Head of the National Organised Crime Group, Greg Williams explains how the Mr Asia drug ring paved the way for NZ's methamphetamine problem. Video/Marty Melville - Edit/Ella Wilks
Fei Wei was sentenced to 11.5 years for her role in a methamphetamine syndicate.
Judge Kevin Glubb acknowledged Wei’s financial desperation but noted her significant involvement and financial gain.
Wei pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including drug importation and money laundering involving nearly $2 million.
When a naive small-business owner turned to loan sharks on WeChat after her Auckland home-staging company fell into financial difficulties during the Covid-19 pandemic, a $50,000 debt quickly ballooned to roughly $700,000 due to steep interest rates.
She saw no way out.
But then the loan sharks suggested she could write off debt by helping a Chinese methamphetamine syndicate with its New Zealand operation, and she reluctantly agreed.
That is how Fei Wei, a 38-year-old single mum with a previously clean record who claims she never used drugs herself, says she eventually found herself in the unexpected position of being what a judge described last week as “the face of the syndicate in New Zealand”.
Auckland District Court Judge Kevin Glubb showed some sympathy for the explanation, but also a fair bit of scepticism, as he ordered a sentence of 11-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for Wei.
“I’m satisfied you got yourself into a difficult situation financially and you saw no way out,” Judge Glubb said.
But at some point, he said, ill-advised self-preservation clearly morphed into simple greed.
“You then continued to offend ... in a deliberate and significant way,” he said.
Voluminous messages intercepted by police throughout a lengthy undercover investigation – dubbed Operation Worthington – show that Wei came to be entranced by the huge sums of money she was directed to handle for the syndicate, some of which ended up in her own pockets.
Over two days in 2021, police carried out 18 search warrants throughout the wider Auckland area as part of an 11-month-long investigation dubbed Operation Worthington, run by the National Organised Crime Group. Photo / NZ Police
“F***, it was quite a rush,” she said in one message to an associate after a night of facilitating a wholesale meth deal and counting the cash that resulted. “It took us more than one hour to do so [count the money].
“I was covered with sweat.”
Once Wei got into the job, she certainly didn’t hold back, the judge observed.
“You had a number of personnel below you doing your bidding, essentially,” he said. “You were not the head of the syndicate, but you played a very important role.”
Bathrobes and ‘yellow rice wine’
By Wei’s sentencing, police and prosecutors had collated an unusually thick, novella-sized summary of facts quoting extensively from her communications with underlings between late 2020 and mid-2021. Most of the messages were found on a phone seized during a search of her property at the termination of the undercover operation, resulting in 55 separate charges.
She was quoted on numerous occasions exchanging messages with a mystery person whom she at times referred to as “boss”.
Towards the end of December 2020, the two discussed recent importations of “MSG”, “yellow rice wine” and “Chinese spirit” – code words for the drugs – and how much Wei had earned recently. If two more expected shipments came in over the next few days, the boss joked, she might reach the “pinnacle” of her “career” with a monthly wage of more than $30,000.
She used the handle “Batman”, but the content of the messages was far from the images of vigilante justice the comic book character evokes – focusing instead on the often mundane day-to-day tasks of drug cartel middle management.
Wei repeatedly gave coded directions to a crew of minions about where and when to pick up illicit packages posted from overseas. The packages would be labelled toys, clothes and other innocuous-sounding items but would have drugs secreted inside – often in the cardboard packaging itself.
Police seized 44kg of methamphetamine while executing search warrants at the conclusion of Operation Worthington. Photo / NZ Police
One such package, containing bathrobes and 3.4kg of methamphetamine, was sent to a West Harbour home that was vacant while on the market. Wei’s legitimate company had furnished the home during the sale period. The gofer tasked with receiving the package appeared to be a real estate agent.
“At the end of the call, Ms Wei asked to be informed when [he] had new listings,” court documents state. “Ms Wei wished to send further importations to these locations.”
Other communications involved Wei arranging times and locations for large-scale sales of the drugs. She never attended the exchanges herself – a sign, prosecutors said, of her management status. She would instead direct others to deliver the narcotics and collect the cash, often hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time.
The police National Organised Crime Group launched Operation Worthington in late 2020 after another major investigation put authorities on the trail of a large-scale money-laundering operation in New Zealand. As investigators dug deeper into the money-laundering operation, it also led them to previously unknown drug importers, including Wei’s group.
Crown prosecutor Daniel Becker acknowledged there were others above her, likely orchestrating the scheme from overseas.
“But for the New Zealand operation ... she was effectively the boots on the ground,” he said. “She made a substantial financial gain.
“She was involved in all aspects of the operation in this country ... She was the head of that part of the syndicate.”
Entrepreneur to underworld
But defence lawyer Andy Wei, who is unrelated to his client despite the same surname, had a different take on her role.
“This is not someone who had a luxury lifestyle as a result of offending,” he said. “She’s not someone who saw the drugs as a fast cash-making machine.
“She was terrified.”
Judge Kevin Glubb. Photo / Dean Purcell
Once she reluctantly got into the illegal drug business, there was no way to get out, he suggested.
The defendant had moved to New Zealand as a student at age 16, distraught over her father’s death in China and wanting to start a new life. She eventually became a permanent resident, obtained jobs at Pizza Hut and then Michael Hill Jeweller and met her husband.
She was abandoned by her husband in 2016 and struggled to raise their now-12-year-old son on her own, her lawyer said. But around 2019, she mistakenly thought she had a good plan in place to overcome the challenges of recent years when she decided to start her own business, he said.
A long term of imprisonment, he said, would have a significant impact on her son.
The lawyer invited several supporters of the defendant to speak on her behalf. All of them asked the judge to give the defendant “another chance”.
“For me, Fei is a nice and sincere and optimistic person,” one friend said. “I know she used to make really serious mistakes before. She’s already deeply realised it and she regretted it.”
The defendant broke down into tears when another friend described having spoken with her son earlier that day.
“Please beg the judge to give my mother another chance,” she recalled the child saying. “She’s a really, really good mother and a nice person.”
Despite the pleas for mercy from the courtroom gallery, lawyers on both sides agreed that the only outcome for Wei would be a lengthy period of imprisonment. It was only a matter of how much the judge settled on.
Wei pleaded guilty last year to 17 charges involving the importation, attempted importation, supply or possession of large quantities of methamphetamine; 31 involving similar schemes for meth ingredient ephedrine; one count of supplying ketamine; and six counts of money laundering involving just under $2 million.
She faced a maximum possible sentence of life imprisonment for many of the charges.
The Crown asked the judge to set a starting point of 18 years for the methamphetamine charges, with uplifts of five years for the ephedrine, two years for the ketamine and one year for the money laundering. Twenty-six years was a high overall starting point, Becker acknowledged, but he said it matched her big role.
“Ms Wei did not simply import one time,” he said. “Ms Wei imported significant amounts ... over a period of time and had a significant if not leading role in doing so.”
The defence sought a starting point of 16 years for the methamphetamine charges with no more than three years in uplifts for all the other charges. He then sought 60% in discounts for her guilty pleas, her previous good character, remorse, personal factors and the impact the sentence would have on her son.
While handing down the 11-and-a-half-year sentence, he reminded the defendant of her son’s pledge that he would wait for her and continue to love her no matter what the outcome.
“It gives me no pleasure sentencing you to that today,” he added. “But it is a reflection of the significant impact this has on the community.”
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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