Tinny salesman took $1m a year

A 52-year-old Porirua man, who claims he ran a tinny house which 150 people visited daily to provide a future for his adult children, was yesterday jailed for four years and three months.

Police estimate Michael Te Wika Anaru sold a $20 cannabis "tinny" every four minutes for a year, earning him $3000 a day, $21,000 a week or just over $1 million a year.

He used a cardboard sign to indicate when his Porirua East house was open and sold the tinnies out of a plastic drink bottle at the front door wearing costumes as disguise.

Anaru travelled monthly to the East Coast to stock up on cannabis, which he stashed in the basement of another house.

When police executed a search warrant in December they found two bags with more than 1kg of marijuana worth $7000 and an Enfield .303 rifle in the basement. Anaru had about $275,000 in a bank account at the time.

He was sentenced in the High Court at Wellington after admitting three charges of possessing cannabis for supply, two of selling it and a charge of unlawfully possessing a firearm.

His lawyer, Chris Nicholls, said Anaru was given the firearm by an associate after being "stood over" by the Mongrel Mob.

Besides a short time as a truck driver, he had had little employment through his life.

Anaru had hoped his cannabis operation would help his son, who had three children, and his daughter, who had five.

"He was doing the only thing he was any good at to try and set them up."

Anaru suffered from poor health and there was a severe risk he would die in jail because of his health, Mr Nicholls said.

"Porirua East is a pretty depressing place. The area where he ran his tinny house from is a bleak place, there's a lot of despair. It's only because depression in the area is so high that people want to get off their faces."

However, Crown prosecutor Tom Gilbert said Porirua East might be bleak, "but Anaru did nothing by his actions to enhance it".

He had shown no remorse and had little motivation to address the issues which had led to his offending.

Justice Alan MacKenzie said that while Anaru was out of prison on bail in January, police visited him and searched the house after smelling cannabis.
They found nine tinnies behind the hot water cylinder which Anaru admitted intending to sell.

Anaru had 19 previous cannabis convictions, 13 of which he had been jailed for.

- NZPA