The Boss was 31 years of age in 2012.
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He was schooled and raised in Wangaratta, though no academic at school. He showed promise as a young cyclist but lost his way after finding and smoking dope in his early teens.
He refocused and was back on track, literally, as he reached his late teens by ramping up his bike riding and spending some time attending the Institute of Sport developing his cycling skills.
The Boss was considered one of the best junior riders in Australia within 12 months of resuming his cycling but never made it to the elite level in that sport.
The Boss resumed his drug use. That was followed by petty crimes including damage that led to assault then drug dealing.
During his teenage years, the Boss was involved in an accident resulting in the partial loss of sight in one eye.
He wore glasses on occasion but not religiously. Interestingly, some members of the public and witnesses described him a spectacled geek.
Investigators believed that the Boss didn’t discourage this perception by others.
In fact, it assisted him going undetected by making him appear non-suspicious when moving amongst the general community.
The Boss was very mindful of how he was perceived by others and made every effort to never show any signs of great wealth. No fancy cars or large screen televisions, just the basics.
His only indulgences were trendy label shoes and clothes, mostly purchased over the internet.
This same discipline was instilled in those who joined his syndicate. Again, there would be consequences if the rules were broken. His motto was to save money for a rainy day.
The Boss was over six feet tall and could handle himself – he liked the gym and boxing.
He was also older and stronger than most of those purposely chosen to join his syndicate of drug dealers.
Behind closed doors and within the drug community, the Boss built a reputation of being a dangerous and violent thug who ruled with an iron fist.
He surrounded himself with people who were younger than himself and whom he could intimidate and instil with his type of discipline.
The Boss loved the Underbelly television series and imagined himself one day being the subject of a similar type of television series.
He knew that he had some work to do to achieve that sort of notoriety but he was willing to give it a crack.
One syndicate member recalled, ‘I reckon [the Boss] watched too many Underbelly shows and he claimed that he wanted to be the next Underbelly person. As far as I’m concerned, it is the worst f---ing show because he wanted to be like them.’
The Boss came from a family with business acumen, his younger brother operated his own business and his grandfather was a bookmaker during the forties and fifties.
The Boss also had a flare for business and making money.
Unfortunately, unlike other family members, he was only interested in making money fast and by unlawful means.
At the time of meeting Paddy and Jock, he was travelling weekly from Wagga to various motels on the Victorian border to collect money and disperse drugs to his foot soldiers.
Although the Boss was not lawfully employed, he managed to maintain a modern home and had an interest in a hair salon with his partner at the time. The hair salon was aptly named ‘Addictions’.
In mid-2012, the Boss’s relationship broke down and he relocated to the Victoria–NSW border where he began living with his drug syndicate in short-term accommodation.
It was at this point that the Boss ramped up his own ice use followed by acts of increased violence.
Most accommodation was strategically booked on the NSW side of the border and in towns with 16-hour police services.
He didn’t feel safe from the prying police in Victoria and avoided living on that side of the border.
The syndicate moved every few weeks on average and he forced others to book accommodation in their names rather than his own.
Multiple rooms or units were booked according to their positions within a tourist park, motel or complex. Multiple rooms meant multiple possibilities as to where the drugs and cash were stored. One thing was for certain, neither came within reach of the Boss unless the drug had been delivered in its bulk form or the money was being prepared for dispatch as payment for another order.
The syndicate did most of its business during the eight hours of the town’s non-policing period and travelled into the north east of Victoria to traffic their drugs under the cover of darkness.
Whilst the syndicate made every effort to avoid suspicion by using the women to book the rooms and sending them in first, inevitably, the property managers stood up and took notice when an influx of young males arrived in numerous vehicles including hire cars.
The comings and goings of those vehicles, at all hours of the night, raised suspicions not only with property managers but with other guests and neighbours as well. The opening and closing of car doors late at night and throughout the early hours of the morning caused some frustration amongst other residents.
The syndicate took a large white-coloured dog with them most places they stayed and this usually roamed the surrounding area. Most property managers didn’t allow dogs on their properties so this also brought unwanted attention to the group.
They paid for accommodation with cash provided by the Boss and avoided the use of credit cards unless they were in someone else’s name. Usually a credit card belonging to a drug user without a criminal record was used as security. That user usually owed a debt to the syndicate and whether they liked it or not, the incriminating transaction was made under their name.
Cards belonging to people from all walks of life were used.
There were other members of the syndicate who came and went, usually after they had been arrested with the Boss’s product and then imprisoned.
One such member was Blacky. He was called the friendly drug dealer by the Boss, even though he was involved in the odd act of violence. He preferred not to get his hands dirty if he could help it.
Blacky was introduced to the Boss by Paddy and began drug dealing almost immediately. He rarely saw the Boss and drugs were usually delivered to him by Jock.
Blacky regularly received an ounce of ice at a cost of $13,000.
Blacky lost count of the amount of drugs delivered to his house.
He remembered the ice as being high quality and he didn’t dare ‘jump’ on the product to increase profits. He knew the Boss would belt people if they cut or jumped on the quality product.
Blacky started on-selling an ounce of ice a week for the Boss. He was soon provided with a housing commission flat by the Boss to deal greater amounts of drugs for him. The flat was in the names of an unknown female and male who had surrendered it. It was located in the Wodonga area.
Blacky estimated that at his busiest times, he trafficked five ounces a week from the flat. At $13,000 an ounce, Blacky was paying upwards of $65,000 a week to the Boss for ice.
On the odd occasions that Blacky met with the Boss, he often saw the Boss in motel rooms with guns and bundles of cash in hundreds of thousands of dollars, too much money to estimate.
More than one room was booked and the cash and drugs were never in the Boss’s room.
Blacky regularly saw two machines used for cryovac packaging and money counting at motels used by the syndicate.
The ice delivered to Blacky whilst living in the flat always came sealed in plastic cryovac packaging.
Eventually Blacky was asked to move in with the syndicate and began living in a luxurious holiday home on Lake Hume.
Unfortunately for Blacky, he was arrested the next day. He had been tasked by the Boss to commandeer a car from a customer who owed a drug debt.
A short distance from the house, Blacky was found in possession of ice and parts of a pen pistol. He went straight to prison and spent a decent stint locked up away from the Boss and the syndicate. The Boss failed to keep his promise of paying Blacky’s legal costs and soon replaced him.
He also imposed an immediate $60,000 debt on Blacky. Blacky was even reminded of the expectation to pay the Boss’s debt by another prison inmate during his time in jail.
If that wasn’t enough, the Boss began a relationship with Blacky’s girlfriend in his forced absence.
Blacky best summed up the Boss: ‘It didn’t matter what you did for [him], you would never end up ahead. For example, if you went out and bought a car with your own money, he would say he paid for it and that cost would go onto the debt you owed him. It didn’t make sense, you always owed him.
‘He didn’t give me s--t, he may have bought me clothing. I didn’t want him to be buying me stuff because that’s how he got to own people.’
The Boss would hand out the occasional beating to reinforce his status as the Boss. He demanded his foot soldiers call him ‘the Boss’ and he promised power, wealth and a better life in return. The Boss owned people but the ice would eventually own him.
This an edited extract from Ice Nation: Cracking an Ice Syndicate by Jason Bray (Echo, $29.99)
