving a reminder. Kennards told him that if payment was not received, the property in the units would be sold. He failed to pay and Kennards employees entered the storage units to conduct a stock take. Concerned with the contents in the storage units, they contacted police and 50 cardboard boxes were seized.

Tee Xiao Kang will be deported to Malaysia upon his release from prison.

Kang was arrested when he arrived at Kennards to pay the storage fees and police recovered $10,350 in cash and four mobile phones from his inner city apartment.

The cardboard boxes contained 7.3kg of methlyamphetamine and 5.6kg of butanediol.

He told police he never saw the person who sold him the drugs and that he received the bottles with the labels from overseas through a contact but could not remember from which country or where the contact was based.

Kang had made $30,000 from the sale of the drugs by the time police moved in.

Judge Doyle said Kane’s role was to store and move the drugs as there was simply no evidence that showed the Malaysian national had the resources to buy drugs of that scale.

Kane played an important and trusted role in the drug operation but lacked the skills, the judge said.

“It can hardly be seen that you were organized and professional in the execution of the role. The failure to pay rent on the storage units was a striking display of ineptitude.”