Strike Force Granchester II has put three people in custody this week waiting to appear back before Dubbo Local Court in relation to an alleged Sydney-to-Dubbo drug trafficking syndicate. While it will be some time before the courts will determine the outcome of the arrests, Dubbo police and state crime command forces have made significant busts in the Dubbo district and today Faye Wheeler takes a look at some of the major breakthroughs.
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1. Police raided a Peak Hill home on August 8, 2000 and uncovered drugs with a potential street value of about $2 million.
The prosecution alleged the material, which included transcriptions of more than 2000 phone calls, implicates Angelo Germano, 50, his 18-year-old lover Jenna Brodie and Wayne Clive Brown, 34, with the multi-million-dollar amphetamine operation.
Germano was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of five years, eight months, which began on August 9, 2000.
He was first eligible for parole on October 9, 2003.
2. Vincenzo Cannistra did his time in jail for his part in what was thought to be the State’s biggest cannabis bust.
Police executed a search warrant at the property in 2004 and found a plantation of more than 30,000 cannabis plants estimated to be worth about $58 million growing at three crop sites.
More than 200 armed officers, including 40 from the Orana Local Area Command, swooped on an 890-hectare property located between Gilgandra and Mendooran.
The deputy Director of Public Prosecutions appealed the original sentence of four years, nine months non-parole on the ground that the sentence imposed by his Honour Judge Nicholson was “manifestly inadequate”.
The Crown appeal was upheld, and Cannistra’s sentence was quashed and replaced with a sentence of a non-parole period of five years and 10 months to begin on January 29, 2004 and to expire on November 28, 2009.
The Department of Corrective Services has advised that Cannistra walked free from the Silverwater complex on November 28.
3. In 2004 seven men appeared in Dubbo Local Court after being arrested in relation to the discovery of another cannabis crop in the area.
The men were arrested shortly after 6am on the property ‘Heatherbrae’, 50 kilometres north of Dubbo.
Between 3000 and 4000 plants were discovered at the property, with an estimated street value of up to $7 million.
Some of the seven received jail sentences, while others were given suspended sentences.
4. Tony Greco is behind bars but it’s his evasion of authorities that is as much the story as the crime he committed.
In April 2008, after five frustrating years, a random traffic stop at the weekend by highway patrol officers attached to Fairfield Local Area Command led to the capture of Antonio Greco.
His $30 million marijuana crop at a site 20km south of Dubbo was one of the biggest drug hauls Dubbo had seen.
Just days after discovering the crop, evidence of another crop of about 5000 plants ripped from the ground was found near Ballimore.
Greco’s five-and-a-half-year prison sentence began on September 16, 2009.
He was given a non-parole period of three years and three months.
5. In August 2007 the case against a local greyhound trainer facing a string of drug and firearm-related charges was described as “overwhelming” in Dubbo Local Court.
Kenneth James Gardoll, 49, later convicted of supplying prohibited drugs on an ongoing basis, was sentenced to a term of three years jail to start on October 12, 2008 and expiring on October 11, 2011, with a non-parole period of 18 months.
6. Susan Peachey was jailed last month for up to five years and three months for her leading role in the large-scale distribution of cannabis brought into the city from Sydney.
She was the final member of the eight-person enterprise to be sentenced.
The cannabis ring was busted by police in December 2008 after four months of surveillance from Strikeforce Monkman, both phone and optical, on Peachey’s home.
Police were listening and watching as Peachey and her gang doled out approximately $48,000 worth cannabis from October 2007 until her arrest on December 4, 2008.