The first bitcoin automatic teller machine in Queensland has been seized as part of an investigation into an alleged drug trafficking network linked to the Bandidos bikie gang.
Police gang squad officers seized the ATM on Friday morning in a joint raid with customs officials at the Roastery cafe in South Brisbane.They allege the cafe was the “commercial front” for a multimillion-dollar methamphetamine trafficking network directed by a former leader of the Bandidos Brisbane Centro chapter.Police are yet to determine whether bitcoin transactions – which have been accepted by the cafe as payment since it installed the machine in May – played any role in the alleged trafficking.Superintendent Mick Niland said computer experts were “forensically examining the machine as we speak”.The cafe owner, a 34-year-old South Brisbane man who owns a 12.5% share of the ATM, is charged with trafficking ice and cocaine over a three-year period.
Bitcoin is a digital currency whose growing popularity worldwide, chiefly for online transactions, contrasts with the mainstream finance sector’s reluctance to embrace them because of their fluctuating market value.Centro have been under investigation by Queensland’s crime and corruption commission (CCC) for alleged drug and violence offences since 2012, when one of its members was suspected of murdering Jei “Jack” Lee during a cocaine deal.A divisive presence in the Brisbane underworld and disparaged by older gang members as “Nike bikies” who don’t even ride bikes, most Centro members resigned last year in the wake of the Newman government’s punitive laws targeting bikie gangs.Niland said Centro was “one of those crime gangs we knew would continue their criminal ways [despite quitting their club]”.
“Most of them didn’t have a motorcycle per se. Their entire being was greed. Their motivation was money and they were ruthless in how they went about it,” he said.CCC official Kathleen Florian said the gang had shown itself to be “incredibly resilient, cohesive and disciplined”, attempting to insulate themselves from prosecution by using “intermediaries to undertake their criminal activities”.This led to a “particularly difficult” investigation that rated as “one of the largest and most sophisticated” ever undertaken by the agency, she said.Florian said investigators examined the bikies’ level of control over six different drug syndicates.The CCC has applied in the supreme court to freeze more than $1m in assets linked to the former Centro leader under criminal proceeds laws.The man, 28, of Coorparoo, is accused of orchestrating the drug network, attempting to import some 10kg of ContacNT cold medicine to make ice, and organising a secret laboratory that was one of the few facilities capable producing the drug in Queensland.The network allegedly trafficked ice and methylamphetamine oil, which can easily be converted to ice.The cafe was one of 19 places raided across Brisbane, Logan, the Gold Coast and Cairns by the joint taskforce on Friday morning.A dozen men over the course of the two-year operation have been charged with drug trafficking, seven of them members or former members of the Bandidos.Half of these were charged on Friday, when police also seized $134,000 cash, 40L of acetone allegedly used to make ice and 10L of an ingredient to make the drug GHB.Police seized more than $2.6m worth of drugs over the course of the investigation.
