Do you ever wonder how gangsters screw up?
About what went wrong?
What mistakes they made that ruined their plans, taking them from this to this
Well here's one answer — a transnational organized criminal syndicate spanning four continents
and capable of moving 3,000 kilos of cocaine — that's more than six and a half
thousand pounds — was undone by careless casino gambling, on video poker machines no less
The Mob Reporter here with news of a plot to bring record amounts of coke to drug hungry Australia
that came crashing down in a clever sting this week, when police made a replica load of cocaine
bricks and replace them for the real deal that had been seized by the U.S. military off the coast
of South America and then used it to lure the alleged smugglers in.
Let me tell you about it
It started when police in Australia opened a file on a man doing wild gambling at the Star Casino.
It's Australia's second largest gambling joint, a glamorous complex overlooking Darling harbor in
Sydney. In what looked for all the world like laundering money, the man was seen regularly
pumping enormous amounts of cash into the poker machines. This is surveillance of him early last
year, chewing through more than $100 million in one week. Alerted to the unusual activity police
traced the man's finances and linked him to other alleged syndicate members internationally,
with Eastern European routes and South American ties. He has since been identified as 42-year-old
Mende Rajkoski. Looking deeper, police allege he was associated with Nikolao Misa, 37. Both of them
had worked at the cargo area of Sydney's main international airport together in 2018. Police
intelligence reports had previously linked the pair to unproven but suspicious importation
activity from their time at the airport, police said. It was the beginning of the end
9,000 miles away in the Pacific Ocean, the United States Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard
were continuing their patrols of the vast oceans around South America, where cocaine is produced
In October 2020, Australian police tipped off the Americans to an anticipated shipment of coke
and a U.S. Navy patrol off the coast of Colombia tracked this boat — an open top vessel with three
high-powered outboard motors. They are called go-fast boats because they're designed to
muscle their way to their destination before they are spotted and caught. Although fast,
they are no match for the U.S. Navy, with its warships, helicopters, and spotter airplanes
Once this boat realized the Navy was on their tail, they didn't meekly surrender,
however. Instead, law enforcement sources tell me, the smugglers jettisoned their cargo overboard
and then lit their boat on fire. Here's a photo of the ship burning in the Pacific
About 870 kilograms of coke were retrieved — that's almost 2,000 pounds. Months later, in April,
the U.S. Coast Guard tracked a second vessel in international waters after Australian information
from their probe. This one was found off the coast of Ecuador and another 900 kilos were seized
What happened immediately after the seizure, however,
is perhaps the most interesting part of this
U.S. and Australian authorities hatched a scheme of their own. An inert replica
of the bricks seized in April were created and then sent on to the intended final destination:
a storage facility in Sydney where police surveillance teams watched it like a hawk
Bright and early on Thursday, June 3rd 2021, a man arrived at the facility where the replica load had
been sent. When the man tried to access it, police allege, a tactical team moved in and arrested him
And lo and behold police say it was Rajkoski, the same man who set
the whole investigation in motion with his wild gambling at the casino
A tactical team then took down another man who was waiting in a parking lot nearby: Misa, who
used to work at the airport but was working as a director of a national security firm at the time
Police then raided five homes in the suburbs around Sydney. At one of those raids
officers arrested a third man
fifty-eight-year-old Gjelosh Nikollaj. He has a previous drug importation conviction. Police
also say they seized cash, electronic devices, documentation, and numerous mobile phones, including
encrypted devices. The two older men, the first and the third arrested, are both charged with supplying
large commercial quantities of prohibited drug and participating in a criminal group
The younger man arrested in the parking lot is charged only with large commercial
quantity drug supply. Police, however, say there is more than just the three involved in this,
describing the organization as a significant transnational
crime syndicate that was operating across Australia, Europe and North and South America
Police said the seized coke in this case was the largest-ever interception of cocaine destined
for Australia and estimated its value — if it got onto Australia's streets — at AUS$900 million,
which is about US$700 million. A senior police official in New South Wales,
Australia's most populous state, which includes Sydney, its largest city, said the amount seized
would be the equivalent to an entire year's worth of consumption for all of the junkies in the state
The smugglers had more product in the pipeline, police allege,
bringing the total weight the group was handling to three metric tons, which is about 6,600 pounds
The investigation is ongoing and further arrests were not ruled out
All three of these men charged face potential life sentences under Australia's harsh drug laws
The stiff penalties just don't seem to be a deterrent, largely because it is so profitable
Alongside Australia having some of the stiffest penalties for drug importation
in a western democracy, it also has some of the highest street drug prices in the world
Those two factors are not a coincidence
Thanks for watching