A man who spent nearly a year on the run after escaping prison while on compassionate leave to attend a funeral has been sentenced to nine years for his part in a bungled scheme to import 37kg of methamphetamine from Iran inside pails of grease.
Talakai Finau’s sentence for the meth scheme, his flight from justice and other violent crimes could have been even higher were it not for his lawyer Devon Kemp, who identified an error in the Judge’s sums at his sentencing hearing in the Auckland District Court on Friday.
His descent from gainful employment to meth ring stand-over man and fugitive came after Finau survived being shot in the face a little over two years before his drug offending, Kemp told the court as he successfully argued for discounts for this and other factors including his youth and guilty plea.
Finau was shot in the eye, leaving him blind and with a bullet lodged in his brain, during a home invasion in Mt Roskill in February 2020.
A report prepared for the court said he suffered lasting physical and psychological effects from the shooting.
Finau was one of several people arrested as part of Operation Lithium, a joint police and Customs investigation centreing on a container filled with lithium grease originating from Iran. Also inside the container was 37.4kg of methamphetamine.
He initially pleaded not guilty and missed a trial date while on the run, requiring the trial to be rescheduled, but later reversed his plea, apparently on the advice of his mother. Several others are headed to jury trial for their alleged roles in the plot.
The Crown acknowledged Finau held a narrow role in the importation scheme, becoming involved only two days before the operation was terminated and police swooped in.
Crown prosecutor Sam Meyerhoff said it was nevertheless an important role, with Finau threatening to kill a legitimate businessman and his son to secure his identification card and therefore the release of the shipment.
“To get the import cleared they needed a man’s identification and the man needed to be threatened to get it,” Meyerhoff said.
Judge Edwin Paul, reading a Crown summary, said it appeared the consignment of grease and meth was imported in the name of a legitimate tyre company not involved in the import.
But others also allegedly involved in the scheme had used a fake email address for that company to seek information about the fate of the container.
It was seized by Customs in Tauranga on May 19, 2022, who found 37.4kg of meth hidden inside pails of lithium grease.
Ten days later, a man who, like Finau, was a member of Mt Roskill street gang the Junior Don Kings (J.D.K) asked him to obtain the identification details of a director of the tyre company to secure the release of the container.
On May 30, 2022, the director and his son parked in their driveway at home, and Finau pulled in behind them. He said he had been sent by another man involved in the business. The director was suspicious and Finau left.
The following day, Finau went to the tyre shop, saying he was willing to pay $2000 for the director’s ID. He told the director he knew where his wife worked before threatening to kill him.
The director replied he was not afraid to die.
Finau then told him he knew which school his son went to and threatened to kill him as well.
The director went to police and Finau was arrested on June 1. Police had earlier searched his home on an unrelated matter and found an AR-15-style rifle and more than 200 rounds of ammunition.
The following year, Finau was granted compassionate bail from Whanganui prison to attend a funeral, but did not return.
Despite a police appeal for information and a release of his mugshot he was not arrested until 10 months later, on March 14 this year. His trial had to be adjourned as a result of his time on the lam.
Judge Paul took aim at Finau taking advantage of compassionate bail, saying it risked ruining it for others who were honest and would return.
“I find your absconding on compassionate bail, which was clearly a false claim of compassionate bail, particularly reprehensible,” the Judge said.
Finau also admitted police charges relating to the robbery and assault of a housemate while on electronically monitored bail at a Grace Foundation property in Whanganui.
Meyerhoff sought a starting point of 15-and-a-half years for the lead offences of importing meth and threatening to kill, with uplifts for the other offending that would have taken the final sentence north of 17 years.
But the prosecutor acknowledged he was entitled to discounts for his guilty plea, head injury and youth that would reduce the sentence to 14 years on the Crown charges.
Kemp sought a starting point of 10 years in prison for the importation and threats, saying the Crown failed to take into account his much lower degree of culpability compared to his alleged co-offenders. His role was analogous to a “catcher”, the term for a person who receives drug shipments, Kemp said.
“It wasn’t a particularly sophisticated affair at all, and Mr Finau’s offending was the least sophisticated of all.”
Kemp argued his client should receive a discount for his youth. He was 21 at the time of the offending, so less able to exercise rational long-term thinking, the lawyer argued, along with further reductions for the head injury resulting from being shot in the face.
His long-standing addiction issues had been exacerbated by the shooting, but he had now completed rehabilitation programmes, not an easy thing to do while on remand, Kemp argued.
Finau was brought up without a father, struggled in school and was lured into a gang because he was gifted a motorbike, not uncommon in South Auckland, Kemp said.
He sought a 20% discount for psychological and personal circumstances, the same amount for his guilty plea and 5% for his rehabilitative efforts.
Judge Paul adopted a 13-and-a-half year start point, increased to 15.5 years for the police charges and the absconding while on compassionate bail.
The Judge then applied a 15% discount for the early guilty plea, saying that meant the victim did not need to go through the trauma of a trial and recounting the threats.
A further discount of 10% was given for youth and rehabilitative efforts in custody, alongside a 15% discount for personal factors including his fall into the gang life and his head injury which was also part of his descent into crime and away from the positive path of employment he had previously been on, the Judge said.
Concurrent sentences of a year each were imposed for the robbery and injury of his housemate, and nine months for escaping custody.
Judge Paul was initially going to impose a sentence of about 11 years before Kemp spotted an error in the calculations. He then corrected his sentence to nine years and four months in prison.
“Mr Finau, lucky you’ve got a lawyer that’s good at his maths,” the Judge said.
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