A Supreme Court judge said those running a drug business should balance the high returns with the risk of high jail sentences.
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Justice Robert Pearce made his comments when sentencing drug kingpin Stephen James Williams, 41, of Waverley.
Williams was deemed to have run the business of drug trafficking between July 1, 2017, and November 13, 2019. He was found guilty by a jury in September 2022 of trafficking in a controlled substance, namely MDMA, MDA, ice and heroin.
A court heard last year that drugs and cash worth $700,000 were the proceeds of the drug trafficking operation run by Mr Williams.
Justice Pearce said it was the third time Williams had been sentenced for trafficking and it was a serious case of the crime.
He sentenced him to a total of six years in jail for trafficking, backdated to May 14, 2022, to take into account the time he had spent in custody.
Such was the success of Williams' operation he was the subject of a police surveillance operation known as Operation Alert from January 2019 to October 2019.
The operation culminated in a raid In November 2019 at Lloyds Hotel, where 105 grams of ice was found in a bar area and a room Williams was using upstairs.
Williams's operation was relatively sophisticated, including the use of burner phones and encryption apps, which meant police could not adduce evidence of telephone intercepts which is one of the main weapons in detecting drug trafficking.
In December, the court heard that the state could not quantify the drug's value exactly but said it was significant.
Heroin worth between $80,000 and $161,000 depending on the method of sale was found; 129 grams of methylamphetamine (ice) was worth between $69,750 and $139, 500; 500 tablets of MDMA and MDA were worth between $10,000-$25,000 from a raid at the Kings Meadows hotel in 2018.
Police seized five amounts of cash from Williams.
On July 5, 2017, $30,200. On July 3 and in July 2019, $8530 from a car.
The court heard that $205,586 had been deposited into the bank account of his then-girlfriend Carly Dekkers and $125,771 was found in a supermarket bag at the home of a later girlfriend, Jordyn Fenton, in November 2019 immediately after the Lloyds Hotel raid.
A further $10,000 had been left at the office of Lloyds hotel owner Peter Dixon during negotiations over a hotel lease.
The cash was generated when Williams was unemployed and on Centrelink payments and that financial gain was the primary motive for drug trafficking, Justice Pearce said.
He said the jury accepted that Williams was running a business.
The court heard that Williams would collect money from sales and engage others to hold the cash.
Justice Pearce said Williams had a record stretching back to 2001.
During his trial, a jury heard that Williams had been seeking to move away from drugs by seeking involvement in the hotel business at Lloyds Hotel and Empire 44 on York Street.
The trial last year heard that Williams offered his then driver Stuart Burgoine $50,000 to take the rap for a firearm in a car when he was pulled over by police in Hoblers Bridge Rd in 2017.
Williams also received a further 12-month jail sentence after pleading guilty to receiving $115,000 worth of stolen property between June 16 and September 15, 2021.
He also pleaded guilty to dealing with property [$6737.50], suspected of being the proceeds of a crime, namely drug trafficking, on September 30, 2021.
However, Justice Pearce allowed nine months of the sentence to be concurrent with the trafficking sentence meaning that three months was added for the receiving stolen property conviction to the six-year trafficking sentence.
Last year during his drug trafficking trial, which included evidence of a raid at Lloyds Hotel in November 2019, the court heard that police conducted a 10-month surveillance operation of Mr Williams.
Investigative and Intelligence Support Services Officers gave evidence that Operation Alert ran from January 2019 to October 2019.
The receiving stolen property guilty plea came after a police raid on September 15, 2021, at Williams' Waverley address.
They seized a mobile phone which contained 55 videos and 279 still images and seized several items.
The videos and pictures showed notes and coins and the lower part of a man's body wearing a distinctive pair of blue shoes and three-quarter-length pants.
After consulting the complainant, police concluded that the videos depicted notes and coins worth $100,000 and a collection of notes worth $15,000 stolen from a safe in George Town on June 16.
The court heard that the blue shoes were similar to those Mr Williams wore in the Launceston police station charge room in May 2021.
"On audio attached to one of the videos, a voice can be heard saying 'pass them here, Willy'," a prosecutor told the court.
A scanner tuned to police radio dispatch was seen in the video. A fortnight later, police raided Mr Williams' home and he fled.
"During the ensuing chase, the accused discarded a small shoulder strap bag. That bag was found to contain 15.7 grams of ice and $6737.50 cash," the prosecutor said.
An identical blue pair of shoes was found under the house and a scanner similar to the one in the video was seen in Mr Williams' bedroom.
The video from Mr Williams' phone showed coins being examined by a person not wearing gloves and a discussion of selling the stolen goods.
The Forensic Services fingerprint section concluded that the fingerprint was similar to the left palm print of Mr Williams. In addition, coin pouches seized from Mr Williams' bedroom identified his fingerprints.
None of the property stolen from George Town was recovered.
"The State asserts that the accused had possession of the property seen in the video and the photographs for an unknown period of time between June 16 and June 18, 2021," he said.
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Nick Clark
I am the Supreme and Magistrates Court reporter for the Examiner for the past 18 months. My journalism career has clicked over 30 years and encompasses four different spells at Tasmanian newspapers.
I am the Supreme and Magistrates Court reporter for the Examiner for the past 18 months. My journalism career has clicked over 30 years and encompasses four different spells at Tasmanian newspapers.
