The girl tried to import cocaine into Australia (not pictured) when she was caught in October 2022. Photo: ACT Policing.
When aged just 16 and 17, a teenage girl managed to build up a major drug dealing business in which she recruited others and sold illicit substances to schoolchildren and adults across Canberra and Queanbeyan.
But her enterprise came undone when she was finally caught while trying to import a large amount of cocaine into the country by having it delivered to her own home.
The now-20-year-old, who legally cannot be named due to her age when she was dealing drugs, pleaded guilty earlier this week and is awaiting sentencing for a charge that carries a maximum 25 years’ jail.
Her tale was revealed in documents that were recently tendered to the ACT Supreme Court.
The girl mostly spoke to buyers through an encrypted app called Signal and regularly advertised to a large number of contacts when she had products in stock.
Detailed records of her dealings were kept on her phone, including dates of sales, customer names and the amount of drugs sold per transaction.
Sometimes she told buyers she didn’t have a particular item, but gave an estimate of when it would be available. She allowed some buyers to purchase on credit, but kept records of who had to pay her back.
The girl either met her customers at a pre-arranged location, her own home, her school or would sometimes deliver the drugs for a fee. She also occasionally recruited others to sell the drugs for her.
“She provided guidance, including potential sale prices and break-even points, to a number of others,” the documents say.
Her notes recorded she sold Xanax 17 times, ranging from two to five tablets for a sale, to several sales of 50 and 100 tablets.
The notes also recorded six sales of ketamine, two of MDMA and 53 of cannabis, with all the transactions taking place from January to October 2022.
The sale prices of the drugs varied. For instance, one customer bought 100 tablets of Xanax for $450, another paid $600 for three grams of ketamine, a third handed over $250 for one gram of MDMA and a fourth paid $280 for 28 grams of cannabis.
Then, in October 2022, US Homeland Security Investigations informed Australian Border Force about a package that was scheduled to arrive in Australia from the US.
The package was addressed to the girl and contained vehicle components, but forensic officers also found 367 grams of cocaine stashed inside two gears.
ACT Policing replaced the cocaine with an inert substance, and an undercover officer pretended to be a delivery driver when taking the package to the girl’s home in Canberra.
She showed him her learner driver’s licence, took the package and thanked him for delivering it.
Police raided her home that same day and seized the package and her mobile phone, as well as a replica Colt pistol and 374 grams of cannabis, both in her bedside drawer.
When they examined her phone, they found she had exchanged several messages with others about the arrival of the package.
For instance, she discussed needing to be paid more for this package as she wrote “mum brought the last package back from the old house n it got a bit sus bananas yk [sic]”.
Also, her phone showed she messaged a person earlier in 2022 and asked if they could get “a strap”, to which they replied that they could.
“A strap is a common street term for a gun,” the documents say.
The girl faced the Supreme Court on Tuesday (30 September) and pleaded guilty to five charges.
These included attempting to possess a marketable quantity of a border-controlled drug, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 25 years’ jail.
She also pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, supplying a declared substance, trafficking cannabis and the unauthorised possession of a firearm.
Her lawyer, Andrew Byrnes of Andrew Byrnes Law Group, requested a pre-sentence report as well as an assessment for an intensive corrections order, a type of community-based sentence.
The girl, who is on bail, will return to court for her sentencing hearing in November.
Original Article published by Albert McKnight on Region Canberra.
