How Operation Ironside’s AFP experts found hidden cash, drugs and guns
This is what the AFP’s forensic team involved in Operation Ironside did to find hidden weapons, drugs and $50 million in dirty cash.
Behind the Scenes
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Forensic experts using military-grade devices such as x-ray machines and penetrating radars have found millions of dollars in cash, gold, guns and drugs hidden by alleged Operation Ironside drug lords and money launderers.
As the fight against organised crime goes increasingly high-tech, the Australian Federal Police’s forensic team was at the frontline of the Ironside raids, attending alongside police tactical squads at 89 raids across Australia last month.
After police and crime scene technicians searched the homes of alleged bikies and drug traffickers, the AFP’s imagery and geomatics team – the “ninjas of forensics’’ – used cutting-edge technology to find further evidence hidden in walls, under floor tiles, buried underground and stashed in cavities in cars.
This included a car which contained a hidden compartment that opened using hydraulics when a secret button was pushed.
Scientists based at the AFP’s Forensic Facility at Majura in Canberra are now processing 3900 pieces of evidence for use by prosecutors working up briefs of evidence against the 288 people charged in Australia so far.
The AFP’s Co-ordinator of Crime Scenes Andrew Parkinson said six months’ worth of evidentiary material had been seized in just three days as 4500 police raided homes across Australia in early June.
The items seized included 55 AN0M devices – the encrypted devices used exclusively by alleged criminals which were revealed to be a Trojan horse trap monitored by the AFP, who secretly copied the 25 million messages sent by AN0M users.
That number is expected to grow as digital scientists continue to examine almost 700 electronic devices found during the raids.
Mr Parkinson, who is based at the futuristic facility at Majura, said 256 forensic scientists were now working full-time on Ironside evidence, working to attribute device ownership to those arrested, including by gathering their DNA and fingerprint evidence.
Photographs including selfies sent via the AN0M devices were being used for facial recognition, and the digital data contained within the devices was being extracted.
Scientists were also examining other items founds at scenes such as guns, ammunition, drugs, cash and other suspected proceeds of crime such as jewellery, gold bullion and designer handbags.
Mr Parkinson said some crooks concealed their loot in sophisticated hides, leading to what he described as a “fun game of hide and seek.’’
He said the highly-specialised imagery and geomatics team, joined by a team from Queensland police, had been used extensively in the Ironside searches, providing “high surety searches’’ of homes and properties during search warrant arrests.
“I call them the ninjas of forensics,’’ he said.
“They’ll go in to a crime scene … and they will give a high surety search level for investigations to uncover any key evidentiary materials, whether that’s firearms, illicit drugs, illicit currency, anything really that will be used for prosecution purposes or to be seized by the investigation.’’
Mr Parkinson said the imagery and geomatics team would follow the crime scene investigators in searching a home or other property, using high-end technology to guide their search.
“I’m talking everything from special video scopes that can get in to little corners to find concealments to X-rays (which) … find anomalies in the walls. Penetrating radar to find items concealed underneath the ground and a whole range of other high-end instrumentations that can help narrow down their search.’’
Mr Parkinson said some of the devices such as powerful metal detectors could be purchased commercially, and police also used “some high-end military technology that we won’t be able to talk about today.’’
“The point is with the training and experience, plus this type of technology, we are one step ahead of organised crime. If they want to hide something, we’ve either seen it before, (or) if we haven’t seen it before, we are using science and technology to find it.’’
Among the items found by the imagery and geomatics team were a Breitling watch and Cartier bracelet, each worth tens of thousands of dollars, drugs including cocaine, MDMA, methamphetamine, ketamine, cannabis and steroids, 1kg of gold bullion and $1.5 million in cash. Twenty hidden mobile phones were also found.
A handgun was found behind a toilet roll holder, and another buried under patio decking at a house in Victoria.
“Some of the hides, they’ll range from concealed in washing or underneath a pillow or underneath a bed which are quite easy to find,’’ Mr Parkinson said.
But he said other organised crime groups used far more sophisticated hides.
“Examples are false beams within a house, kickboards underneath a kitchen, behind ovens,’’ he said.
“In car concealments, we’ve seen everything from concealment behind a steering wheel, behind a glove box but we have also seen hydraulic hides where you potentially press a button and the hide will open up in the rear of the vehicle.
“From our experience working with our partner organisations across Australia and the world we have seen it all. Organised crime groups will go to great lengths to conceal the ill-gotten wealth they’ve got.
“Where there’s a void in a cupboard, a kitchen, a car, we know that organised crime groups like to hide their illicit material in those and we have seen it all during Ironside.’’
Mr Parkinson said police were uploading images of the hides used by organised crime to a forensic database, so all officers, along with state and territory police, were aware of the kinds of concealments used.
He said forensic experts were now examining the ballistics evidence uncovered by Ironside, including 136 firearms including assault rifles. Ammunition was also being examined.
The guns are being test-fired to help identify them, and being run through national law enforcement databases to see if they have been used in previous unsolved crimes.
“The ballistic examination really is two parts,’’ Mr Parkinson said.
He said the guns were being identified and classified, then the fired ammunition being checked against reports of unsolved crimes across Australia and overseas.
“Any crimes scenes where we’ve uncovered any ballistics material or cartridge cases, we will now be able to compare that to these fired firearms that we have seized as part of Operation Ironside to determine whether any of them have been used in any other illicit activities around the country and potentially around the world,’’ Mr Parkinson said.
He said this could potentially include cold-case murders.
“Anything that a firearm has been used in. Drive-by shootings, unsolved homicides, any search warrant where we have seized fired cartridge cases … all of that material is now on the national data base with our state and territory police colleagues.
“We’ve got a treasure trove of evidence in the firearms space and a treasure trove of evidence in the biometric space in terms of facial profile, DNA and fingerprints.’’
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