Name and shame: The Tassie drug dealers busted in 2020
Meth-addicted mums, a local footy player, a failed restaurateur and an elderly couple were all punished by Tasmanian courts in the last 12 months for dealing and trafficking drugs — further contributing to Tasmania’s growing drug problem. DEALERS EXPOSED >>
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It’s no secret drug use in Tasmania is on the rise.
Just last year the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission Wastewater Drug Monitoring Report — which analyses waste water from waste treatment plants — highlighted rising drug use among Tasmanians.
The report found Hobart also had the highest average cannabis, oxycodone and MDA consumption levels of any Australian state capital.
Illicit drug users in Tasmania consumed an estimated 180 kilograms of methylamphetamine a year, 16 kilograms of cocaine, 54 kilograms of MDMA and 2.8 kilograms of heroin during 2019, the survey discovered.
Meanwhile in 2020, courts across Tasmania and Victoria saw numerous dealers and traffickers prosecuted for their part in facilitating Tasmania’s growing drug problem.
Here are some of the offenders punished last year:
VANESSA LEE WOLF
A Warrane mother who used crystal meth to self-medicate after a history of trauma was jailed last year for trafficking the insidious drug ice.
The court heard Vanessa Lee Wolf, 43, started using ice at age 26 after an abusive upbringing and later tragically lost her three-month-old child.
She faced Supreme Court of Tasmania on September 29, 2020 after pleading guilty to one count of trafficking a controlled substance and one count of dealing with proceeds of crime.
She was sentenced to 22 months jail, with a non-parole period of 12 months and ordered to pay $3043 in drug analysis costs.
ZOE LEANNE WHILEY
A drug-addicted Burnie mother who onsold between $50,000 and $70,000 worth of ice will stay behind bars for an extra two and a half years after being jailed in July 2020 for a serious assault.
Zoe Leanne Whiley, 38, pleaded guilty to trafficking in ice and guns and possession of stolen firearm charges.
The court heard Whiley also owed $7000 to Centrelink, $1500 to Housing Tasmania and more than $17,000 in outstanding fines.
Justice Robert Pearce told the court during her sentence: “I think there is no realistic prospect that you will ever be able to pay off a penalty in that amount, or any meaningful part of it”.
On the firearms charges Whiley was sentenced to three months imprisonment cumulative to the term she is already serving while on the trafficking charge she was sentenced to two years and four months, cumulative to the other term.
JUSTIN RICHARD MAYNARD
It was a cunning operation – PVC pipes stashed with drugs and money, buried vertically in pine plantations and covered up with vegetation, identifiable only with a rock placed on top.
The man in charge of that drug trafficking racket kept his “stash points” at Cambridge, Acton and Seven Mile Beach.
But with police foiling his operation, Justin Richard Maynard was sentenced to 14 months at Risdon Prison.
The former local footy player faced the Supreme Court of Tasmania on last year after he was found guilty by a jury of trafficking cocaine and ice.
Maynard was sentenced to three years and two months’ jail, with 12 months suspended. He must serve 14 months before he is eligible for parole.
DAMIEN NEIL SMART
A drug trafficker who has been on the straight and narrow since he was shot in the groin during a home invasion was sentenced to 15 months home detention in early August last year.
Damien Neil Smart, 45, pleaded guilty to trafficking MDMA, cannabis and ice and was sentenced in the Burnie Supreme Court.
Smart was fitted with an electronic anklet and is required to be at his parents’ Norwood address at all times until his sentence is served.
KATARZYNA WANDA STADNICKA
A “rebel” who ran away from home at age 13 after her family moved from Poland avoided jail time last year after bringing drugs into Devonport via the Spirit of Tasmania.
In April last year Launceston mother-of-two Katarzyna Wanda Stadnicka, 32, was sentenced to 15 months home detention after pleading guilty to trafficking in August 2017, the Supreme Court in Launceston heard.
While delivering his sentencing, Justice Robert Pearce said police intercepted Stadnicka’s vehicle when she arrived in Devonport, finding 25.6g of a brown paste containing ice and pseudoephedrine or ephedrine, 19.6g of ice, $800 cash, four mobile phones and a tick sheet.
While in the midst of the pandemic, Justice Pearce stated sentences of actual imprisonment should be avoided, unless there was no alternative, to minimise the risk of COVID-19 exposure.
SIMON RATCLIFFE
A Victorian dad who was seen trying to mail a huge amount of ice was sentenced to a minimum of five years’ jail at Victoria’s County Court on Monday, December 7, 2020, after pleading guilty to charges including trafficking a commercial quantity of meth.
He was monitored as part of a national investigation into interstate drug trafficking when police watched him put almost 240g of ice in a Laverton post box on February 3.
The court heard the father-of-two had also used his brother’s internet account to arrange a Honda Accord to be sent from Devonport, Tasmania to Melbourne via the Spirit of Tasmania.
After Ratcliffe collected the car on April 10, 2020, police raided his home and found $125,150 hidden inside pillowcases in a panel of the Honda.
DUC VAN NGUYEN
A meth-dealing Sandy Bay restaurateur who started his drug-delivery business only a month after being released from jail was put back behind bars in May last year.
Duc Van Nguyen, 36, was the chef and owner of Duc’s Asian Cuisine – which went under in 2017 while he was in prison for selling more than $200,000 of the drug ice.
The Supreme Court of Tasmania heard, after spending more than two years in jail, Nguyen was released on parole in January 2019, but trafficking again – delivering drugs to customers throughout the greater Hobart area using his car.
Nguyen pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking and one count of dealing with proceeds of crime and was jailed for three years and six months, with a non-parole period of two years and three months.
REGINALD THOMAS COLLINS AND CATHERINE FISHER
An ice dealer was sent to jail last year, while his partner has narrowly avoided time behind bars for the same crime.
Reginald Thomas Collins, 79, and 59-year-old Catherine Fisher appeared in the Supreme Court in Hobart last year after pleading guilty to trafficking meth.
Collins, a former Hydro Electric Commission worker who left his career after an ankle injury, and Fisher, a former Royal Australian Air Force recruit who left her career to become a full-time mother, then a full-time carer, lived together for about three years, with Fisher assisting Collins in his ice-trafficking enterprise, the court heard.
Collins was sentenced to 22 months, with a non-parole period of 11 months and ordered to forfeit $13,080 to the state.
Fisher received a five-month fully suspended sentence.
MITCHELL JOHN CAMPBELL
A Hobart drug trafficker used a courier to transport tens of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine into Tasmania — wrapped in methylated spirits and coffee to mask them from detection.
Mitchell John Campbell, 32, was jailed for a minimum of two years and three months in the Supreme Court of Tasmania last year after pleading guilty to two counts of trafficking in a controlled substance in 2017 and 2018.
Justice Michael Brett said Campbell arranged the importation of MDMA and cocaine from Queensland numerous times.
In one instance, Campbell arranged for 73.6g of cocaine to be sent to via post, and on another occasion arranged for a man to bring 167.7g of cocaine into the state by plane.
Campbell also coerced an ex-girlfriend to collect 3244 MDMA tablets by post.
He was sentenced to four years and six months jail, backdated to June 2018, with a non-parole period of half that time.
Campbell was also ordered to pay $20,000 to compensate for drug analysis.
AHMED IBRAHIM AHMED
A father spent the birth of his first child in jail after police nabbed him trafficking ice by bugging a Hobart hotel room with a covert camera and listening device.
Ahmed Ibrahim Ahmed, 28, was recorded carrying a black calico shopping bag into the hotel room during October 2018 where he met two men who had arrived in town that day, the Supreme Court of Tasmania heard in March last year.
Ahmed was in the hotel room for about 20 minutes where he removed a cryovac package containing two ounces of ice and placing it on a table.
One of the other men then handed Ahmed a large freezer bag containing a number of separate packages of ice.
Ahmed then offered them $20,000, placing the freezer bag inside the calico bag.
He then counted a further $13,000 and handed it over before telling them they’d have a further $25,000 that afternoon before the men drove away from the hotel together and were stopped by police shortly afterwards at Moonah.
Justice Geason said police found five freezer bags of ice in the car, which would have had a street value of about $273,900 if sold in 0.1 gram deals.
Ahmed, who pleaded guilty to trafficking in a controlled substance, was jailed for two years and 10 months, with a non-parole period of 17 months.
DAVID WILLIAM MICHAELSON
A Hobart father-of-four and computer technician will spend 12 months in home detention after police found dozens of cannabis plants — worth $153,000 — growing in two of his properties.
David William Michaelson, 44, was sprung in August 2017 when police searched one of his homes, finding 19 mature plants and 28 plantlets growing under lights in a bedroom he’d converted into a grow-room.
In a locked shed at his other home, where his ex-partner and children lived, Michaelson was also growing 19 mature plants and 19 plantlets.
The Supreme Court of Tasmania heard that police also found 2.8kg of dried cannabis bud and 72 harvested plants as part of Michaelson’s drug-growing enterprise.
Justice Michael Brett said Michaelson was growing the plants alongside two others, and wasn’t planning to do the selling himself.
But he said the grower also planned to use considerable amounts of the drug for his own use.
He said the cannabis was grown with the use of “a relatively sophisticated degree of infrastructure” facilitating its cultivation, and contributing to the difficulty in detecting it.
“I think it is a significant operation because of the quantities of the drug involved, and because of the degree of sophistication in relation to the cultivation,” Justice Brett said,
“So I think this was a serious operation. You have committed a serious crime.”
Michaelson, who pleaded guilty to one count of cultivating cannabis, was previously convicted for trafficking the drug and given a six-month suspended sentence in 2014.
Justice Brett said the long-term cannabis user claimed he’d now stopped using the drug, and the judge hoped he was serious about those claims for the “benefit of your family”.
Michaelson was convicted and given a 12-month home detention order with electronic monitoring.
Originally published as Name and shame: The Tassie drug dealers busted in 2020
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