Craig Elliott Phillips guilty of trafficking meth and MDMA from storage at Mowbray to Cairns
A relatively small player in a massive wholesale methamphetamine trafficking operation in Far North Queensland has been jailed.
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A relatively small player in a massive wholesale methamphetamine trafficking operation in Far North Queensland has been jailed for seven years.
Craig Elliott Phillips, 48, pleaded guilty to trafficking, supply and possess anything used in the commission of a crime in Cairns Supreme Court on Monday.
Crown prosecutor Seamus McManus said the syndicate got a Townsville-based driver to deliver meth in large quantities to a base at Mowbray, near Port Douglas.
Mr McManus told the court Phillips and his brother Cameron then did “drug runs” to the address, picking up 250g parcels of meth for $80,000, or $9000 an ounce – selling it for $12,000 per ounce, a profit margin of $3000 per ounce and overall profit of $26,000 during the time of the offences.
Phillips’ brother Cameron Phillips, 47, has pleaded not guilty to 11 charges relating to the trafficking.
They were under police surveillance for the first half of 2022.
The court heard it typically took them a fortnight to offload 250g of meth, with ounce and gram amounts sold.
The court heard while Phillips’ brother allegedly said anything less than 3.5g was not worth his time, Phillips sold smaller amounts to street users as well as wholesale deals.
The pair had 31 identifiable customers, Mr McManus said.
“He sold to both end users and to other dealers who had their own customer base in Cairns,” Mr McManus said.
Defence barrister Rachelle Logan said Phillips graduated from Trinity Bay High School and started an apprenticeship but ditched it in favour of work for better money, cleaning hotels such as the Shangri-La.
She said he worked at a motel in the front office and handyman for 12 years but got “sucked into his brother’s lifestyle”.
A lot of deals were done at KFC Earlville and on the waterfront at Holloways Beach, the court heard.
Ms Logan said the father-of-two understood there was a chain but “didn’t quite know the magnitude of it” and his trafficking was low level, to support his own use.
Justice James Henry said Phillips had a couple of close scrapes with police but that didn’t deter him from continuing and the trafficking only stopped when he was taken into custody on another matter.
He said Phillips’ brother was plainly heavily involved in wholesale meth distribution and during the period they were subject to phone intercepts and car surveillance, $712,000 was the turnover, with a profit of $178,000 “but likely higher than that”, Justice Henry said.
Justice Henry said Cameron Phillips did 26 drug runs and Craig Phillips did five, “pumping meth into Cairns”.
“The nature of your role required a degree of initiative, you were not merely the errand boy, you were trusted with the shopfront when he was away.
“You obviously knew the sophistication and significant scale of your brother’s business,” Justice Henry said.
He received a head sentence of seven years with parole eligibility on December 9, 2025.
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