Life was sweet for Amiel Rondan, who was living high above Sydney’s CBD in a luxury apartment.
The 36-year-old boasted an impressive collection of watches and jewellery including a Patek Phillipe number valued at $395,000, two Rolexes with a combined value of $100,000, several “replica” Cartier bracelets – worth north of $10,000 each – and a necklace with lab-grown diamonds worth $39,000.
Amiel Rondan will return to court next month.Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald
Rondan’s good fortune allegedly extended beyond the $1 million worth of luxury accessories to cryptocurrency. Inside his Bathurst Street unit was a pink Samsung Galaxy phone that had allegedly received more than $440,000 worth of cryptocurrency in a three-week period.
That same device had a seed phrase – essentially a pin code to rebuild a cryptocurrency wallet – for a Monero account that received more than $400,000 in September 2022.
Detectives also located 14.6 bitcoin worth approximately $1 million at the time using a seed phrase handwritten on a water bill and thousands of dollars in Australian and American cash.
Despite his considerable riches, investigators monitoring surveillance devices in the Bathurst Street unit late last year noticed something odd – he didn’t seem to have a job.
Luxury watches seized from Amiel Rondan by NSW Police.Credit: NSW Police
Police say that Rondan’s riches were instead a result of selling drugs on the dark web. Documents obtained by the Herald claim that Rondan was the biggest seller on Abacus Market, a since-shuttered dark website on which he allegedly spent two years making 59,129 sales.
“While active on Abacus Market [Rondan] averaged 78 orders per day, with an average sale price of approximately $300 AUD. It is estimated that Inc has earned over $17 million by supplying drugs on Abacus Market,” the documents tendered to the Supreme Court claim.
His alleged scheme came unstuck last November, when police began to investigate an Abacus user called Inc, buying both methamphetamine and cocaine via both the marketplace and the encrypted communications app Wickr.
US dollars confiscated from Amiel Rondan’s unit.Credit: NSW Police
“A statistical analysis of sale data from Abacus Market indicates that Inc is the only vendor on the platform with a sales volume high enough for this amount of bitcoin from Abacus Market,” police documents allege.
Tracing those funds led detectives to another cryptocurrency wallet, which police say received $590,000 in another three-week period that year.
That mobile phone also contained a seed phrase for a Monero wallet that police say received and transferred $414,000 worth of cryptocurrency in September that year.
Following months of investigation, Rondan was picked up in January by specialist police from the State Crime Command’s cybercrime squad. At the time of his arrest, he had a different Samsung phone in his pocket, which police seized alongside the pink Galaxy and two other phones found inside his unit.
Investigators will allege he had spent six years selling $80 million worth of cocaine, MDMA, heroin and other illicit and pharmaceutical drugs.
“We will allege the group known as Inc was the largest Australian vendor selling drugs within the Abacus marketplace on the dark web at that time. What this highlights is that despite the anonymity promised by the dark web, police are actively monitoring these spaces. These investigations are labour-intensive, however our success has come from combining technology with old-school policing methods,” said Detective Acting Superintendent, Jason Smith, the acting commander of the Cybercrime Squad.
Rondan was charged with a slew of proceeds of crime offences to the tune of $5,720,718, drug supply and giving false information in the face of a digital access order.
Originally refused bail by police, he was granted Supreme Court bail earlier this year on a $1 million surety, despite police’s objections that one of the people offering the surety was someone to whom he had allegedly supplied drugs.
Police have also charged three other men over the allegations, all of whom remain before the courts.
In a statement, his solicitor Yasmine Fardous said: “Rondan continues to maintain his innocence and will contest the charges. However, given the ongoing nature of these proceedings, we will not provide any additional comments at this time.”
He will return to court next month.
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