HUNTING the HUNTERS

• Published date: 31 August 2024
• Publication title: Whanganui Chronicle

For the best part of the past two decades, the motorcycle gang had power in Auckland’s criminal underworld

Once a rag-tag bunch of teenage misfits with humble beginnings in Glen Innes in the 1960s, the Heads forged a reputation for never taking a backwards step.

This propensity for violence allowed their members to muscle their way into the methamphetamine trade, which exploded in the early 2000s, and enjoy the ill-gotten gains of their labour.

In particular, the East chapter, based at 232 Marua Rd in Mt Wellington, grew in size and influence.

The Head Hunters established themselves as heavyweight contenders in the criminal underworld, and police had no choice but to treat them as such.

Top-ranking East members were targeted by police in a series of covert investigations, and eventually convicted of running lucrative drug dealing enterprises.

But there was one name missing from the list: Wayne Doyle.

Known as “the Chief”, Doyle was the founding member of the East chapter and widely considered to be the leader of the notorious gang.

While his peers were in and out of jail for serious drugs or violence offences, Doyle had managed to keep out of trouble since his release from prison in 2001 after serving time for murder.

There wasn’t any evidence to connect Doyle to crimes committed by the Head Hunters, but frustrated detectives were suspicious about how an unemployed gang leader could accrue millions of dollars’ worth of property.

The mystery prompted the longest, if not the most ambitious, financial investigation ever conducted by the police under the powerful (some would say draconian) criminal proceeds law.

This week, nearly 10 years after Operation Coin started, a High Court judge gave a definitive answer to the nagging question about Doyle’s unexplained wealth.

Justice Peter Andrew spent 10 months mulling the evidence, and the nub of his 154-page decision is that the Head Hunters are an organised criminal group and Doyle, despite his assertions to the contrary, sat at the top.

As a result of his influential position, the judge found, Doyle reaped a financial reward from the crimes committed by the gang’s members and laundered the money through a charitable trust.

“The evidence in this case traverses much of Mr Doyle’s adult life,” wrote Justice Andrew.

“For much of the last two decades, he has lived beyond the reach of the law; his attitude to the law appears to be one of cynical disregard.”

It seems the law has finally caught up with him.

The landmark ruling (unless later overturned by the Court of Appeal) means Doyle must sell the five Auckland properties he controls, including the East chapter pad at Marua Rd, to pay a $14.8 million profit forfeiture order.

A further $275,000 in cash found at the pad was also forfeited.

Not only will Doyle lose his family homes, but also the spiritual home of the Head Hunters: it is a staggering blow to a once swaggering outlaw motorcycle gang.

Real power can’t be given. It must be taken.

THE HEAD Hunters’ current predicament can be traced back 25 years to the lavish lifestyle of one of their own members.

Peter “Pedro” Cleven had been accused of making a fortune from dealing cannabis and methamphetamine between 1996 and 1999.

He had a palatial Titirangi home (next door to a judge), a Harley-Davidson motorbike, a Mercedes-Benz convertible and a speedboat.

All of his assets were frozen following Operation Mexico in 1999, led by Detective Sergeant Darryl Brazier, in which Cleven was caught talking in bugged conversations about making a million dollars a year from methamphetamine.

Cleven was acquitted in 2002 after two controversial trials.

The jury in the first trial was unable to reach a verdict and the second was sequestered in a secret location for nearly three weeks.

The reason why is still suppressed. But the jurors found him not guilty.

Cleven’s defence against the charges was that he had been making empty boasts to impress a woman, and that his lifestyle was in fact funded by the innovative methods of angora goat farming and “taxing” (employing standover tactics) other criminals.

Under the law at the time, the Proceeds of Crime Act, the police needed a conviction to strip ill-gotten gains from underworld figures. So despite the ludicrous goat-farming explanation for how Cleven accumulated his wealth, the assets had to be returned.

The police swore never again, and used the case to convince politicians that the best way to battle organised crime was to follow the money and pass the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act (CPRA) 2009.

Under the new law, police no longer needed a conviction.

They only had to show that someone profited...