Claudia Romero Lopez and Peter Wellman were both sent to prison for their part in a South American-linked syndicate smuggling Class A drugs into New Zealand. Facebook Image / NZME Graphic
When a joint police and Customs operation, Operation Bali, culminated in 2022, officers seized 28kg of imported methamphetamine, 5kg of cocaine and $450,000 in cash. RIC STEVENS looks at the people who are now serving hefty jail terms for their parts in the South American-linked drug syndicate.
Claudia Romero Lopez grew up in poverty, enduring a chaotic and abusive childhood caught up among the infamous drug cartels of South America.
In 2011, she got the chance to escape her traumatic past and begin a new life in New Zealand.
But she didn’t leave her old life in Colombia completely behind her.
She stayed in contact with her ex-husband back home, an alleged drug dealer named Eddy, and when her son joined her in New Zealand some years later, she helped him in his drug-dealing activities too.
Now she is in prison.
So is her Kiwi husband, her son and another South American immigrant, who all joined forces in a criminal group to import Class A drugs – cocaine and methamphetamine.
The Wellington-based syndicate operated at least between February 2021 and June 2022, importing an estimated 28.6kg of methamphetamine and 5kg of cocaine.
A joint police and Customs investigation, codenamed Operation Bali, was started after Customs intercepted several drug consignments at the border.
The amounts in each and the packaging led Customs to believe the consignments were somehow related to each other.
They notified police, and a joint investigation was set up, with a core group of five Customs investigators and between five and 10 police officers.
Some of the suspects were identified as foreign nationals who were using Spanish in their communications.
Spanish-speaking police officers were brought in to provide translations in “close to real time”, according to Detective Senior Sergeant Trevor Collett of the National Organised Crime Group.
Collett told NZME that authorities have seen an increase in methamphetamine and cocaine coming into New Zealand in recent years from Central and South America.
He said this could be attributed to the drug cartels in those areas expanding into the South Pacific.
“New Zealand is considered by international standards a very lucrative market for the sale of methamphetamine and cocaine,” Collett said.
“Users in New Zealand pay premium prices for the controlled drugs, and suppliers such as the South American cartels can maximise their profit by supplying the New Zealand market.”
In Operation Bali, the drugs arrived in packages and consignments addressed to fictitious people, or hidden in imported items, including the legs of a wooden table, a plate from a roading compactor, a metal cog, and a sausage grill.
Some of it was even in a package containing a painting of the Virgin Mary.
Operation Bali culminated in June 2022, when police with 11 search warrants raided properties in Wellington, the Hutt Valley and Hamilton.
The searches uncovered not only drugs, but also more than $450,000 in cash.
The subsequent court cases resulted in hefty prison sentences for syndicate members, handed down by Justice Helen McQueen in the High Court at Wellington.
Romero Lopez’s New Zealand husband, Peter Alexander Wellman, got the stiffest prison sentence in the group after pleading guilty to importing cocaine, importing and supplying methamphetamine, conspiring to possess methamphetamine for supply, and money laundering.
He was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison, with no chance of parole for three years and four months.
Another leading member of the group, Sergio Antonio Vargas Gonzalez, was sentenced to seven years and three months for importing methamphetamine and cocaine.
Romero Lopez’s son, Juan Sebastian Galicia Romero, pleaded guilty to importing methamphetamine and cocaine and conspiring to possess meth for supply. He was sentenced to six years and nine months in jail.
Romero Lopez herself, who said she was acting in deference to Wellman and to please her son, pleaded guilty to importing cocaine and money laundering. She was sent to prison for four years.
Gonzalez’s former partner, Frances Petersen, pleaded guilty to being a party to the importation of methamphetamine and received a sentence of eight and a half months of home detention.
Court documents say Wellman used his business, Speciality Glaziers, to rent a storage container where the drugs were extracted from the imported goods and processed.
When police searched the house that Wellman and Romero Lopez shared, they found $144,000 hidden in the hot-water cupboard.
The money laundering transactions for which Romero Lopez and Wellman were charged involved buying vehicles with cash – the couple paid $25,500 for a Nissan X-Trail SUV, and Wellman handed over $48,000 in cash for a caravan.
They explained their offending by saying it stemmed from a setback which caused them pain and financial hardship. Wellman and Romero Lopez were involved in a serious car accident in 2018.
Wellman’s ability to work was compromised by his injuries, and he turned to meth to deal with the pain while he was working.
Before then, he had been considered a hard-working and highly regarded member of the community, according to references provided to the court from a former employer, a neighbour and friends.
Wellman had previous convictions, not specified by the sentencing judge, but apart from a driving offence in 2002, they were all more than 30 years ago.
But after Wellman started taking meth, he became addicted. His use increased dramatically, and he needed money to pay for the drug at the same time that he was earning less from his business and using up his savings.
He was offered the chance to obtain meth at a reduced cost if he became a supplier and found other people to sell it to.
Romero Lopez was described as having an “extremely difficult personal history” in South America before moving to New Zealand 14 years ago.
She came from poverty. Her early life was unstable and abusive, chaotic and traumatic. She was caught up in a gang-related drug cartel, although she later claimed that she had never used illegal drugs herself.
She had no previous convictions.
She was married for a while to the alleged drug supplier Eddy.
She later met and married Wellman in New Zealand, but suffered spinal injuries in the 2018 car crash, leaving her unable to work.
Romero Lopez claimed she was unaware of the cash found at her home, telling a probation officer that she looked after the house, and he looked after the money.
“[I] didn’t question where the money came from,” she was quoted as saying. “Women from my culture and situation don’t do that.”
Romero Lopez said that some of her offending was to help her son, Galicia Romero, who took a leading role in the syndicate. She said she would “try to do anything” to make her son happy.
Galicia Romero worked with contacts overseas to send the drug imports to several New Zealand addresses.
Court documents say he was personally responsible for the importation of 2.5kg of cocaine and 1kg of meth, and was found to have $63,450 hidden in a PVC pipe in his home.
Galicia Romero, 27, was born in Colombia, and a report prepared for the court said that he grew up in the context of crime, violence and the idea that people could only succeed and get out of poverty through illegal activities.
Another report said that when he was in his late teens, his father encouraged him to get to know older men involved in criminal activities, because they had money and status.
Galicia Romero joined his mother and two brothers in New Zealand under a family resettlement programme.
He has previous convictions and has struggled with addiction to cocaine and alcohol.
He faces possible deportation after finishing his sentence, and thus separation from his New Zealand-born son.
Vargaz Gonzalez was involved in importing the lion’s share of the syndicate’s drugs – 15.2kg of methamphetamine and 2.5kg of cocaine.
Police found $299,000 hidden in a storage locker he had access to.
He also directed his then partner, Petersen, to provide addresses where drug consignments could be delivered.
These were sent to fictitious people, including “Teresa Hendricks”. Teresa is Petersen’s middle name, and Hendricks is her mother’s maiden name.
Petersen is a former psychology student who, according to court documents, is at risk of being trapped in a lifestyle of dancing in nightclubs, vulnerable to drug and alcohol use and predatory men.
She applied for a discharge without conviction and name suppression, and was unsuccessful on both counts.
Detective Senior Sergeant Collett said offshore drug suppliers were using increasingly sophisticated methods to conceal drugs coming into the country.
In many cases, even the recipients don’t know how the consignments will arrive and in what form until they receive the goods.
Wastewater analysis and increased seizures show that cocaine use in New Zealand is on the rise.
The national drugs in wastewater testing programme estimated that in the first quarter of 2025, the national consumption of the drug was 4.5kg a week.
This compares with 3.3kg in the first quarter of last year.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.