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Gary Colin O’Connell ran a very lucrative meth ring from his home in Shannon, making $ 4 million in five years. Jono Galuszka reports on O’Connell’s rise of throwing weed in the schoolyard at one of Horowhenua’s top methamphetamine dealers.
Picking potatoes is hard work.
Down in the dirt, digging in the slimy loams of Horowhenua, digging out the starchy potatoes meant for Christmas roasts and the local fish and chip shop. It’s hardly glamorous.
It’s no wonder Gary O’Connell, a high school dropout, wanted an easier way to earn money.
The Shannon resident knew exactly where to turn to earn money: drugs.
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From a young age he was familiar with the cannabis trade as he helped his father negotiate from his home in Shannon, the tin house, to search for tinnies for clients and to help find buried hiding places.
He was stealing cannabis from his father to supply people at school when he was 14 years old.
But the advent of methamphetamine led to O’Connell’s rise on the Horowhenua drug scene.
Now 43, he was sentenced in Palmerston North District Court Wednesday to nine years in prison for his involvement in a drug ring that police dubbed Operation Abbey.
Three others were also sentenced Wednesday, but O’Connell was Abbey’s high priest, the man responsible for leading a group of people, many of them without prior convictions, to a multibillion-dollar drug company.
MARTIN DE RUYTER / THINGS
Then-Justice Minister Andrew Little talks about the meth addiction problem in the country (video first posted on October 12, 2020).
O’Connell’s career path is predictable
Canterbury criminologist Dr. Jarrod Gilbert spoke with O’Connell prior to sentencing.
In a report to the court, Gilbert said O’Connell’s path was not surprising given his past.
His father was a full-time drug dealer and bookie.
He was also an alcoholic, spending most of his earnings in the pub, leaving the family deprived of the basics.
Being raised by a drug dealer made O’Connell think trafficking was normal, so he expected to expand into methamphetamine, Gilbert said.
O’Connell’s drug use was also a factor.
Things
O’Connell invested $ 265,000 of the drug money in improvements to the house in which he, Emma Jane Armstrong and their three young children lived on Stansell St, Shannon.
But he also told another writer on the pre-sentencing report that he was motivated by one thing: easy money.
Judge Stephanie Edwards said O’Connell’s past was relevant, but drug addiction couldn’t explain why he ran one of the largest known methamphetamine operations in Horowhenua’s history.
“You are a smart man who ran a well-organized, lucrative business organization that made a profit of $ 4 million in five years,” the judge told O’Connell.
Drug money financed the good life
The 26-page judicial summary of the crime, delivered to Things on Wednesday, he describes how O’Connell ran his business from January 2014 to September 2019.
Given the price of the methamphetamine, police estimate that O’Connell supplied 12.86 kilograms of the class A drug.
The ring was only broken when police arrested him in Sanson, on his way to a drug store, with zip-lock plastic bags containing methamphetamine, cocaine and MDMA hidden between his buttocks.
O’Connell dealing methamphetamine is not a real surprise: He was jailed in 2005 for eight years for being part of a conspiracy to supply methamphetamine, but the profitability of his last company, 4 million dollars in five years, was extreme.
That huge profit margin was both a blessing and a curse for O’Connell.
New Zealand Police
Motorcycles seized by the police in September 2019 as part of Operation Abbey, an investigation into methamphetamine trafficking in ManawatÅ «and Horowhenua.
On the one hand, it gave him an extremely luxurious lifestyle.
Travel agencies were used to book $ 34,882 of travel between August 2015 and September 2017, while he used $ 19,982 in cash to purchase four Tūroa skifield life passes in April 2019.
His drug money was also used to fund a Queenstown vacation in July 2019 for 20 people.
Four rental cars cost $ 4605, lodging is $ 15,448, while meals on two consecutive nights cost $ 1,857 and $ 1,566, respectively.
Not bad for someone who doesn’t have a legitimate job and lives in Shannon, a city known for anything but opulence.
Things
Alice Andrew’s home on Petticoat Lane, Shannon, was searched for two days before police found the hidden compartment where the drugs were hidden inside a Tupperware container.
Clean up dirty money with gambling, bikes, vehicles, and home improvement
Finding out where to keep your money was the hard part.
After all, you will be asked questions if you enter a bank with tens of thousands of dollars in cash on a regular basis.
However, it seems that no questions are being asked at the Levin Sports Bar, where a female associate made numerous large cash bets on her behalf.
The stakes started low, but quickly rose to more than $ 10,000 a time, made with cash packaged in lots of $ 1000 carried in toilet or shopping bags.
The woman, not named in the court summary, told staff that she placed the bets on O’Connell because he was too lazy to do it himself.
The police asset recovery unit estimated at $ 2.5 million was laundered through the Levin Sports Bar.
O’Connell also built a diverse portfolio of assets, investing in an attempt to hide his ill-gotten gains.
Vehicles ranging from a 2003 Toyota Corolla to a 1973 Dodge Challenger that you paid $ 75,000 for were among the fleet you purchased.
Warwick Smith / Stuff
Stephen Heta Puhipuhi helped launder drug money by owning Harley-Davidson motorcycles and buying sovereign rings.
The Dodge deal involved the delivery of $ 71,500 in cash in $ 50 and $ 100 bills, packed in a small travel bag, to the Picton ferry terminal.
The vehicles were put in the names of several associates, including 38-year-old Stephen Heta Puhipuhi.
Despite having no income, Puhipuhi, who was sentenced to two months in community detention Wednesday for money laundering, was the registered owner of two Harley-Davidson motorcycles purchased for $ 57,400.
He purchased $ 10,596 worth of sovereign rings from Michael Hill Jeweler in Palmerston North in July 2019.
O’Connell also invested money in two businesses.
Although the business owners deny wrongdoing and have pleaded not guilty to money laundering, the court summary indicated that O’Connell invested $ 150,000 in one and $ 57,500 in the other.
The mother raised her children “from the misery of the people”
He invested in home improvements, which his long-time partner, Emma Jane Armstrong, benefited from.
He invested $ 265,000 in improvements to the home they and their three young children lived in on Stansell St, Shannon.
Warwick Smith / Stuff
Emma Jane Armstrong was told that she could raise her children “out of the misery of the people.”
Despite pleading guilty to money laundering and being sentenced to seven and a half months in home detention, Armstrong, 35, told a writer of the pre-sentencing report that he thought the money came from legal sources.
The judge told him Wednesday that that didn’t make sense.
“You were able to be a full-time mother and meet the material needs of your children … because of the misery of the people.”
She may have noticed other children in worse situations while helping out at school or kindergarten events, knowing they suffered due to drug abuse, the judge said.
“In some ways, that drug abuse could well have kept a roof over their heads and their children’s food on the table.”
The last person sentenced Wednesday, Alice Irene Andrews, allowed O’Connell to use her home in Petticoat Lane, Shannon, to store drugs.
He visited there dozens of times in different vehicles at different times of the day and night.
Warwick Smith / Stuff
Alice Irene Andrews let her Shannon home be used to store the drugs O’Connell trafficked.
Police took days of searching in September 2019 to find a specifically designed compartment under a kitchen drawer.
The compartment contained a Tupperware container containing 997 grams of methamphetamine, 61 grams of cocaine, and 17 grams of N-ethypentylone, commonly called “bath salts.”
She was sentenced to eight months of house arrest for allowing her property to be used for drug trafficking.
