Teenage drug dealer bought 12 types of drugs off the dark web, court hears

A TECH-SAVVY drug dealer bought 12 different types of drugs from the dark web to sell and feed his own addiction, which led to him shooting up heroin twice a day when he was a teenager, a court has heard.

Aaron Plant has pleaded guilty to 16 drug-related offences.

A TECH-SAVVY drug dealer bought 12 different types of drugs from the dark web to sell and feed his own addiction, which led to him shooting up heroin twice a day when he was a teenager, a court has heard.

Aaron Plant, now aged 20, appeared in the Darwin Supreme Court yesterday – lanky with a neat haircut, white shirt and tie – and pleaded guilty to 16 offences related to the purchase and supply of illicit and restricted drugs, and to having more than $10,000 cash from the sale of drugs.

The court heard Plant, who was 19 at the time, bought three fake identification cards from the dark web and used them to open three PO Boxes at the Casuarina Post Office, and then had dozens of packages containing a range of drugs sent to them between March and May this year – also purchased from the dark web.

Police intercepted seven of the packages, found to contain heroin, meth and morphine.

They then searched Plant’s home in Darwin, where he lived with his parents, and found quantities of MDMA, cocaine, cannabis, amphetamine, ketamine and DMT, as well as a range of other unidentified prescription pills, none of which Plant had a prescription for.

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He was arrested in May and told police he still had more packages on the way.

After Crown prosecutor Rebecca Everitt read the agreed facts, Plant’s lawyer Matt Hubber called his client to give evidence, saying the majority of the drugs he ordered were for personal rather than commercial use.

Plant told the court that after first trying drugs socially at age 16, he was addicted to heroin and “benzos” – prescription sleeping pills – by the time he reached Year 12.

“At first it was not every day (taking heroin), but when I felt like it. Then it progressed,” he said.

“I was using heroin every day before I was arrested. I would have a couple shots (per day).”

Plant said he had been regularly selling MDMA, and occasionally selling other drugs, and using the profits to buy heroin as well as other substances to “try out”.

Of buying synthetic heroin he said: “I was just sort of testing it out, substituting it. It was supposed to last longer so I wouldn't have to shoot up twice a day.”

Plant told the court he learned to use the dark web “in an afternoon” by “watching a YouTube video”.

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Justice Stephen Southwood ordered full pre-sentence and psychiatric reports be done on Plant before the matter returns to court next March.

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