Uncovering the meth moguls
| Published date | 28 November 2020 |
| Date | 28 November 2020 |
| Publication title | Weekend Herald |
In the summer of 2018, the Harlech House cop shop was quiet, close to empty, as National Organised Crime Group (NOCG) staff took annual leave over the Christmas and New Year break.
Detective Sergeant Damian Espinosa was tidying up paperwork from a Head Hunters meth operation when he was called into his boss’ office, where Detective Inspector Colin Parmenter showed him a single photograph.
The image of two men was literally all the police had to go on.
Most drug investigations begin with some intel from fizzes – criminal informants – or perhaps a drug importation picked up by a suspicious Customs officer at the border.
But this was a completely cold start. All police knew was the names of the two men featured in the photo.
The names of the Naufahu brothers, Pasilika and Vetekina, meant nothing to Espinosa.
The brothers were 501s, deported to New Zealand despite having lived in Sydney for nearly their whole lives.
Their frustration at being kicked out of their home had boiled over less than 24 hours after they stepped off the plane at Auckland International Airport. The brothers were soon embroiled in a drunken street fight outside a bar.
“I don’t want to be here. I’m forced to call this country home. I gave 27 years to Australia,” Pasilika Naufahu told a reporter from Television New Zealand.
“What can I say, the night just went bad. I apologise to all the staff members there and anyone who got hit.”
He went on to warn others deported from Australia under the tough immigration law that they could be forced into a life of crime.
But there wasn’t anything to say the brothers themselves might be committing crimes in New Zealand. Not yet.
THE NAUFAHU brothers had been senior members of the Comanchero gang in Sydney.
Pasilika Naufahu had been the sergeant-at-arms, regarded by Sydney police as a larger-than-life character.
The guy was a gym junkie with huge arms; he also had acumen and a keen appreciation of business. He was among the new breed of Comancheros who had moved the gang forward from the bearded, scruffy white bikies of yesteryear.
He had been one of the earliest candidates considered by Strike Force Raptor in New South Wales for deportation under the new section 501 of the Australian Migration Act.
Police were desperate to rid Sydney of an influential gangster and he was the first of 14 Comancheros forcibly sent across the Ditch.
Operation Nova, the new investigation headed by Espinosa, was in no doubt that Pasilika Naufahu’s presence would lead to the setting up of a new Comancheros chapter in New Zealand.
He was a heavy hitter, charismatic and cocky, with a small band of reinforcements eager to live up to the Comanchero name.
That a chapter of Australia’s most dangerous motorcycle gang would establish itself in New Zealand was inevitable, and imminent. And while Operation Nova knew little about the Naufahu brothers, Espinosa and his team had read all about their brethren across the Tasman.
The turf wars, the firebombings, the shootings, the all-in brawl at Sydney Airport, the birth of Strike Force Raptor ... Nobody was in any doubt that the arrival of the Aussies was bad news.
But no one could claim to foresee how quickly the Comancheros would change the gang scene.
Espinosa and his team of five detectives got to work.
They had only the photograph and some basic details, so they set about building an intelligence profile of Pasilika.
What was his daily routine? Where did he go? Who did he meet with? Who was in the Comancheros’ inner circle in New Zealand?
The Commos were a small, tight-knit group who kept to themselves and were constantly looking over their shoulders.
Their counter-surveillance techniques were like nothing Espinosa, a veteran of nine years in the drug squad, had ever seen before.
Every half-decent criminal knows not to talk business on the phone, but Pasilika and his friends communicated with one another using Ciphr devices with end-to-end encryption.
These sophisticated phones, which cost thousands to run each year, were well known in organised-crime circles overseas, but it was the first time they’d been seen in New Zealand.
While the covert surveillance was tricky, every now and again a piece of valuable intelligence fell into their laps.
A few hastily snapped photos of Pasilika Naufahu and five others wearing “Comanchero New Zealand” T-shirts cropped up on social media in February 2018.
The Instagram shots of six strapping Comancheros were soon to be made infamous in a Herald on Sunday scoop. It was clear that the 501s had now formed a local chapter.
Alongside Pasilika and Vetekina Naufahu was the tall figure of Tyson Daniels, who turned out to be the chapter’s vice-president, as well as Pomare...
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