Herald Sun, 24 November 2007, journalist Greg Thom
Cookin' in the 'burbs
This quiet Ashburton house was the centre of Victoria's biggest backyard drugs laboratory, where three men made speed out the back and, in a front room, used their profits to play the stockmarket.
"J ACKPOT!" shouted Sen-Det David O'Riley, as he gazed around the dingy interior of the suburban bungalow. A tip led O'Riley to suspect the rented Ashburton house was the site of an amphetamines laboratory. And not just any old laboratory, either. It was the state's biggest and held about $30 million in drugs when police raided 33 Gloucester Rd.
As a veteran of scores of backyard amphetamine-lab busts, O'Riley hadn't seen anything like it. Never. "We walked into a house that was just amazing. It was one of the best set up (amphetamine) labs you would ever see," he says.
O'Riley moved in with officers of the Victoria Police clandestine laboratories squad on July 24, 2003. The gang was not at home, giving police an opportunity to find out exactly what they were up against.
The raid four years ago was the start of a long-running investigation that ended with two men, Caner Paksoy and Mark Chandler, pleading guilty last week in the County Court to running what police believe to be the biggest illegal amphetamines laboratory in Victorian history. The third defendant, Ozgur Simsek, died after falling and hitting his head outside a Richmond brothel.
Back to the police raid in 2003, O'Riley entered a room crammed with stills, glass beakers and containers of sulphuric acid and ammonia. To the untrained eye it resembled something like a mad scientists' convention. The number of amphetamine labs raided by police has more than doubled, from 30 in 2004 to 64 last year. Police have already kicked down the doors of more than 60 backyard labs this year. The makeshift labs are so volatile, police have special training and wear protective suits and breathing apparatus when dismantling them.
O'Riley describes the Gloucester Rd lab as one of the cleanest, most sophisticated labs he'd ever seen. "It was clean . . . and they had just the best of the best equipment," he says. That wasn't all. While the gang made the drugs in the back, a computer in the front served as an office, where the men played the stockmarket with proceeds from drug sales.
So how did it all go wrong?
The trail that led police to Gloucester Rd began in early 2003, when police at Glen Waverley regional response unit arrested Levent Alparslan for drug offences. Phone intercepts revealed what police believed were coded conversations relating to deals between Alparslan and his suspected supplier, Simsek. It was Simsek who rented the house in Gloucester Rd.
As difficult as it was to tear themselves away from the mountain of evidence in the Ashburton home, the police intruders had work to do.
Satisfied they had had a glimpse of a large drug-making operation, they filmed the scene and collected samples for analysis.
Police hung back and began to gather more evidence. Tests confirmed the substance as methamphetamine. Other chemicals were used to make amphetamines. "The chemists had never seen anything like it," O'Riley says. "They had never seen amphetamine made that way before."
Police planted listening devices and a camera was hidden too, giving police a perfect view of the team "cooking" the amphetamines. For good measure, police intercepted the gang's telephones as well. Operation Riant provided overwhelming evidence of a multi-million-dollar drugs operation -- it was the oldest undetected amphetamines lab in the state. Documents seized suggested the gang had been making drugs for many years before the 2003 raid.
During one of their covert incursions, police removed a glass flask containing more than a litre of liquid. Tests revealed it to be amphetamine base oil. The sample was more than 90 per cent pure. "That in itself was a large commercial quantity, just sitting there waiting to be crystallised into powder form, so we knew we were on the right track," O'Riley says.
Amphetamine production was not the only thing Simsek, Paksoy and Chandler had in common. All three were originally from Mildura. Paksoy and Simsek were mates at St Joseph's school, which Chandler also attended. After moving to Melbourne in the early '80s, Simsek, Chandler and Paksoy ran a fish-and-chip shop together in Glen Waverley. Chandler also lived with Simsek for a period at the Gloucestor Rd house before moving into his own place in Ivanhoe.
Simsek eventually moved into a $900,000 home in Hawthorn, but continued to rent the Ashburton property.
The reason why became obvious to O'Riley and his colleagues. They were struck not only by the gang's sophisticated laboratory set-up, but by the way they prided themselves on making high-quality drugs.
"I'm a big fan of purity," Chandler admitted to police after his arrest. "I've always seen the s--- other people produce and it's absolutely . . . it's horrible, you know. This stuff is terribly impure . . . it's dangerous. If I could make something that was pharmaceutically pure, that would be my goal."
O'Riley says it soon became apparent the trio were not your average criminals. Simsek and Chandler had studied chemistry at university, knowledge they put to good use in their suburban drugs lab. Police found bookshelves crammed with chemistry text books. "They were very, very clever people when it came to the chemistry side of things," O'Riley says. "Police later seized many folders containing hand-written notes, sketches, calculations and material downloaded from the internet relating to the production of amphetamines.
More startling to the gang's police eavesdroppers was the revelation they actually had a second drugs lab -- at Chandler's Ivanhoe home. "We worked it out through conversations we listened in on that Chandler had actually made about 50g of methamphetamine hydrochloride in Ivanhoe and brought it to Ashburton," O'Riley says. "He and Paksoy then smoked it, using some sort of bong. Chandler had successfully made it on a small scale back in Ivanhoe. Now they wanted to mass-produce it in Ashburton."
When police raided the Ivanhoe house, they found a secret lab at least equal in sophistication to Ashburton. The lab was being run as a kind of experimental facility, feeding directly into the main operation in Ashburton. Chandler was even making his own sophisticated drug-making equipment. "He had drugs I had never heard of," O'Riley says.
Chandler later admitted to police he wasn't afraid to experiment. "I'd become the research-and-development department, to investigate whether things could be possible or not."
The gang's pride in their work and detailed record-keeping was a boon to police in terms of evidence. Investigators discovered receipts for the purchase of chemicals dating back to 1993, along with meticulous record-keeping of their drug-making.
"They were unbelievable. They were anal almost," O'Riley says. "They'd do the cook and clean the lab. It would all be scrubbed down and be spotless." "At the time we raided, they were trying to distil almost a kilogram of amphetamines. We knew there was half a kilogram of powder in the house, and they had another process up and going that involved more than 900g of methamphetamine," O'Riley says. "They were knee deep into it when we did the raid and they were all there, share-trading on the computer."
Police seized drugs worth an estimated $30 million. A trailer in the driveway of the Ashburton house contained enough chemicals to produce a further $45 million in methamphetamine.
There is little evidence, however, that the gang led an extravagant lifestyle. Chandler says payment for his drug-making expertise was ad hoc to say the least. "It was sort of taken for granted that if I did some work a bit of money would come every now and again, and I could rely on not having to worry about where the next meal was coming from. "I'd drop around and they'd (Paksoy and Simsek) say, 'Here, have some money'. I'd get an envelope (containing up to $5000) or something like that."
Far from hardened criminals, Simsek and Chandler co-operated fully with police. O'Riley says it was almost as though being busted had come as a relief. Admitting to suffering from depression, Chandler says he never planned to be a career criminal.
When asked by police why he became involved, Simsek was more succinct. "Does stupidity count as a reason?" Simsek and Chandler will be sentenced in the County Court on December 18.
The Accused
MARK DONALD CHANDLER, 35 Medical evidence presented in court suggested Chandler's obsession with achieving drug-making perfection was related to his suffering from Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism.
CANER PAKSOY, 40 Father of a three-year-old daughter, Paksoy migrated to Australia with his family in 1980 after finishing school in his native Turkey.
OZGUR SIMSEK, 32 Simsek had a lot on his mind. Facing charges of operating a multi-million dollar backyard amphetamine-making operation, he had reputedly hit the bottle -- hard. "He had come to a lot of drinking, apparently, because of his predicament," Sen-Det David O'Riley of the Victoria Police clandestine lab squad says. "With the (court) plea coming up and looking at doing a long stint in jail, he had a bit of a drink problem." Simsek would never have his day in court. About 5.30am on March 28 last year, Simsek is believed to have gone to a brothel in Coppin St, Richmond. It was closed. A security camera captured him apparently tripping on the gutter and hitting his head, fracturing his skull. Simsek had a genetic bleeding disorder known as Von Willenbrand's disease. He was found by a passer-by, slumped on the ground, struggling for breath and bleeding from the mouth. He died soon afterwards in hospital. Simsek's family have since taken his body back to Turkey to be buried.
