Drug lord used casino as 'office'

Ri Tong Zhou. Photo / Supplied

The VIP lounge at SkyCity Casino was where Ri Tong Zhou first came to the attention of detectives battling organised crime in Auckland.

Zhou was a regular in the exclusive gambling club, spending millions of dollars in the invitation-only room and arousing the suspicions of Department of Internal Affairs inspectors.

His name was mentioned by Internal Affairs at a meeting of the Combined Law Agencies Group, where police, Immigration, Customs and IRD share intelligence on suspected crime.

Police long suspected that members of the underworld were rubbing shoulders around the roulette tables of the casino - so Zhou became a target.

Their inquiries during 2006 began to uncover a large-scale drug ring run by an organised Asian crime syndicate, supplying and distributing methamphetamine throughout Auckland, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty.

The head of the syndicate was a man nicknamed Xiao Pang, who lived in China. The gang kept a large stockpile of up to 30kg of methamphetamine in Auckland.

Police surveillance during the 12-month Operation Manu tapped 13,500 phone calls in the two months prior to arrests in December 2006.

Ri Tong Zhou, his associate Zhong Wei and Tauranga man Alan McQuade were the main targets.

The trio have since pleaded guilty to numerous methamphetamine-related charges: McQuade was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment, Zhou to 15 years'.

Wei, a 26-year-old student nicknamed "Visa", drove a late-model Chrysler Crossfire sports car and had more than $550,000 stashed in a deposit box. He will be sentenced in May.

The crime syndicate flooding the streets with methamphetamine was sophisticated and highly organised.

P was both imported and manufactured in New Zealand. The drug was held in bulk by Chen Huang, a high-ranking syndicate member found guilty on a number of supply charges in the High Court a fortnight ago.

Zhou's main source of methamphetamine was Zhong Wei, who in turn took orders from Xiao Pang in China.

When Zhou wanted more drugs, Wei would make a cellphone call to Pang, who arranged with Huang to make the P available.

Then Wei and Huang liaised directly to arrange meeting places for the methamphetamine and money to be exchanged. The pair dealt in half-kilogram or kilogram amounts - with a street value of $500,000 to $1 million.

Zhong Wei then liaised with Zhou, delivering the drugs to his flat in the Scene Apartments in Beach Rd, or on three occasions directly to Zhou's purchaser in a restaurant downstairs.

Zhou had seven identified drug dealers working for him to distribute the P, including McQuade, Lyrice Peri, Jia Wang and Gang Cai, who have since been convicted.

Another alleged dealer, Di Wu, is on the run from police after leaving his lawyer Ron Mansfield's office during a special visit the day before he was scheduled to stand trial.

Zhou sold the P to his dealers in a minimum of one-ounce amounts - an ounce retails for between $14,000 and $17,000.

During the "live phase" of Operation Manu, Zhou supplied up to $3.7 million of methamphetamine between October and December 2006, nearly half of that to McQuade alone.

Travelling between Tauranga and Auckland to collect the drugs from Zhou, McQuade then distributed it to his criminal contacts in motorcycle gangs in the Bay of Plenty. Peri did the same with her network in the Waikato.

Yet the "hub" of the sophisticated network was SkyCity Casino.

Zhou was reluctant to use cellphones to arrange deals, preferring face-to-face contact. He rubbed shoulders with other drug dealers in the VIP lounge to arrange deals, said Crown prosecutor Ross Burns, while money and drugs actually changed hands in the basement carpark.

According to the agreed summary of facts, Zhou used one of his drug dealers, Jia Wang, to gamble money he earned from his drug dealing to conceal it - effectively money laundering.

He paid Wang in P, or vouchers he received from SkyCity as a VIP customer.

She distributed the drug to contacts in West Auckland, and has now been sentenced to five years in prison by Justice Patricia Courtney for her role in the drug ring.

Zhou used another drug dealer, who has yet to stand trial, to deliver P to the VIP room at SkyCity to give his customers as complimentary samples, according to the summary of facts.

Gang Cai, another "trusted lieutenant", once delivered methamphetamine to a buyer at KFC in Ponsonby.

On one occasion, Zhou - nicknamed Four Eye Tong - was seen fraternising with two rival drug dealers in the SkyCity VIP rooms.

Police were watching two Vietnamese men in a separate drug investigation, Operation Ice Age, which revealed that Zhou had been dealing with both men for some time.

Thirteen people were arrested as a result of Operation Manu. Most have either pleaded guilty or been found guilty after trial. Zhou pleaded guilty to 31 methamphetamine-related charges.