NAMED: A list of the Territory’s drug dealers

FROM a FIFO worker to a school-aged hustler, these are some of the suburban drug dealers who plied their trade in the streets and homes of the Territory before the law finally caught up. Find out WHO IS ON THE LIST

Michele Bryan Roughton Daltoe was “regularly supplying others, including children, with cannabis”, before he was finally busted last year. Picture: Supplied

• More Territory drug dealers named and shamed

FROM a FIFO worker to a school-aged hustler, these are some of the suburban drug dealers who plied their trade in the streets and homes of the Territory before the law finally caught up. Find out who is on the list.

MATTHEW FINDLAY: FIFO WORKER TRADED MINES FOR SLINGING ROCK

FORMER Darwin FIFO worker at GEMCO’s Groote Eylandt manganese mine, Matthew Findlay, was jailed for 18 months in July after he quit his job to start a drug dealing business.

The 33-year-old pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to supplying a commercial quantity of cannabis and less than a commercial quantity of methamphetamine after police broke up his operation last year.

The court heard Findlay was earning between $131,000 and $140,000 at the mine up until the end of October 2019 when he resigned and received a payout of more than $18,000.

Shortly before leaving the job, Findlay started dealing cannabis out of his Howard Springs home and police subsequently raided the property on November 11.

Officers found almost 3kg of cannabis and more than $5000 in cash and arrested Findlay who has been in jail ever since.

In setting a head sentence of three years in prison, to be suspended after 18 months, Justice Stephen Southwood said the offending was “a case of greed and commercial gain”.

“The offender engaged in this activity in circumstances where he had been well paid by GEMCO while he was employed with them and he received a substantial payout, slightly in excess of $18,000, upon leaving GEMCO,” he said.

Justice Southwood said while Findlay was of previously good character, he gave less weight to his prior almost clean record because he “deliberately decided to engage in drug dealing for commercial gain”.

MIC ROUGHTON DALTOE: CARNEY WHO SOLD DOPE TO KIDS

SMALL time drug dealer and former carney Michele ‘Mic’ Bryan Roughton Daltoe, who pushed his product on children in Katherine, left court a free man in September after spending just three months in jail on remand.

Michele Bryan Roughton Daltoe spent three months in jail after pleading guilty in the Supreme Court to selling drugs to children. Picture: Supplied

The 28-year-old pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to three counts of supplying less than a commercial quantity of cannabis to a child following his arrest in October last year.

The court heard the first girl Roughton Daltoe sold to was 15 when he sold her a $50 bag of cannabis in 2019 before the girl brought two other children over to buy more of the drug.

One of the girls introduced to Roughton Daltoe by the first girl then started coming to his house to buy cannabis and introduced him to a third girl.

Roughton Daltoe “approached” them and told them he was a dealer and then sold to the third girl, telling the pair “if they needed any more, they could come back”.

In suspending Roughton Daltoe’s three-year and two-month sentence after time served, Justice Judith Kelly said he started using cannabis after moving to Darwin at age 12 where he lived with his mother who had her own substance abuse issues.

By the time he was 14, Justice Kelly said Roughton Daltoe had left school to work the carnival circuit in Queensland and the NT and began drinking and smoking cannabis regularly.

Justice Kelly said Roughton Daltoe had operated his drug business in Katherine for nearly four years, “regularly supplying others, including children, with cannabis”, before he was finally busted.

“Unlike some of the other cases that you heard discussed, you approached children and told them that you sold cannabis,” she said.

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MICHAEL KALITSIS: PUSHBIKE RIDING BANDIT BOOTED BACK TO GREECE

DARWIN man Michael Kalitsis — who tried to flee a police raid on his house on a pushbike — was booted back to Greece for four years in June after being busted with drugs and weapons.

The 39-year-old pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to supplying less than a commercial quantity of methamphetamine as well as possessing a precursor to the drug and an illegal weapon.

The court heard Kalitsis was storing 520 pseudoephedrine tablets in his shed which were intended to be used to make meth and which he planned to swap for drugs to feed his own habit.

Michael Kalitsis was booted back to Greece in June after trying to flee from police on a pushbike.

On January 3, police were preparing to raid the shed when Kalitsis emerged on a mountain bike and then “rode towards them and took off”.

As he fled, Kalitsis tried to throw away a clip seal bag containing 1.87g of meth before the officers chased him down and caught him.

In sentencing, Justice Judith Kelly said when the raid went ahead, police found ice pipes and a “knuckleduster with taser capacity” which “worries me” due to his lengthy criminal history.

“You have a 12-page criminal history, which includes a number of miscellaneous offences as well as a large number of driving offences — many of them for driving with a prohibited drug in your system — nine convictions for possessing and carrying unlawful weapons and a total of 33 drug-related convictions,” she said.

Justice Kelly sentenced Kalitsis to two years in jail, suspended immediately on the condition he return to Greece and not come back to the NT for at least four years.

LACHLAN PARR: COMMERCIAL QUANTITY OF KETAMINE ‘FOR MY OWN USE’

LACHLAN Parr was jailed for three months in August after failing to convince a judge more than 200 times the legal threshold for a commercial quantity of horse tranquillisers was all for his own use.

The 28-year-old from Fannie Bay pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to possessing a total of more than 20g of ketamine he had ordered from a supplier in Victoria.

In sentencing, Justice Trevor Riley rejected Parr’s explanations for why he had the drugs as “implausible”.

“In answering questions, it seemed to me that you would say whatever was convenient at the time,” he said.

Parr had told the court he initially ordered seven grams of ketamine to “wean (him)self off valium” and when it was intercepted by the police, his dealer offered to send him another seven grams for free but sent him 13g instead.

“You could not explain why almost twice as much ketamine was sent to you as you ordered and as you had paid for,” Justice Riley said.

“You speculated that the dealer was using it as a ‘loss leader’, to use your expression. You agreed that sounded unbelievable, and to me, it is unbelievable.

“I found the whole explanation quite improbable.”

Under NT law and having failed to convince Justice Riley, Parr was assumed to have intended to supply the drugs for commercial gain.

“I found your evidence unconvincing and I am not persuaded that you have discharged the onus of rebutting the presumption contained in the act that you possessed the ketamine for commercial purposes,” Justice Riley said.

JESSE CUMBERLAND: NATION’S HIGHEST COURT GRANTS DEALER REPRIEVE

IN JUNE, the High Court ruled the NT Court of Appeal failed in its duty to “accord procedural fairness” when it sentenced convicted drug dealer Jesse Cumberland to an extra three years in jail just a week before he was supposed to get out.

Cumberland, who was jailed in 2017 after pleading guilty to dealing MDMA and cannabis, including to minors, was sentenced to four years and six months’ jail, suspended after two years.

The prosecution appealed his sentence later that month on the grounds that it was “manifestly inadequate”.

However, it took the three NT Court of Appeal Judges more than 10 months, after announcing they would allow the appeal, to make orders to re-sentence Cumberland.

Subsequently, Cumberland was re-sentenced to a term of eight years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of five years and five months on June 19, 2019 – just one week before he was set to be released under his original sentence.

Cumberland’s defence lawyer, Mark Thomas, appealed to the High Court, with Cumberland winning the appeal and being released from prison in April.

In the reasons for their judgment, the High Court ruled the time between allowing the appeal and re-sentencing Cumberland made the ruling unfair.

“In the way the proceedings were finalised, the appellant was not given the opportunity to place material before the Court of Criminal Appeal as to his progress in custody, nor to make submissions on re-sentence or dismissal of the appeal.”

TRAVIS TATIPATA: TEEN CAUGHT WITH 163 PILLS OUTSIDE HIGH SCHOOL

TEENAGE drug dealer Travis Jacob Tatipata avoided jail time in April after being caught with more than 163 tablets of MDMA outside a Humpty Doo high school.

The 18-year-old pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to supplying a commercial quantity of MDMA and less than a commercial quantity of cannabis.

The court heard Tatipata left a backpack containing almost 60g of MDMA with a friend at the Humpty Doo Village Green while he took his younger brother — who was not involved in the offending — from school to buy him lunch in May last year.

Police searched the backpack while Tatipata was absent before he returned and admitted that the backpack – and the drugs inside – belonged to him.

The court heard the Humpty Doo Village Green, located outside Taminmin College, is “a hotspot for students to use drugs and to engage in the supply and purchase of drugs”.

However, Justice Graham Hiley said it could not be proven that Tatipata was supplying the drugs to children.

“It appears that there were schoolchildren in the vicinity,” he said.

“At first blush, I thought that you may have been involved selling drugs to schoolchildren. However, I’m not able to be satisfied to the requisite standard that you were. If I was satisfied of that, your offending would be much more serious.”

PETER STRECKER: GREEN THUMBED MECHANIC AVOIDS JAIL

A WELL-KNOWN Rural Area mechanic, who turned his wife’s hydroponic herb garden into a cannabis grow operation for himself and his “close associates”, also avoided jail in September.

Peter Strecker pleaded guilty in the Darwin Local Court to growing, possessing and selling the drug before police raided his Howard Springs home in June this year.

Prosecutor David Castor said the 49-year-old’s “sophisticated” hydro set-up across two bedrooms was complemented by Strecker’s green thumb.

“The defendant monitored and encouraged the cannabis growth by monitoring the pH levels of the water, adding specific nutrients at different stages as the plants grew, supplying an artificial climate and training the plants to grow to maximise the flowering capacity of each plant,” he said.

Strecker’s lawyer, Peter Maley, said his client’s entrance into the illicit cannabis trade all started following the breakdown of a long-term relationship a few years ago.

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“He has a new wife now and his wife was running a Thai takeaway restaurant and they grew all of their own herbs and the like in those two grow rooms that were in the house,” he said.

“The business came to an end and then shortly thereafter my client decided to grow cannabis plants which were discovered by the police and that’s how it came to be in terms of the set-up.”

In handing Strecker a three-months suspended sentence, Judge Greg Cavanagh said he was a “middle aged man with no prior convictions” who was “too old to go to jail”.

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