The son of drug smuggler and prison escaper Brian Curtis has been sent to prison for conspiring to supply drugs.
In the Auckland District Court yesterday, Judge Russell Johnson sent Brent Neville Curtis, aged 41, to prison for four years for conspiring to supply methamphetamine, or speed.
A jury found Curtis guilty after a seven-week trial.
Brian Curtis, 67, was recaptured in July after being on the run for nearly eight years. He is now in Auckland Prison at Paremoremo.
Brent Curtis was one of six people sentenced yesterday for conspiring to supply methamphetamine. The five men and one woman had either pleaded guilty or were found guilty by the jury.
Another of the men was sentenced to four years in prison, three were sentenced to three and a half years in prison, and the woman was sentenced to 21 months in prison with leave to apply for home detention.
They were caught during Operation Mexico, a police investigation that stretched between October 1999 and January 2000.
Judge Johnson said there was no evidence which showed Curtis in contact with Class B drugs.
However, he referred to a "stunning venomous" phone message left by Curtis, "which could be understood to show that he had some kind of controlling influence" over another of the men.
He said police intercepted discussions at an Onehunga house during Operation Mexico, which the court heard during the trial.
Though he could not put an upper limit on the value of the drugs involved, planned transactions were worth tens of thousands of dollars.
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