Police beaten to $1m drug stash

Darryl Leigh Sorby and Robert Charles de Bruin

Drug kingpin Darryl Leigh Sorby left a million-dollar cash payday buried in a Helensville forest - but only holes in the ground were left when police finally found the spot.

Sorby buried $1,190,000 in plastic drums in February 2002, the money said to be the wholesale price owed for 30,000 Ecstasy tablets from South Africa.

It was put in the ground while arrangements were made to send it to South Africa.

Details of the buried treasure emerged during the drug trial of Sorby and Robert Charles de Bruin.

The pair were yesterday given hefty prison terms for their part in an Ecstasy importation racket.

They were found guilty in May on 21 counts of importing and selling the class B drug MDMA (Ecstasy). The offending - which took place between 1999 and 2002 - was conservatively estimated to have been worth $3 million.

Under a Proceeds of Crime ruling - delivered before sentencing - the pair were each ordered to pay $1 million.

The ruling, one of the largest of its type, is likely to cost Sorby a property at Paparoa , a yacht and Subaru Legacy car.

De Bruin will have to sell a property for which he paid more than $420,000 in cash.

Alexander Smith, who was earlier convicted of running the South African end of the drug ring, gave evidence against Sorby and told of helping him bury the cash.

Smith said he always intended to return and dig it up but was arrested in May 2002. He claimed to have never found out what happened to it.

The officer in charge of the case, Detective Stephen Peat, told the Herald police searched the property extensively while Sorby was being held in custody, but someone had got to the cash first.

"All we found were the holes in the ground," he said.

"There is a million dollars floating around out there somewhere."

Sentencing Sorby and de Bruin in the High Court at Auckland, Justice Mark Cooper said the men were guilty of offending "on a massive scale".

He rejected suggestions by defence counsel - Rob Weir for de Bruin and Ron Mansfield for Sorby - that the men played minor roles in the racket, saying they were obviously "heavily involved".

The fact that $379,000 in cash was found at de Bruin's home was evidence of the scale of the operation and his involvement in it, Justice Cooper said.

Both men refused to accept the jury's verdicts and showed little remorse, while de Bruin still maintained his not-guilty plea, the court was told.

Justice Cooper sentenced Sorby to nine years in prison, and imposed a 12-year term on de Bruin.

De Bruin, an Australian citizen, will be deported after completing his sentence.