Nicked
Some on-the-spot reporting I did for The Big Issue a few Christmases ago. Still topical, in more ways than one ...
In news just to hand, a northern suburbs man accused of masterminding an international crime ring has been jailed for one year.
The court heard that the heavily bearded man, known only as “Godfather X” or “Fat Nick”, is the head of a long-established and highly secretive outfit operating under the guise of an unregistered children’s charity, with links to a number of religious organisations.
Little else is known about the man, though he is said to have worked for many years in a casual capacity in several department stores and shopping centres.
Dressed in a heavy suit and motorbike boots, the thick-set accused sweated profusely in the dock as a police prosecutor detailed the long and colourful criminal history of the accused. His wrongdoings ranged from numerous speeding, parking and drink-driving violations to charges relating to cruelty to animals - rumoured to be at least eight exotic livestock – and offences involving a large-scale “sweatshop” operation.
Further charges were laid after a raid on the man’s remote property in the outer north, where police seized an unregistered, and apparently homemade, light aircraft. The man allegedly used this aircraft to make annual “drops” of contraband to undisclosed contacts all over the world, under cover of darkness.
In doing so, the man breached “virtually every civil aviation regulation and international law in existence,” the court heard.
According to police, on the evening of December 24, a surveillance team observed the man and his accomplices loading boxes of electronic equipment and small firearms from a large workshop onto the aircraft. The man then climbed aboard the heavily laden aircraft, shouted a series of coded instructions to his helpers, and launched the heavily laden aircraft into the night's sky, evidently on one of his many regular clandestine forays into foreign air space.
On the same night, a man fitting the exact description of the accused was reportedly seen breaking into houses in multiple locations.
Asked by the prosecution about the exact nature of the cargo aboard the aircraft on the evening of December 24, the man replied: “They were just toys.”
The prosecution replied: “By which you mean they were not the high-powered weapons that you might normally carry?”
“By which I mean,” the accused said, “they were just toys.”
Asked if an inventory of these “toys” existed, the accused said: “Of course. I’m always making lists and checking them twice.”
According to an aviation expert, the man’s aircraft was fitted with no safety equipment except for a single red light: “This fellow flew under the radar, quite literally, for years. Quite frankly, how an unlicensed, untrained pilot could flout the most basic of air safety regulations time and again without tragic consequences beggars belief.”
Asked by the prosecuting lawyer if he considered himself to be above the law, the accused replied, “Only when I’m flying over a police station.” He then clutched his stomach and said: “Ho, ho, ho.”
Asked if he had an obsession with “good and evil”, the accused said he was really only interested in “naughty and nice”.
In sentencing, Supreme Court judge Justice Felix Navidad described the man as a seasoned criminal who should have been jailed long ago.
Asked if he had anything to say, the accused muttered inaudibly. Ordered to repeat himself, he said: “Well, I know which judge won’t be getting that extra-large naughty schoolboy costume he ordered, your honour, and as for that spiky rubber –”
“Silence!” the judge shrieked, before sentencing the man to 12 months’ jail.
The decision was greeted with an uneasy silence in the public gallery, except for Archbishop George Pell, who leapt to his feet, applauded and shouted: “Hear, hear! It’s people like him who give the church a bad name.”
The man will be eligible for parole in December next year.