“I think it’s possible to get away with it.”
Those words would come to haunt ketamine addict Matthew John Keenan, a United Kingdom national who has now been prosecuted in two foreign countries after helping a drug syndicate with smuggling schemes.
The 36-year-old’s latest conviction has extended his New Zealand trip indefinitely after a recent nine-year sentence meted out in Auckland District Court.
Judge Stephen Bonnar made reference to the defendant’s hopeful quote about getting away with it as he announced the prison sentence in August. The judge’s sentencing notes were provided to the Herald this week.
Police had discovered the “get away with it” conversation on an encrypted messaging app on Keenan’s phone. It revealed multiple discussions with a drug syndicate handler in Australia - known by his alias, “Tall” - about juggling multiple shipments of MDMA, ketamine and methamphetamine.
“Mr Keenan suggested concealing drugs in supplements and starting a company selling supplements,” police noted in the agreed summary of facts for the case.
“He suggested rebranding another company’s products with the purpose of moving around drugs, saying, ‘I think it’s possible to get away with it’.”
Judge Bonnar acknowledged that the supplement scheme “never came to fruition”. But it showed Keenan’s role was larger than the defendant might have cared to admit, he suggested.
“First, you came to NZ for the express and sole purpose of receiving and dealing in commercial quantities of drugs,” Judge Bonnar said.
“Your role was an important one within NZ.
“Although you took direction from Tall, you were also proactive in discussions with him and in making suggestions as how to manage imports and exports into and out of NZ. You operated relatively autonomously within NZ.”
He said he agreed with Crown prosecutor Liesel Seybold that Keenan appeared to be Tall’s “right-hand man” in NZ.
Keenan pleaded guilty earlier this year to importing and supplying methamphetamine, both of which carry maximum possible sentences of life imprisonment. He also faced shorter sentences for possession of MDMA for supply, as well as importing and exporting ketamine.
It was an act of laziness between him and Tall that resulted in his arrest, court documents suggest.
Tall would ship the drugs from overseas to Airbnbs and other addresses in NZ that were provided by Keenan. Sometimes the drugs would be sent to an address near where Keenan was staying and he would intercept the packages.
Keenan would also send illicit packages to addresses in Australia provided by Tall.
The two ran into trouble in August last year after using the same Torbay house twice for two subsequent shipments of methamphetamine.
The person who lived at the address, who knew neither man, handed the first package over to Keenan after the defendant showed up at his house and lied that he had accidentally put down the wrong address.
But the resident got suspicious when another package turned up three weeks later. He opened the package then took it to police, who later confirmed that the 3.24kg of crystalline substance inside it was methamphetamine.
That same day, Keenan was seen on CCTV footage wandering around the property looking for the parcel. He returned to the address the next day and rang the doorbell, but the resident denied any knowledge of another parcel.
Keenan was arrested the next day after the resident and a police officer both spotted him loitering in the neighbourhood.
A search was conducted a short time later of the Auckland Central apartment where he was staying, resulting in a find of 3.1kg of methamphetamine. The two hauls would have resulted in “60,000 doses of misery” for NZ communities, police said at the time of his arrest.
Police also seized his cellphone, resulting in a bevvy of additional charges after extracting his encrypted messages.
Court documents don’t outline when Keenan arrived in NZ, but conversations recovered by police showed him discussing drug shipments with Tall dating back to June 2024.
In one conversation, Keenan provided an East Tāmaki address and Tall replied, “Send the Kenny there”. Kenny is slang for ketamine.
After the package was cleared by Customs days later, Keenan added: “I need to start doing more... shit being poor”.
The next day, the two discussed providing samples of “Md” or “mandy” and “ket” - MDMA and ketamine - to a prospective buyer.
“Not bad memory for a ket head,” Keenan said of himself after doing some calculations for a 2.5kg sale.
He added later that day that he needed to make rent and vehicle payments.
But their luck started to run out as early as July 26, when NZ Customs intercepted a package containing just under 3kg of methamphetamine. It had been addressed to “James Keenan” in Mt Wellington.
On August 23, Australian Customs intercepted a parcel labelled as industrial glue but actually containing ketamine. The duo later argued after the shipment never arrived, with Tall accusing Keenan of using some of the ketamine for himself.
Another package containing 2.7kg of methamphetamine was intercepted by Customs on September 9, but by then Keenan was already in custody.
During the recent sentencing hearing, defence lawyer Ryan Jones noted that Keenan was a daily user of ketamine at the time of offending. His drug use had “gone off the rails” about four years earlier, the court was told.
The defendant said he first began dealing drugs in the UK to fund his drug habits, which also included cocaine use.
“You tell me that you acquired a debt to your suppliers and you were given an opportunity to repay the debt which had accumulated,” Judge Bonnar noted.
“You accept that you came to NZ for the sole purpose of receiving and dealing with parcels of drugs.”
He had previous convictions in the UK between 2017 and 2023 for drug-related matters and an offence against a person.
But more significantly, the judge noted, he was convicted in Spain in September 2023 for participating in organised crime relating to the supply of drugs.
He should have been still serving his sentence from Spain - six years and one day’s imprisonment - when he would have arrived in NZ.
No further information about the Spanish case was available, Judge Bonnar said.
The judge ordered a 12-year starting point for the methamphetamine offending and a two-year uplift for the MDMA and ketamine charges.
He then applied 40% in total discounts for his guilty pleas, his background of addiction, remorse and for the hardship on his young son having a father serving a prison sentence “on the opposite side of the world”.
An additional uplift of eight months was added for the Spain offending, resulting in the nine-year end sentence.
Judge Bonnar noted that Keenan’s risk of re-offending had been assessed as moderate to high.
Keenan will have to serve at least one-third of the prison sentence before he can begin to apply for parole. He is likely to be deported when eventually released.
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 NZ.
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