Ex-con Brent Jeremy Allen’s latest legal troubles started when two guns he had illegally purchased off Trade Me with a phoney firearms licence ended up being found by police during unrelated arrests in Auckland just weeks later.
Then investigators – looking into how the rifles got onto the streets, their muzzles illegally sawn off for easier concealment – obtained access to Allen’s phone records.
His troubles got worse.
The 40-year-old Papakura resident appeared in Auckland District Court for sentencing last week on multiple guns charges, as well as for a series of text message drug deals associated with his phone number.
Records showed him peddling cannabis, MDMA and GBL in not remotely subtle terms.
“Should I come over I got a couple of drinks and some really wicked MDMA,” he typed in one message – using “drinks” to refer to GBL, also known as fantasy or liquid ecstasy. “You have to try this stuff it’s so good.”
Judge Evangelos Thomas noted that Allen appeared to be a “pretty low-level dealer”, but the extra layer of charges resulted in his sentence being increased to the point where home detention was not a consideration.
Most of the judge’s admonishment, however, was devoted to the weapons scheme.
“You dragged into this an innocent member of the public,” he said of the legitimate firearms licence holder whose identity was stolen, adding that the defendant then got rid of the guns “in a way that allowed them to be used ... by criminal elements”.
“It goes without saying that there is a very significant public interest in responding firmly against anyone who contributes in any way to uncontrolled firearms being in the community,” the judge continued.
“I can refer you to many families – innocent families – whose lives would be much different if we were better able to control restricted firearms in the underworld.”
Court documents state Allen set up a fraudulent Trade Me account in March last year under the name of the man whose licence he had forged. Two days later, he purchased a $210 Stirling M20 Semi Auto 22LR rifle from a seller in Torbay, on Auckland’s North Shore.
Allen had superimposed his own photo over that of the legitimate licence holder and altered the date of birth to more closely match his own age.
When the fraud went off seemingly without a hitch, he tried again just over a week later, this time agreeing to pay the same seller $605 for three more rifles. He paid $300 in cash but then ripped off the seller for the other half, promising to make a bank transfer that never happened.
Just less than two weeks later, police found one of the three guns while executing a search warrant at a Clendon Park home.
“An associate of Mr Allen’s has been charged with unlawful possession of the firearm,” court documents state.
Exactly two months after the search warrant arrest, police discovered the first gun Allen had bought during a traffic stop on Auckland Central’s Karangahape Rd. That also resulted in the arrest of an associate.
Allen initially denied having or using a forged firearms licence, telling police he had received the guns from the licence holder whose identity he was later found to have stolen. The victim, however, did not know Allen, police pointed out.
“He claims he did this [picked up the guns] as a favour to an unknown associate,” explains the agreed summary of facts. “He states he took the firearms to an unspecified address in Albany and doesn’t know what happened after that.”
Judge Thomas described the summary of facts as “very vague”.
“What does the Crown say Mr Allen did?” he asked during the hearing. “Who cut it down? Did he know it was going to be cut down?”
Crown prosecutor Eleanor Cato acknowledged that some questions remain unanswered, including how the items ended up cut down and in the hands of other people.
“It’s reasonable to conclude that he was buying them for illegal purposes,” she said.
Allen faced up to four years’ imprisonment for a representative charge of unlawfully possessing a firearm and up to 10 years for using forged documents. Offering to supply MDMA and GBL both carry 14-year maximum sentences.
He had initially been charged with supplying a Class A drug, which would have carried a maximum possible sentence of life imprisonment, but that charge was later withdrawn.
Allen also pleaded guilty to two charges of obtaining by deception two electric bicycles that were ordered online. He was sentenced to a short prison term in 2022 for similar offending.
Defence lawyer Alex Slipper presented to the court several certificates his client had earned at a drug rehab centre over the past two months. But the defendant had put a lot of thought into the matter and decided a short prison term followed by post-release conditions would be better for his continued recovery than being ordered to stay at the rehab centre under home detention conditions, Slipper said.
His client had formed a drug habit at a young age due to a difficult childhood and his addiction, accompanied by dishonesty offending, had defined his life for most of the past decade, the lawyer explained.
“To be blunt ... I think Mr Allen’s remand in custody has actually been somewhat beneficial to him,” Slipper added. “He knows that he’s capable of more.
“He realised the associates he has been interacting with had enabled him to not address his addictions.”
That being said, Slipper argued that the sentence shouldn’t be too long after taking into account his client’s remorse, rehab, guilty pleas and background.
The judge ordered a starting point of three years for the gun-related charges then uplifted it by nine months for the drugs and dishonesty offending and 2.5% for his criminal history. He then allowed 35% in reductions for mitigating factors.
“It’s getting worse,” the judge said of illegal guns in the community. “The fear of it is getting worse. The court’s response to it is getting heavier.
“... There are offences from which our citizens need to be firmly protected.”
The resulting sentence was two years and three months’ imprisonment, just shy of the two-year mark where a judge can consider non-custodial alternatives. The judge then added three months of imprisonment in exchange for cancelling $15,000 in fines from previous cases.
Another $12,000 in restitution to his previous victims remains outstanding.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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