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The Advertiser
a day ago
- The Advertiser
Coke hoax: traffickers arrested for selling fake cocaine at a whopping price
Police have charged two alleged traffickers for selling fake cocaine to Australian criminal syndicates. The South American trafficking suspects sold fake cocaine for $90,000 per kilogram to four Sydney-based criminal networks between May and June 2025, police said. Two men, aged 61 and 27, were arrested after police searched a unit in North Rocks, in Sydney's northwest suburbs, on June 11. Investigators seized 10 bricks of a white substance, $121,000 in cash, 14 mobile phones, numerous SIM cards, multiple bank cards and documentation relating to foreign money and crypto transfers. "Testing of the substance confirmed it was not cocaine," NSW Police said. An investigation, named Strike Force Bookara, was launched into the South American criminal group supplying "large commercial quantities of cocaine in NSW". Police allege the members of the South American syndicate travelled from Spain to Sydney in May 2025 "with the intention of selling 95 kilograms of cocaine". They also allegedly "carried out fraudulent activity in London" in early 2025, police said. Police have charged the 27-year-old and 61-year-old suspects with supplying a prohibited drug in both small and large quantities. They were refused bail to appear in Parramatta Local Court on June 13. Three other people, who were arrested at the unit, were released pending further inquiries, police said. Sydney-siders were the largest consumers of cocaine in Australia, according to the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program. Around 1.9 tonnes of cocaine were consumed in NSW, while the combined total of every other Australian state and territory was 2.1 tonnes, according to 2023 data. Anyone with information that may assist investigations into organised criminal activity is urged to contact Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000 or Information is managed on a confidential basis. Police have charged two alleged traffickers for selling fake cocaine to Australian criminal syndicates. The South American trafficking suspects sold fake cocaine for $90,000 per kilogram to four Sydney-based criminal networks between May and June 2025, police said. Two men, aged 61 and 27, were arrested after police searched a unit in North Rocks, in Sydney's northwest suburbs, on June 11. Investigators seized 10 bricks of a white substance, $121,000 in cash, 14 mobile phones, numerous SIM cards, multiple bank cards and documentation relating to foreign money and crypto transfers. "Testing of the substance confirmed it was not cocaine," NSW Police said. An investigation, named Strike Force Bookara, was launched into the South American criminal group supplying "large commercial quantities of cocaine in NSW". Police allege the members of the South American syndicate travelled from Spain to Sydney in May 2025 "with the intention of selling 95 kilograms of cocaine". They also allegedly "carried out fraudulent activity in London" in early 2025, police said. Police have charged the 27-year-old and 61-year-old suspects with supplying a prohibited drug in both small and large quantities. They were refused bail to appear in Parramatta Local Court on June 13. Three other people, who were arrested at the unit, were released pending further inquiries, police said. Sydney-siders were the largest consumers of cocaine in Australia, according to the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program. Around 1.9 tonnes of cocaine were consumed in NSW, while the combined total of every other Australian state and territory was 2.1 tonnes, according to 2023 data. Anyone with information that may assist investigations into organised criminal activity is urged to contact Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000 or Information is managed on a confidential basis. Police have charged two alleged traffickers for selling fake cocaine to Australian criminal syndicates. The South American trafficking suspects sold fake cocaine for $90,000 per kilogram to four Sydney-based criminal networks between May and June 2025, police said. Two men, aged 61 and 27, were arrested after police searched a unit in North Rocks, in Sydney's northwest suburbs, on June 11. Investigators seized 10 bricks of a white substance, $121,000 in cash, 14 mobile phones, numerous SIM cards, multiple bank cards and documentation relating to foreign money and crypto transfers. "Testing of the substance confirmed it was not cocaine," NSW Police said. An investigation, named Strike Force Bookara, was launched into the South American criminal group supplying "large commercial quantities of cocaine in NSW". Police allege the members of the South American syndicate travelled from Spain to Sydney in May 2025 "with the intention of selling 95 kilograms of cocaine". They also allegedly "carried out fraudulent activity in London" in early 2025, police said. Police have charged the 27-year-old and 61-year-old suspects with supplying a prohibited drug in both small and large quantities. They were refused bail to appear in Parramatta Local Court on June 13. Three other people, who were arrested at the unit, were released pending further inquiries, police said. Sydney-siders were the largest consumers of cocaine in Australia, according to the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program. Around 1.9 tonnes of cocaine were consumed in NSW, while the combined total of every other Australian state and territory was 2.1 tonnes, according to 2023 data. Anyone with information that may assist investigations into organised criminal activity is urged to contact Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000 or Information is managed on a confidential basis. Police have charged two alleged traffickers for selling fake cocaine to Australian criminal syndicates. The South American trafficking suspects sold fake cocaine for $90,000 per kilogram to four Sydney-based criminal networks between May and June 2025, police said. Two men, aged 61 and 27, were arrested after police searched a unit in North Rocks, in Sydney's northwest suburbs, on June 11. Investigators seized 10 bricks of a white substance, $121,000 in cash, 14 mobile phones, numerous SIM cards, multiple bank cards and documentation relating to foreign money and crypto transfers. "Testing of the substance confirmed it was not cocaine," NSW Police said. An investigation, named Strike Force Bookara, was launched into the South American criminal group supplying "large commercial quantities of cocaine in NSW". Police allege the members of the South American syndicate travelled from Spain to Sydney in May 2025 "with the intention of selling 95 kilograms of cocaine". They also allegedly "carried out fraudulent activity in London" in early 2025, police said. Police have charged the 27-year-old and 61-year-old suspects with supplying a prohibited drug in both small and large quantities. They were refused bail to appear in Parramatta Local Court on June 13. Three other people, who were arrested at the unit, were released pending further inquiries, police said. Sydney-siders were the largest consumers of cocaine in Australia, according to the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program. Around 1.9 tonnes of cocaine were consumed in NSW, while the combined total of every other Australian state and territory was 2.1 tonnes, according to 2023 data. Anyone with information that may assist investigations into organised criminal activity is urged to contact Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000 or Information is managed on a confidential basis.
The Guardian
21-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Coalition says a national sex offender register would be a ‘powerful deterrent'. How would it work, and why now?
The Coalition says it will trial a national register for child sex offenders if elected, providing the option for parents and carers to check with police about whether individuals who interact with their children have prior convictions. The 12-month pilot, which the Coalition says will cost $21.3m, is modelled on existing schemes that have functioned for more than a decade in Western Australia and the UK. Peter Dutton said the register would serve as a 'powerful deterrent' to offenders and enable parents to be fully informed about their child's safety. But would it work, and why is it being raised now? Two similar schemes operating in WA and the UK, the shadow attorney general, Michaelia Cash, told ABC Radio on Monday, which she said had 'unmasked thousands of paedophiles to worried parents and guardians'. The UK's disclosure register, known as 'Sarah's Law', was introduced in 2011 after eight-year-old Sarah Payne was abducted and murdered by a convicted paedophile in 2000. After her death, Payne's mother campaigned for years for greater public access to information about known sex offenders. It allows individuals, not just parents or carers, to ask police whether someone with access to a child has a record. If there is a risk, information is disclosed by police to the person best placed to protect the child. In the two years after being introduced, police forces in England, Wales and Scotland received 4,754 applications and made 708 disclosures. In contrast, WA's community protection website publicly lists limited information about the state's most serious convicted sex offenders – including some names, photos and locations. It was rolled out in 2012 after high-profile cases prompted public calls for greater transparency. The Coalition's disclosure register would not be available to the public and relevant information could only be provided to a parent or guardian – with a number of caveats in place. Law enforcement would make the decision to disclose whether an individual was a listed child sex offender on a case-by-case basis after an application was made and necessary checks had taken place. Cash said the scheme would apply in situations where there had been unsupervised contact with the child for at least three days within 12 months. Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter 'What it's saying to parents is you can make informed decisions about who has access to your child,' the senator said. 'It sends a clear message to sexual predators, you have nowhere to hide.' Once a disclosure was made, the applicant would be barred from sharing the information further – including to other parents. The 12-month trial would be overseen by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, with the details to be worked through with state and territory law enforcement. If this policy sounds familiar, it's because Dutton first proposed a child sex offenders register while home affairs minister in 2019 – but he wanted it to be public. The national database faced backlash at the time from legal and child safety experts for potentially stigmatising or misidentifying individuals without reducing risk. Child protection organisation Bravehearts said in a consultation paper in 2019 that while a register may provide a 'false feeling of comfort' that parents were being given all the information they needed, 'the truth is it won't'. It said it would only reveal a small number of offenders, pointing to low disclosure rates of victims and an even lower rate of criminal proceedings. Just 15% of sexual assaults involving child victims reported to police in New South Wales led to a trial, Bravehearts said. The Law Council of Australia said any register had to be stringently monitored to avoid unintended consequences or errors, and should only apply to high-level offending. Its then president, Arthur Moses SC, said in 2019 that a register brought 'the risk of adverse community attention and vigilantism', pointing to evidence from the US which showed public sex offender registers did not prevent offending in the general community. The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare welcomed any action to protect children from harm, but said funding should be focused on prevention and support. Its CEO, Deb Tsorbaris, pointed to a recent paper which found almost half (45.2%) of those who experienced child sexual abuse had never told anyone about their experience. 'The focus must be on victims,' she said. 'On supporting them to come forward and on making sure there are safe and appropriate supports to give victims and their families the help they need.' Tsorbaris said more work should also be done to tighten the existing Working with Children Check system, which was spread across eight separate state and territory jurisdictions. 'There are so many holes in Working with Children Check processes, not just in information sharing across states and territories, but in the coverage and requirements around who is required to have these checks,' she said. The prime minister won't match the Coalition's commitment and told reporters on Monday that an information-sharing register was already operating between state and federal law enforcement officials that enabled cross-jurisdictional cooperation. 'There is a national system right now that my government has put in place,' Anthony Albanese said. 'He [Dutton] never put it in place.' The employment minister, Murray Watt, told RN Breakfast the announcement was a 'cynical move' from the opposition leader a day out from early polling opening. In response, Dutton accused Albanese of being 'loose with the truth' and said unlike WA, existing commonwealth mechanisms meant information couldn't be disclosed to members of the public if they had specific concerns. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Australian black market tobacco sparks firebombings, budget hole
Sky-high tobacco prices in Australia have created a lucrative black market, analysts say, sparking a violent "tobacco war" and syphoning away billions in potential tax revenue. Faced with a pack of 25 cigarettes costing up to Aus$50 (US$32) or more -- including Aus$1.40 in tax on each stick -- many smokers have instead turned to readily available illicit tobacco. At the same time, authorities have cracked down on vapes, restricting legal sales to pharmacies and opening up another illegal market for people in search of affordable nicotine. In March, the government cut its budget forecast for tobacco tax revenue in the period to 2029 by Aus$6.9 billion. "We've got a challenge here and too many people are avoiding the excise," Treasurer Jim Chalmers conceded after revealing the figures. He announced an extra Aus$157 million for a multi-agency force battling organised crime groups involved in the market and a string of "tobacco war" fire-bombings. The situation was a "total disaster", said James Martin, criminology course director at Deakin University in Melbourne. "We have taken a public health issue, smoking, and our tobacco control policies have transformed it into a multi-fronted crisis," he told AFP. "It is a fiscal crisis, so we are losing billions and billions of dollars in tobacco tax excise but also, more concerning for me as a criminologist, it has turned into a major crime problem." Since the start of 2023, there had been more than 220 arson attacks targeting either black-market retailers or store owners who refuse to stock illicit tobacco products, Martin said. - Extortion and intimidation - "This is really serious organised crime, extortion and intimidation of otherwise law-abiding citizens." Alleged crime figures named in local media as big players include convicted heroin trafficker Kazem Hamad, who was deported to Iraq in 2023, and an infamous Melbourne crime family. Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission chief Heather Cook said criminals fighting over the "lucrative" illegal market were associated with "violence and dangerous behaviour". "This is impacting communities," she told Melbourne's Herald Sun in February. Law enforcement alone could not solve the problem, Martin said. "If we just keep making nicotine harder to get to, people are going to turn to the black market." Australia had made two mistakes, he said: pricing legal cigarettes so high that a pack-a-day habit cost about Aus$15,000 a year and at the same time heavily restricting sales of vapes, which were predominantly sold on the black market. "The government needs to lower the tobacco tax excise to stop the bleed to the black market, and they need to legalise consumer vaping products." New Zealand was the only country that had successfully introduced a similar tobacco taxation policy to Australia's, Martin said. "But they did it by legalising vaping back in 2020," he added. "So, New Zealand used to have a higher smoking rate than we did back just four years ago. It's now substantially lower than Australia's." Illicit cigarettes are flowing into Australia from China and the Middle East, with vapes predominantly being sourced from Shenzhen in China, the criminologist said. - 'War on nicotine' - And the black market still thrives despite the Australian Border Force saying it detected huge volumes of illicit tobacco in the year to June 30, 2024 -- 1.8 billion cigarettes and more than 436 tonnes of loose leaf tobacco. Daily tobacco smoking in Australia has fallen sharply over the past decades: from 24 percent of those aged over 14 in 1991 to 8.3 percent by 2023, according to a national household survey. But monitoring of nicotine in Australian wastewater -- whether from cigarettes, vapes, or nicotine replacement products -- showed consumption per person had remained "relatively stable" since 2016, according to the government's health and welfare institute. Edward Jegasothy, senior lecturer in public health at the University of Sydney, said smoking rates in Australia fell just as fast during periods of sharp price increases as they did when prices were stable. The black market had undermined government policy by providing a cheaper alternative, he told AFP. To address the problem, authorities would probably need to lower taxes on tobacco and strengthen law enforcement, he said. Broader nicotine restrictions in Australia had left people with fewer less harmful alternatives to tobacco, Jegasothy said. People switching to vapes were going to the unregulated market where concentrations of nicotine and other adulterants were unknown, he said. "So that's another risk that's unnecessarily there because of the black market." The high tobacco tax policy also hit people in the lowest socioeconomic groups the hardest, Jegasothy said, both because they were spending a higher proportion of their incomes on it, and because they had higher rates of smoking. Australia's "disproportionate" focus on cutting nicotine supply rather than reducing demand and harm echoed the "War on Drugs", Jegasothy argued in a joint paper with Deakin University's Martin. "As with Australia's broader War on Drugs, there is little evidence to suggest that our de facto War on Nicotine is an optimal strategy for reducing nicotine-related harms," it warns. djw/sft/dan/fox
