Documentary: New Zealand has tried and failed to fix its methamphetamine crisis for 20 years. Now the country is facing a second wave of the epidemic.
Aref Ziba was sentenced to five years in prison for trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to smuggle an estimated $2.5 million worth of methamphetamine.
Overseas contacts in Iran hid the drug in car parts, but Customs intercepted the shipment.
Judge David Sharp noted Ziba’s role was significant but also “somewhat confused” and spurred by his addiction.
An Iranian refugee living in Auckland who used his overseas contacts to arrange the smuggling of roughly $2.5 million worth of high-purity liquid methamphetamine into New Zealand hidden inside car parts has been sentenced to prison after a comedy of errors trying to get it past Customs.
One Tree Hill resident Aref Ziba, 59, was described by prosecutors during his recent Auckland District Court hearing as “the boots on the ground” for the scheme.
He pleaded guilty earlier this year to a single importation charge that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, although the top end of the sentence range is generally meant for people thought to be a “kingpin” of a large, sophisticated commercial operation.
That, he was not, Judge David Sharp said, describing Ziba’s “somewhat confused and unsophisticated method” of trying to retrieve the illicit payload as indicating he wasn’t a high flyer in the criminal underworld. The judge set a starting point of 14 years’ imprisonment before considering mitigating and aggravating factors that might change the length.
The 166kg air-freight package, labelled as containing 50 Peugeot shock absorbers from the Islamic Republic of Iran, arrived in New Zealand in July 2022. The intended recipient, according to the package, was a Parnell auto repair shop specialising in European cars. Court documents suggest the auto repair business was unaware it had been listed as the recipient and had no involvement in the scheme.
One Tree Hill resident Aref Ziba has been sentenced to prison after pleading guilty in Auckland District Court to having helped smuggle just under 23 litres of liquid methamphetamine into New Zealand hidden inside a shipment of car parts. Photo / Supplied
Customs decided to search the shipment, finding that it did contain the items listed. But the inspection also revealed that each shock absorber contained about 450 millilitres of a liquid that later tested positive for methamphetamine - about 22.8 litres in all.
On July 27, 2022, an Auckland-based brokerage specialising in getting cargo shipments through Customs was contacted about the shipment, starting a long, strange chain of communication that was later uncovered by investigators.
The brokerage was initially told by an alleged associate of Ziba’s that he didn’t want the shock absorbers sent directly to the auto repair business. They were sent to New Zealand by his nephew in Iran who wanted his uncle to deliver the items himself as part of his business’ “door-to-door” service, the brokerage was told.
At 8.24am on August 2, the brokerage representative is reported to have received a call from another man claiming to be a colleague of the first caller. Like the first caller, he emphasised that he wanted to receive the shipment directly. The brokerage representative again explained that he would first need authority from the auto shop to begin the clearance process.
At 9.12 that same morning, the broker received an email purported to be from “Jeremy” at the auto shop in which he gave permission for the other person to pick up the shipment. But Jeremy’s email was a Gmail account in which the address consisted of the earlier caller’s name.
At 10.39am, a new email was received from “Jeremy” - this time from a slightly more convincing, but still flawed, email address. It again was a Gmail account consisting of the name of the auto shop. The business name, however, was spelt wrong.
Several days later, the broker was contacted by the first caller, who said the auto shop was no longer interested in the shipment. He gave the name of another man who wanted to claim it instead. The purported new buyer emailed a form with his name and a copy of his driver’s licence.
“This application was, however, made without [his] knowledge after his wallet and driver’s licence were stolen on 23 December 2021,” the agreed summary of facts for the case states.
That effort appears to have been hastily abandoned, with the broker being told days later that the new buyer was actually overseas in Canada and that the order might have to be cancelled altogether.
One last effort was made on August 15, one month after the shipment had arrived in New Zealand, when an email from the fake Gmail address for the auto company stated that a new person had been given authorisation to receive and handle the shipment. The woman submitted a new form.
By this time, Customs and the police National Organised Crime Group had launched Operation Detroit and obtained a warrant from a High Court judge to monitor suspects and intercept their communications.
One Tree Hill resident Aref Zeba has been sentenced to prison after pleading guilty in Auckland District Court to having helped smuggle just under 23 litres of liquid methamphetamine into New Zealand hidden inside a shipment of car parts. Photo / Supplied
Ziba was recorded in one call asking an associate if they could trust the new woman. After he was assured she could be trusted, he asked for the woman’s address so he could “write it on the form”. A revised client code form was sent to the broker, although police later noted, her address on the form contained a misspelling of the woman’s street and the wrong suburb.
Had the liquid methamphetamine been processed, prosecutor Daniel Becker said, the amount of undiluted crystal methamphetamine would have conservatively amounted to about 15kg.
Police have previously testified in an unrelated trial that in 2020, two years before Ziba’s scheme, the wholesale rate for a single kilo of meth was anywhere from $160,000 to $200,000. At that price, Ziba’s import could have garnered between $2.4 million and $3 million had it been successful.
Backer emphasised the high purity of the drug.
“Mr Ziba played a significant role in the overall importation,” he said, noting that the scheme only happened because the defendant had drug connections in Iran.
“Mr Ziba was involved in the importation effectively from the early stages.
“Mr Ziba is the one that’s calling the shots. He’s the one that’s ultimately telling [others] what to do.”
Defence lawyer Marie Taylor-Cyphers agreed her client’s role could be described as “significant”, but she argued that it was on the bottom edge of that classification rather than the upper echelons.
It was a “slightly unusual case” in that her client had knowledge of what was happening overseas but was “not making management decisions at the top of the chain”, she said, insisting that he was more of a middleman.
“I don’t think he’s making an awful lot of money out of this,” Judge Sharp concurred, noting that the defendant didn’t appear to have assets worth seizing - something usually seen in commercial-scale drug dealing. “But he does look like he’s making decisions [regarding the collection of the shipment] so he has a measure of control.”
Judge determined a starting point of 14 years considering his role and the quantity of drugs uncovered, but he then reduced it by one year because he saw a nexus between the defendant’s addiction and his offending and a further three years for his guilty plea.
Additional reductions included a year and a half for his lack of prior criminal history in New Zealand; one year for his efforts at rehabilitation and the time he’s already spent on electronically monitored bail; six months for the extra difficulties he is likely to experience in prison with English as a second language; and two years for personal matters that might have contributed to his addiction issues.
“It’s clear that you were someone who suffered [during Iranian] military service and things that you witnessed,” the judge said, declining to elaborate except to say that Ziba “came to New Zealand in circumstances where you were unable to remain in Iran”.
Ziba arrived at court for the hearing holding a Pak’n’Save bag with his belongings before sitting in the courtroom dock next to an interpreter. He left the courtroom through a side door accompanied by security, a final sentence of five years having been imposed.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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