A senior member of the Hells Angels has been arrested in Taskforce Morpheus after a drug lab was allegedly found in his Auckland home. Photo / Supplied
A senior member of the Hells Angels has been arrested in Taskforce Morpheus after a drug lab was allegedly found in his Auckland home. Photo / Supplied
A senior member of the Hells Angels gang has been arrested after police allegedly found a methamphetamine lab inside his Auckland home.
The raid was part of a transtasman crackdown on the outlaw motorcycle club, called Taskforce Morpheus, in which 106 people were arrested in New Zealand and Australia.
Detectives seized 35 firearms, 740,000 illicit cigarettes, a wide range of drugs - cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA, GHB - and $100,000 cash in the co-ordinated search warrants across both countries.
Taskforce Morpheus was a joint initiative across Australian state police and various law enforcement agencies, as well as the National Organised Crime Group in New Zealand, to “target the highest threat outlaw motorcycle gangs [OMCG]”.
“OMCG members have a significant footprint in a range of organised criminal activities including illicit drug production and distribution, firearms trafficking, money laundering, tax evasion and more recently, infiltrating the illicit tobacco market,” said Victoria Police in a statement about the joint operation.
“OMCGs are ranked as the largest serious and organised crime cohort impacting Australia and New Zealand.”
As part of the Morpheus raids, detectives in the Motorcycle Gang Unit allegedly found a clandestine drug laboratory at the Auckland home owned by a senior patched Hells Angel nearly two weeks ago.
Court documents show the 35-year-old has been charged with possession of equipment and chemicals, such as hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, used to manufacture methamphetamine.
A 29-year-old prospect for the gang, who lives at the same address, has been jointly charged with the same offences.
A media spokesperson for Police National Headquarters did not respond to questions about New Zealand’s involvement in Taskforce Morpheus.
But Detective Superintendent Greg Williams was quoted in the press release issued by Victoria Police this week.
As well as the meth lab, Williams said police found 68 LSD tabs and 180 grams of methamphetamine during the simultaneous raids at two Auckland properties linked to the patched Hells Angel on August 5.
Two other gang associates were arrested in Wellington when police discovered methamphetamine, cannabis, magic mushrooms, testosterone and a handgun, Willams said.
Marked by a distinctive “death head” insignia (a skull with winged helmet), the Hells Angels are one of the largest and oldest outlaw motorcycle clubs in the world, and highly respected in the New Zealand criminal fraternity.
Several recent investigations have allegedly uncovered links between local members of the gang and large-scale drug trafficking.
Earlier this year, the Herald revealed how the inner workings of the New Zealand drug trade were exposed through encrypted messages exchanged between a Hells Angel and an undercover DEA agent.
Murray Michael Matthews, a patched member of the Auckland chapter of the motorcycle gang, and Marc Patrick Johnson, one of the country’s original meth cooks, were arrested in Romania in November 2020.
Matthews and Johnson believed they were talking with a large-scale drug trafficker. Instead, they exchanged dozens of encrypted messages with a Drug Enforcement Administration agent in Texas.
The price of meth, co-operation (and conflict) between gangs in the drug trade and the potential corruption of police were among the topics discussed, according to the messages obtained by the Herald.
“It’s f...ed here, bro,” Matthews said. “We have too many gangs here and heaps of Asian imports that keep sending the shit to these clowns.
“Because of this, the pigs [police] have knuckled down on the gangs. There is a respect thing here where most gangs work together but no one I know out of the lot of us has had a consistent line of work [drugs] ... I have sleepless nights thinking about it.”
The whereabouts of Matthews and Johnson are currently unknown after the pair absconded from Romania while on bail.
More than $2.4 million in cash was seized as part of Operation Samson in July 2022. Photo / Supplied
In other recent covert investigations, several other Hells Angels have been charged with drug importing or money laundering.
Police seized more than $2.4 million cash in Operation Samson in July 2022, then discovered 190kg of cocaine inside a boiler machine a few months later.
In a separate case last, Andrew John Sisson - believed to be the president of the Auckland-based Nomads chapter of the gang - was convicted of running a meth ring in Manawatū. He was sentenced to 14 years and eight months in prison.
Sisson had previously been jailed in 1999 for being one of the first people in New Zealand to be convicted of manufacturing the drug.
Jared Savage covers crime and justice issues, with a particular interest in organised crime. He joined the Herald in 2006 and has won a dozen journalism awards in that time, including twice being named Reporter of the Year. He is also the author of Gangland and Gangster’s Paradise.
