Gangs, baggage handlers

• Published date: 13 July 2024
• Publication title: Weekend Herald

The driver of the Hyundai grabbed a bag from his car, and placed it in the front passenger seat of the Skyline, before both vehicles left abruptly

The encounter was brief, less than a minute, but a detective watching the odd interaction suspected he knew what had happened.

The Skyline driver was working for a money laundering syndicate under investigation by the police, code-named Operation Worthington, and the car park meeting in late March 2021 was a suspected “money drop”.

Inside the bag, police later discovered, was nearly $1.2 million.

“Follow the money” is a law enforcement cliche but one that can often break open cases, so identifying the Hyundai driver became a priority for the detectives.

His name was Aisake Feleti, a once promising league player, who was arrested just a few months later at the conclusion of Operation Worthington in June 2021.

The covert inquiry had already gathered more than enough evidence to lay 200 charges of money laundering and drug dealing, with police also seizing more than $10 million of assets.

But analysts who managed to digitally break into Feleti’s cell phone also discovered fresh evidence of large-scale drug smuggling, which prompted an entirely separate investigation.

The treasure trove of information gave Operation Selena, as the new inquiry was called, an insight into how different criminal groups were circumventing border security with corrupt “insiders” in the US, Tonga and Malaysia.

With the final High Court trial now finished, the Weekend Herald can reveal the full story of how criminal gangs used networks of Auckland Airport baggage handlers to import hundreds of kilograms of meth into the country.DETECTIVES SCROLLING through the messages on Feleti’s phone could not believe their luck.

The Operation Worthington team had cracked into the device and reading everything he sent and received on Threema, an encrypted app popular with organised crime figures because police cannot intercept the communications live.

However, Feleti had forgotten to delete the Threema messages that stretched back for months and which outlined his involvement in the drug world in excruciating detail.

Because the messages were encrypted, Feleti did not bother to use a code when discussing the sale and purchase of methamphetamine (he was happy to make $30,000 to $40,000 profit for each kilogram sold) with his US-based supplier “Wiseman”.

There were thousands of messages, accompanied by photographs and videos of packaged drugs and cash.

That’s how the police learned there was $1,198,600 in the bag Feleti gave to the money launderer in the car park.

The Threema messages also revealed how Feleti was smuggling drugs into New Zealand without being caught.

He had an “insider” at Auckland Airport who could manipulate the transfer of luggage from international flights so bags were never screened by Customs.

The simple, but ingenious, plan worked like this.

The US supplier would arrange for methamphetamine, packed inside luggage, to be stashed in the bulk hold of the plane in Los Angeles.

Once the flight landed in Auckland, baggage handlers would find the correct bag and remove it from the airport without going through security.

The “rip on, rip off” tactic is common throughout the world, and relies on organised crime syndicates having trusted insiders working at the border.

In the criminal underworld, this is known as having a “door” into the country.

THE PERSON pulling all the strings at Auckland International Airport on behalf of Feleti, according to the Threema messages, was a name already familiar to the investigators.

Sese Vimahi was a senior Air NZ baggage handler who had been arrested a year earlier for running an identical modus operandi.

He was uncovered only because of an error made by the drug mule on the failed import attempt in May 2020.

Romney Fukofuka, an...