The MAFS Groom who flew $100K drug runs: Tim Smith Pt. 1

Tim Smith is best known as a groom on season 11 of Married at First Sight Australia, but that's arguably the least interesting chapter of his story. Nearly two decades earlier, he was flying helicopter loads of marijuana across the Canada/US border, pulling off at least 20 runs and pocketing around $100,000 a trip. It was a wild ride that couldn't last. When it all came crashing down, Tim found himself behind bars in a maximum-security US federal prison for over a year. But the real punishment began after his release, when he lost both his mum and his brother while he was locked up, powerless to be there. You can watch I Catch Killers on Youtube here. https://www.youtube.com/@ICatchKillers-Podcast Follow I Catch Killers: Instagram:@icatchkillers https://www.instagram.com/icatchkillers/?hl=enTiktok:@icatchkillerspodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@icatchkillerspodcastFacebook:@icatchkillers https://www.facebook.com/icatchkillers/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The public has had a long-held fascination with detectives. Detectives see a side of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent 34 years as a cop. For 25 of those years, I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  Tim Smith is probably best known as a former Married-at-First-Sight groom. Yes, I do watch the show. But during his time on the show, audiences had no idea about Tim's dark past as a helicopter pilot smuggling drugs into the US. You can't make this story up. Eventually, Tim got caught and ended up serving time in the US maximum security prison as a federal inmate. It's a wild story. Take a listen.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  Tim Smith, welcome to I Catch Killers.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Thank you very much, Gary.

• 1:18Speaker 00

  I got the hard-hitting question first up. What's scarier, going on MAFS or being locked up in the US prison system?

• 1:26Speaker 01

  I would rather do 12 months in the US than three months on MAFS. That with no word of a lie. The people are nicer.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  The people are nicer, the food's not as good, but I tell you what, yeah, it's a lot less hassle in prison than MAFS.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  Not as much treachery or danger.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  You know, everyone's got their place and it seems to flow pretty well in prison. Not so much on MAFS, in the back shadows.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. There's a pecking order in prison, but...

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  Well, we're gonna delve into MAFS because I'm not gonna let MAFS contestant or whatever. What's the right word for a participant?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  You're a participant, you're a character.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  MAFS groom, yeah.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  You're a character.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  I'm not gonna let the opportunity pass by. And look, I wanna get confessions out of you today, but I'll put it up front. I'm a MAFS fan.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Are you?

• 2:21Speaker 00

  I like the series.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  There's a lot of, it's amazing the amount of guys that are running to an airport and say, "Look, can I get a photo? It's not for me. My wife makes me watch it." I've mostly heard that about 1,000 times.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, it's not something you wear around as a badge of honour, I suppose.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  I've tried to sell it to people and go, "Just watch it." Whatever stage your life is at, it makes you feel better about your relationship anyway.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  There's no question, you will feel much better about yourself, your life and where you stand after you've watched a couple of episodes of MAFS and watched Us Morons on there.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  Well, well, the morons watching the morons because I sit at home and watch it and have a laugh at other people's expense.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  It's all about the laugh.

• 3:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, good stuff. Now, your life, it's been a life of adventure and I think people are gonna be absolutely shocked about some of the stuff that you got up to. I've sat opposite some really interesting characters in I Catch Killers and I've heard, and most of us, well, all of us have done stupid things in our lives, but some of the things you've done, I think, take the cake. And I'm talking about your exploits with the helicopter, which we're not gonna discuss at this stage. I want people to understand who you are. We've had John Killick on the podcast and he's become a good friend. John Killick, bank robber, spent a long time in prison, but his greatest escapade was escaping from Silver War, the prison, in a helicopter that was hijacked by his Russian

• 3:54Speaker 00

  girlfriend and they landed in the yard and he jumped on the helicopter and the shots were being fired and took off. So that's one of the crazy helicopter stories we've heard on this, but I think yours one, yours almost matches that one, so.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  And as you talk about that, that part of what he did actually flows into the United States and that's why they kept me on the move so much is people getting broken out with helicopters. That's why they kept me in MAFS.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Ah, right. That's interesting. Okay, when you were inside, when you're in custody.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  All these stories about people getting broken out with helicopters and they figured I had access to aircraft, so I never went out in the yard for two years.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Okay, that's interesting. Well, we're gonna delve deep into that, but let's find out a little bit about your upbringing. You grew up in a mining town in Queensland?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  In Queensland, a little place called Mara, about two hours outside of Rockhampton, inland, the Coal Belt, Bowen Basin, deadliest coal mine in Australia, yeah.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  As in, like accidents?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  As in accidents. In 72, the mine blew up and 14 were killed. In 86, another 14 killed. And in 94, another 16 killed.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  Are they underground mines?

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Underground. Each shaft blew up at different stages, yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  I've been in underground mines up at Mount Isa and, you know, a kilometre underneath the ground. It's a dangerous work environment, isn't it?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  It's especially in the coal. You've got all the gases and, yeah, you couldn't pay me enough to do that job.

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Tough, tough breed of people that work in those.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Hundred per cent.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  And it's almost, you see them down there and they think, yeah, they're enjoying it. It's almost like they're institutionalised in that they get paid good money, but it's a shocking environment to be working in, day in, day out.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. They look at it as no big deal, very similar to me flying. Once you get comfortable doing whatever you're doing, yeah, it's, but there is an inherent risk to it for sure.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. The type of people that you would see in the town and your parents, your family, what sort of environment?

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Great town to grow up in, great people, had grandparents there, had great-grandparents, had lots of cousins. And it was, it was one of those small mining towns that back then it was all about community. We didn't have any contractors, there was no such thing as FIFO.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  No fly-in, fly-out.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  If you got a job, you had to have a house in town and the town was really...

• 6:23Speaker 00

  So that built a community.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  It was, it built a community and it was, it was great for the years I was there, yeah.

• 6:29Speaker 00

  Schooling, it didn't rock your boat? You're out by year nine, how old were you there?

• 6:35Speaker 01

  I would've been 14 and a half, I remember when dad came home and said, "You don't have to go back." And so I hated school from the day I started till the day I ended, yeah.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  What was it about?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Look, I wasn't very smart and that would lead into a lot of things later on in life. I just couldn't pick it up. They said that I had dyslexia or I had, yeah, just a learning disorder, which was really strange. And back then, they just didn't have the time to spend and they figured you were gonna work in the mine anyway. So they just kept pushing you through grade after grade till you got out, yeah.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  There wasn't that bit of attitude, wasn't it? Well, we won't waste on the academics, you're gonna find your way in a trade or something like that.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. You'll have a set of steel cap boots on and be down the hole. So there's no point in spending any time on you, yeah.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  Okay, so you're 14 or around 14 and you're out of school. I don't imagine your parents are the type that let you just sit around and fiddle your thumbs?

• 7:34Speaker 01

  No, dad said, "Well, you don't have school tomorrow, but you'll head up into the backyard and I'm gonna do an extension on the shed. You can start digging rat wall holes." And so I got a job with him and a plumber, so I became an apprentice plumber for the first six months, yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  I think it's a good thing, getting those skills and a bit of hard labour because it puts in perspective when you're making money doing something else. When, I know when I was in the cops, because I was a sparky, I worked in the building industry for six years, became a tradesman and I know when I was in the cops and people go, "On a tough day." And I'm thinking, "You have no idea. Get on a Jack Amer all day and see what a tough, tough day is."

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. You know, my grandfather had an old sawmill and I worked from him since I was eight, like cutting fence posts for the farmers, old rosewood. And that was, that was tough work. So I always had a job from eight onwards, yeah.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Okay. So growing up in the town, you're doing the odd jobs, you never got your dream job of working at a local service station? That was what you're aspiring to?

• 8:36Speaker 01

  I know. I can't believe that I put an application in and they denied it. That was, that was...

• 8:42Speaker 00

  I'll show them. What gave you a worldview or wanted you to, what made you and how old were you when you decided you wanted to see the world?

• 8:50Speaker 01

  You know, we didn't even have a video shop in town. We had a video van that used to pull up to your driveway and then slide open the door and then the movies would be in it. So I guess it was movies. It was watching movies like The Goonies and all these movies based in, when I look at it, it was all based in North West America and Canada. So the North West where the... You know, the, the green trees meet the ocean, snow capped mountains from central Queensland. All that landscape looks so different. I remember ordering a geographic, a National Geographic video on Canada and seeing how clean the streams were. And, and so that's, that's really what started it.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, just seeing something you wanted to experience yourself. So Aiden, that's fairly young for, for travelling. What, you saved up some money, bought a one-way ticket? What, how, how'd you go about it?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  I bought a two-way ticket. I, I flew into LA and I was supposed to be home six weeks later, but mum knew that wasn't gonna happen. Um, and in LA, that was the first, I got there the second day of the Rodney King riots.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  Oh, okay, that would have been an interesting time.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I couldn't actually get to my hotel. So I had a friend up in Seattle and they said, oh, come up to Seattle, it's safe up here. So I flew up to Seattle and hung out with them for a while. And that sort of started my base in the northwest.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  From Seattle, Vancouver, Tacoma and, and all around there. It's, it's just a fate that I landed there and met some people.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  You, you said that your mum knew you wouldn't be back in six weeks. Was it something written in your?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, cause I never followed through on anything. And I said, because I'd, I'd, I'd put a hold on my job at the mine to go away. And I said, look, I'll just go away for six weeks. I'll be back and I'll, I'll pick that job up again. And she goes, you're not coming back.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Do you ever think how different your life could have been if you, if you did come back of working the mines the whole?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's that, it's that sliding doors or deja vu.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  I, I think our, our, our destination is mapped out no matter what. I, I, I think you're always designed to do that. So I, I can't see, I couldn't see myself just sitting in that job, paying off a house. And it just, that wasn't the path for me. So it was, it was never gonna be on the cards. So I can't look at what, cause I've got friends that have been thirty years in the mines and they've done, they've done quite well.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  That, you know, that's their path and, and my path is very, very different.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  And you look at people that go that path of that white picket fence and the, you know, two kids and the family pet and everything else. And sometimes, I, I don't know about you, sometimes I look at that life and think, yeah, that wouldn't be bad. And I know people in that life probably look at your life and think, oh, well, you've, you've done things I wish, wish I did. It, it's interesting, the path that your life takes, isn't it?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  You'll, you'll always peer over, over the fence and have a look at the neighbours. You know, whether it's the yard or what they're doing. And, and that's in life itself. And with social media today, always looking at somebody else and go, ah, should I have done that? But, you know.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  You find your, find your level.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  You, you find where it's supposed to go and, and everyone gets a choice to do what you want.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Um, you said you landed with the Rodney King riots. Now, I, I still have memories of them because they were such a big, uh, and I think it was the first type of riots that were captured so widely in the media. And you, you saw some horrific situations. Did you see the violence, people getting dragged out of trucks and?

• 12:21Speaker 01

  I didn't, cause I just walked straight out of the airport, jumped in a taxi and said, here's the name of my hotel. And he just laughed and said, buddy, head back in and get a ticket and get the hell out of here. So I never, I never even got to see LA.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  That was your introduction.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  LA was my dream and I've, the most I've seen LA is on a prison bus heading to San Bernardino for two hours, heading through the traffic. That's all I've seen of Los Angeles.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Not really the Hollywood Boulevard.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I didn't get the, uh, the, the star tour.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Heading up through the hills. Yeah, I got a, I got a completely different tour.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Didn't they show you the Holly- Hollywood sign?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  No, they didn't show me the Hollywood sign, yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  Okay, um, there, Aiden, how, how'd you make a life for yourself?

• 13:02Speaker 01

  I went over to England for, for a little while. I just tripped around there for a little while. I came back and I had a working permit for Canada.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  So I went up to Canada and, and started, and started working. Oh God, I was young. I must've been nineteen, maybe twenty. And I, I started working up in Canada and it was a one-year work permit. I met a girl up there and, you know, we got along. So after the year was up, I had to come back to Australia. So I'd been away about a year and a half by the time I came back to Australia. My girlfriend followed me and, and, you know, we stayed here a couple of years before she said, look, my parents are really old and I'd like to go back to Canada. I want you to come. And so we had to get married for me to move back to Canada.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  Right, okay, tell us, tell us about your life over there.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  It was shit. Um, I, I, I, I.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  I thought I'd made the worst decision because I got there at New Year's Eve in nineteen ninety-seven. The snow was all black because Vancouver doesn't get a lot of snow. It was dark, it was cold. I hated all my in-laws. I thought I've made the worst decision. And, and it was, it was really quite tough for the first three or four years. Work was very seasonal.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Over the winter, you wouldn't get any work. And, but all these events start leading into it. So I'd work construction in the summer and then in the winter I'd get laid off. And so then I started getting sick of getting no money in the winter. So then I thought I'd make up a fake resume and become a bartender.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  Right, okay.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  And so that's, that's what I did to supplement my winter income from construction. And what do I love? I love aviation. I've always loved planes. So I got that resume and handed out to all the bars at Vancouver International Airport and got my first job.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  You bought property over there too?

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I'd done this course, how to buy money, how to buy properties with no money down. The financing is very different in the US than it is here in Australia. You can actually buy whatever you want over there and that the tax is really simple to work out. So I was going down to the US looking for these properties and buying properties and, and flipping them. But as well as working in the bar, as well as working in construction and then travelling a lot.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  For these, for these houses, yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  So you, you're building a portfolio.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had, I had, had properties in, in the US and in Canada, yeah.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  Okay, and where did your life start to take a different turn? Did your relationship break down or?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that bartending and, and I think I'd played it so straight for so many years.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  And, and the bartending at the airport, I met some, I met a girl actually, not, we're still mates today.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  And I said, you know, we should go get jobs in the city at some of these, you know, the best nightclub we can find. And we'd make, you know, you make great money. So we actually went and applied for, um, this new nightclub that was not opening up. We looked like two out of work actors. And how ironic that, that that was really the start into my contacts into the underworld.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  So that bar performed like shit.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  I remember going back to Australia on, on holidays and then, then the manager called me up and said, when are you coming back? The place is flooded. And he actually hired this promotional team and they were called Ecstasy. It was four guys. I think three of them are dead now. Um, and they would just bring in their crowd. Basically they're, you know, you have the, the bar.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  These guys take the door, you look after the security and their crowd was, was Vancouver's underworld.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  Okay, and called Ecstasy, was that a, a play on the?

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Oh, totally.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  Okay, so people, Ecstasy knew what they were, uh, the, the scene that they were coming into.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  And, and it was crazy because, you, you know, these guys would travel with bodyguards.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  There was a few guys that, you know, one guy'd have ten bodyguards around him. And when I'd have friends come into the bar, I wouldn't like to bring friends into the bar because they didn't understand the rules.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Don't make fun of the guy with the funny hat over there, cause he controls those ten guys around him.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  And they'll kill you. And our money went through the roof. As a bartender, I was making between a thousand, two thousand dollars a night.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Right, so li- living the good life, were you still keeping the relationship going or was that?

• 17:13Speaker 01

  It started to go down. I got into that, that nightclub life where you finished work at four in the morning, then you had some drinks.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Staffies and?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, you mightn't get home till midday, you get some sleep, you do it again the next night. Then I'm working all during the week.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  She wants to, she's moving into banking, we're just heading in different directions.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  Right, okay. When, um, the cannabis, the growing exploits, when, when did that start or how, how did that start?

• 17:42Speaker 01

  You know, when I was buying all those properties, so I, I had a four-plex in a little town, in a place called Mission.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  What whereabouts does that give us?

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Just outside of Vancouver, about an hour and a half outside of Vancouver.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  And what I tend to find, I didn't understand when they, when I bought it is, there's a lot of prisons around there. So when, when dad gets sent to prison, mum goes out and rents one of the apartments off me. Dad gets out of prison, moves in with mum, that's when I meet him at about three in the morning.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Cause there's a big fight going on. So I got so sick of this building, I had a mate said, hey, we should light it up.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  Light it up as in burn it down or light it up as in?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Light it up as in make it hydroponic grow. So that's what we did. I kicked all the tenants out and then had eighty seven lights in there.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  How risky was that? Like, I, I, you know, I know over in the United States, I don't know of Canada, but I know cannabis is legalized in a lot of places. Was it looked at a serious crime?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  It wasn't a wasn't because in the criminal world, when you're getting into it, there's so much misinformation.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  That they are, you know, you don't get any time, you get a ticket or something for it. But there was, they estimate one out of every five houses was a grow house in Vancouver. So it was just so widely done. And it, I don't know, it's sort of, it was the largest cash cow for British Columbia.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  It brought in more cash than mining, timber and fishing combined.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  For it to, to make that sort of money, growing there or exporting it, but was there high usage? Was it looked at as a socially, was it frowned upon or was it just accepted and?

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Look, it's legal now, but the whole idea was we were, the penalties were really low on British Columbia.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  So with the penalties low, it made it producing it really easy. Because if you got, if you got popped, big deal, you're gonna, you're gonna get three to six months, maybe a year, whatever. It's first offence. It's no big deal.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  Comes down to that risk.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  It comes down to that risk worth rewards. So Vancouver at that time was just crazy. Everyone was a broker, everyone's selling weed, everyone's trying to get weed across the border. Because it went from about two and a half thousand pounds in, in Vancouver. That if you could get it across that three metre ditch over on Zero Avenue.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  It would go from there to six and a half thousand US per pound.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  So that, that was where the money was to be made.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Right. And then, and then from there, it's burned out. So if you got it down to Oregon, that would go up to eight thousand. B C weed in Texas was going for about twelve thousand dollars a pound.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  How much money were you making with your little hydroponics operation in the?

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Look, I can't say that I, I teamed up with a couple of idiots. So, um.

• 20:34Speaker 00

  Good fellows, but just idiots.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Just, just big talkers, but when it came to, I'm, I, now I'm a good gardener, but back then I wasn't a good gardener. But these guys said they knew every, everything what to do, but they weren't good business people. So we're not add up the bills at the end of paying for all the, all the lights.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  Then you can't make a tax claim.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  I know. And, and they would just see a pile of cash and they're going, no, we got expenses. I own the building and I've been paying the electricity for the past four months.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  And all that stuff I've been paying for. So they didn't understand and, and that partnership broke down pretty quickly.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Tell, tell us a story when your mates, the ones you said that weren't the smartest pencils in the pack, were inside and you were down, you just pulled up with a sealed box full of some seeds or plants.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were about two inches high. There was two hundred and fifty in that box.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  And it's really funny because I wasn't a criminal, I wasn't in the criminal world. Mum and dad, I didn't know anyone that was a criminal.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  And so you would think that you would have that level of, of calming and no big deal. And these guys said they had it, but.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  They, they were pitching to you that they're criminals, so we know this world.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  That we're cool, we're cool, calm, you know, customers. So I came down, I had the box and I pull out and then a cop car comes wheeling in next to me. And I'm like, oh, this can't be good. And so he got out and I put, I put all the plants on the hood of his car. And he said, a couple of guys escaped from the prison and they've run through here. Have you seen anybody? And I said, no, I haven't seen anybody. But right then I seen my guys open the back door, seen a cop car there, seen the box on the hood. They went upstairs and started ripping everything out. I had a chat with him for about five to 10 minutes. By the time I got up there, for the past three days of everything we'd done, they'd ripped out.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  So you didn't even give it a minute to see if they're going to come in the door, you know?

• 22:34Speaker 00

  So what? Yeah. Okay. That would, it seems a bit of a comedy central. What was the other time where you, the fully grown plants, you had to move them and they're back in the convertible hanging out the back of the car?

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Todd Rushnell, Todd, Todd died actually.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  From a cop's point of view, I reckon that's, they couldn't be that stupid. Surely it looks like something they had a Cheek and Chong.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Well, I started lighting up all my friends' places. If I see a good deal, then I tell, Todd was a, he was a mortgage broker. He had a little one bedroom. He got divorced. He needed a side income. I said, we can blow that back bedroom up. So we did that and we, you know, it looked, looked pretty good. So on the night that we're going to, to, to cut it all up, I had a team of guys coming in and we were going to chop it all up. Right then, police pulled up and they were raiding.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Not this house, the one next door. But all my guys took off in the yard and headed up the laneway. I thought, holy shit, they're, they're raiding everything. But it turns out next door they were raiding. Our place that we were going to cut that night wasn't on the list.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  So then I, I said to Todd, like, we can't come back, it's too hot. We'll take it out to my other building. So you get the stuff and bring it to me down in Burnaby. And he goes, yeah, I can take care of that. And he'd had a few drinks. He had a Nissan three fifty Z, you know, those little hatchbacks? I remember him coming down, knocking on my door. I was living in a basement and I came walking upstairs and I could smell it. From the time I started walking from the backyard up onto the street. And there he was, he had stuffed every plant and it was just hanging out the back of a Nissan three fifty Z. He had to drive through three suburbs to get to me. These are fully mature marijuana plants.

• 24:18Speaker 00

  Potential reason to stop from the cops?

• 24:21Speaker 01

  They were just all hanging out the back. You couldn't see the back of this convertible for weed plants.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  The exploits. It does, and like it's referencing way back, but Cheek and Chong, have you seen the movie?

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  Two stoners and, yeah. And look, we're, we're talking about a crime and, you know, don't try this at home type thing, the message to people. But the growing of the cannabis, I, I know, and I've had people that have been involved in it from years gone by. And one, Charlie Staunton, who was a former New South Wales cop and ended up getting big time within the, in the drug trade. But cannabis, and he said, the irony of the time I spent in prison was that it's now legal. Like, but I'm, I'm serving time for something that's now been, been legalized. I'm not saying it's right. But yeah, I, I, I look at it and go, okay, well, I can have a bit of a laugh about.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Mine's the same story.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, yeah, a couple of people trying to make some money out of, out of growing some cannabis. With the hydroponics setup too, I didn't do a lot of, a lot of work in, in drug work in, in the cops. But I know at one point in time when the cops woke up to it, why are, we'd just go to the electricity companies and see who's, why is this house drawing 10 times more power than every other house in the street? Or flying over with infrared, why is this house like glowing at night because of, because of that? And they were pretty easy to discover.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  They are, but if you paid your power bill.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  They didn't bother you. If you stole the power, you're up shit creek. So.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, that was the other, other thing. And I, I saw a few of them burned, burned down when people that had stolen power and hadn't connected right and things had happened.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  And, and the police weren't focusing on the grow houses. It just, it was a little bit of a free for all for a couple of years.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So you've got into growing cannabis, but that's fairly harmless. When you start talking about what your next venture is, when you're, you're importing, getting it across the borders. Can you tell us that, that journey?

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think, I think everything is leading up to that confidence.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  You know, the growing, got away with that, made a few dollars, lost a few dollars. But, you know, you're sort of outsmarting the law no matter where you go. I found it quite funny when I put weed on the, on the hood of the car. And, and I, so your confidence is growing. And then it was one, then the nightclub I worked at closed down. And then one of these guys' brother, he bought this nightclub and this was essentially a nightclub owned by gangsters.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  And they wanted me to bartend there. They'd, they'd heard about me at the last place and, and the crowd was really comfortable with me. So I went bartending there. And everyone, over the, over the course of say a year, a year and a half, you gained a lot of respect. I knew who the players were. I knew how to serve and, and, and you knew who to take care of and, and what the scores were. So I guess it was just, and then as the bar shuts down, then certain people are allowed to stay and, and, you know, have drinks and then the conversations start.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  And are we talking like, to give it perspective from a Australian point of view, a bar set up in King's Cross? Is that, is that the type of characters you're gonna come, come through there? Yeah. Okay. So working that bar, a lot of the, the bad guys are hanging out, the gangsters.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  You shut the bar down, but it stays open for certain people.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  That's where it starts. And I was just sitting in a booth with, with about four others and they said, we need to, to get a path across the border. We need a heli, like, does anyone know a helicopter? And a helicopter for me has been a dream, like to, to fly a helicopter or to get a helicopter licence. And I don't know, I just, I said, yeah, I think I could do that. And they, they looked at me and said, oh, can you fly? I said, I flew an ultralight for about six hours many years ago.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  And I said, I reckon I could do it. I can operate machinery and I, I don't think it would take me that long if you guys are willing to pay.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  That's, that, I've got to say, that's a lot of confidence in, in your ability, like heli, helicopters, the consequences of stuffing up on that, probably a little bit more than the heavy, heavy machinery. But you can come unstuck in the heavy machinery. But okay, so you're sitting around, how, how old were you at this stage?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  I wasn't young. I was 28, 29.

• 28:49Speaker 00

  Okay. So let's just set the scene, the group of, you know, colourful characters, let's describe them, sitting around. If only we had someone that can fly a helicopter. I reckon I could. Is that?

• 29:00Speaker 01

  That's exactly how it went down. Okay. Yeah. So, so Chris said to me, go out and hire one tomorrow and see if you can fly it. So I went to Chinook Flying School. I went out and hired the Bell 47J, that story that you told about getting broken out, that exact helicopter, piston driven, you know, the manual throttle. And it was a half an hour introductory flight.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  So you got an instructor there with you?

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Got a instructor there.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  And yeah, went out for a half an hour flight, flew into a, into a creek of trees and he showed me how you can hop around a logs and then get yourself out of a tight spot. But, you know, I, I was on the controls with him on the controls, but I could feel what it was doing.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  And okay, so he's, he's overriding.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  He's overriding it. But once I got above the trees, I could fly it. And he said, you've got really good hands and feet. And that's what they say when you're a pilot. You've got good hands. And that was from the excavator.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Oh, I could imagine. Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  You know, you're using your feet with the pedals to go.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  Independently of each other.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  And then your, your controls operate your boom and your slew and you've got to use them all at once.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Okay. So you felt, felt confident after a half hour crash course.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Half an hour crash course.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  Crash course. It's probably a bad omen for a helicopter. Okay. But how many training sessions did you have before you put your hand up and said, hey, look at the wings on these?

• 30:24Speaker 01

  I didn't have, I went back that night and said, yeah, boys, I can do this. Like, I literally, I signed on that day. I said, I'm good to go.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  Tim, don't mistake my laughing, laughing with you. I'm laughing at you. That's ridiculous.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  I know. So everything started happening really quickly. What sort of helicopter do you want?

• 30:44Speaker 00

  I don't know. One with the blades. Yeah.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  At first I said, I'll go for the Bell 47J because I just took a lesson in that. And obviously that's what I'm going to learn on for the next couple of weeks before we start the business. Went down to Seattle and had a look at one of those and it just wasn't going to serve our needs. We're gonna have to have bags strapped on the outside like MASH.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  And, and they're really slow. They only do about 60 knots.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  And they're not very, they're just, they're heavy. So I upgraded and said, yeah, I need a Bell 206 Jet Ranger.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  Did you just flick through a magazine?

• 31:18Speaker 01

  I did. It was my favourite helicopter as a kid. And they go, okay, try and find one of those. And I did.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  Okay. So I, I just, I really wanted, because if I'm missing, missing the points here. So you've had, what, half a dozen lessons roughly?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Must be a little less than that at that point. Yeah.

• 31:35Speaker 00

  You don't know a great deal about helicopters other than, you know, I, I used to look at jet planes, but I didn't know a lot about them. I was just playing with them as a kid. But you're looking at the helicopters, you've gone through and go, I think this is the one that we need.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yep, totally.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  Never flown one like that?

• 31:50Speaker 01

  No, once we'd made the decision to do that one, I, I went to the school and said, do you have this type of helicopter? And they said, yeah, we've got one in the shed.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  Okay. So.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  So I quickly switched over and said, could you give me a couple of lessons in that?

• 32:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  And what lessons is one thing. Did you ever get qualified? Like, did you get a licence for, like, oh, you're running drugs, so you don't necessarily need the licence.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  The licence.

• 32:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  But night school for, for helicopters and aviation, weight and balance, weather, weather planning, air law and all that, that took part at night.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  I was bartending at night still. I was still fixing up houses in Seattle.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  What were the things? You just said they can't be that important.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  I, I skipped all the night school stuff.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  And I just said, look, I just need the basics, how to get this off the ground.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  And I'll figure the rest out. And that's exactly what I did. I didn't, I didn't look at weather patterns. I didn't look at weight and balance. I didn't look at calculating fuel, nothing.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  I know nothing about flying, but Tim, I reckon that would be probably pretty important.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Looking back now, my weather pattern was I would just slide the door of the hangar open. And if I could see the mountains in the US, which were about five miles away, we're good to go. Not realising I've got to go 70 miles past there. So the weather's going to change a bit.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  But that was, that was my weather forecasting. I didn't listen to, to any of the, the weather stations that pilots listen to and then map out where you're going and look at the winds. None of that. We're good to go.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  Okay. I want you to give us a very descriptive story. Once you've gone back to the crew and said, I'm, I'm right to go. And what went down there? Who you flew with? Where you went? How you, how you hired your helicopter? When, when you hire a helicopter, even when you're hiring a car, where are you off to? I'm going up the coast or something. What did anyone ask? Or was it off, off the records?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  When you hire a helicopter, you can't, it's got to be through a helicopter school because there's only one company in the world that insure helicopters. So if you want to, if you want to fly it around on your own, you've got to go buy one.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  So that's what we did. We went and bought a 206 Jet Ranger. We bought it off Blackcomb Helicopters in Whistler.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Whistler, the ski resort.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  So we bought it off them guys and that in itself was pretty amazing. It was such a beautiful helicopter. I think it was around 700 grand at the time. And I took a drive up one afternoon with a buddy of mine to just go see if they'd done all the work. I knew that it was coming up, that we were going to take possession.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  And I was trying to get a hold of a pilot that I knew to come over and fly this down to the valleys. So then I could mess around with it a bit in the flat ground.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  So when I got up there that afternoon, they said, yeah, your helicopter's ready to pick up. So I looked at my mate in the car and said, what do I do? Like, they, they want me to pick the helicopter up. And he goes, what are you, what are you gonna do? So I said, give me the bag in the back. And he goes, what's in the bag? I said, my gym clothes. But whenever I walk through an airport, I always see a pilot carrying a bag. So I'm gonna walk through.

• 34:57Speaker 00

  They have instructions.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  They have the instructions, weather patterns, all the, all the shutdowns. So I threw the back, bag in the back of the, the helicopter and, and just proceeded to fire this thing up.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Okay. I've got, I've got a few questions, quite a few questions. When you hire a car from an airport, let's say, a new type of car, you tend to sit, okay, this indicator there, there, how do you turn it on? All, all that sort of stuff.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  Helicopters and, you know, I've flown in the police helicopters quite a few times. They're pretty complex little, little things. Tell us what happened when you, okay, instead of, of getting your mate to come up here and fly it down, you're gonna fly it, fly it back. It can't be that hard.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Right. Well, the first issue I've got is I don't have a cheat sheet on starting because even an airline pilot has a cheat sheet.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  I just got to go on memory from what I can remember, how to start it and how to get the thing moving. So I did that quite well. So I got it started, nobody died and I didn't blow the engine up. Next, next point is I've got a, I didn't realise how emotionally attached companies get to aircraft like boats. So this was their last two O six that they'd sold and they're moving to A star. So everyone from the officers came out to watch this take off and wave to the last two O six leaving. So about fifteen people stand about fifteen feet away. I thought I was gonna chop everyone's heads off.

• 36:22Speaker 00

  I'm just cringing at the moment, go on.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  But it was mostly one of the best takeoffs I've ever done. It's sort of, it's, I, I just, I fluked it. It just stepped into the air, right side, a little heavy.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  And as it, as it just, I stepped up and then I backed out and then I turned and off I went. And I started climbing out over Whistler. I was shaking at this point, thinking, have I done everything right? And as I'm going through the gauges, I looked down on the right hand side and it said, the fuel gauge said empty. And I've gone, holy shit. And right then, I've, I've leaned up and there's two fuel pumps up here, but it's a triple system. And the only thing that could have killed me was that.

• 37:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  And I forgot to turn them on. And I was already thousand feet in the air by then.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  And it was just.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  I turned a mine instantly and the fuel bounced up.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  Your mate, your mate wasn't with you at this stage?

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Nah, he drove back.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  I would have volunteered to drive the car back. You bring the helicopter back.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Look, I, I was on the phone with him trying to fly with my knee and said, I gotta get back to Vancouver now. And I don't know where to go. And he said, just follow the highway. So that's what I did. I just, I just followed the highway all the way down. But I knew that Y V R, which is Vancouver International Airport was, it had a ring around about thirty miles. Yeah. So I knew I was gonna, I was gonna encroach on that a little bit. So then I just went down to about fifty feet above all the trees. And there's a, there's a really ritzy area called West Vancouver and North Vancouver. And I just ripped across everyone's yards at about fifty feet above the trees, just to stay out of the, the way of the airliners. Yeah.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  How you're alive is like, I, I am, I am, I'm telling you here, I'm laughing at you, not with you. This is stupid. This is, uh, uh, in, um, helicopters, like you've got to look out for power lines and that. You hear helicopters coming down, hitting power lines.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I never even thought about those.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  I just, because a couple of times I've gone across people's backyards, you're doing a hundred twenty five knots.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  So you're doing two hundred twenty kilometers an hour. And, and you look like a fighter jet coming over. I'm like, oh jeez, look at everyone's doing it. And I was really low, really, really low.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  Wait, well, did you?

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Did a couple of waves, yeah.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, on, on your phone. Yeah, that's cool. I've seen in the police poll area, and I'm referencing my lack of experience there, but in the times I've been there, they've got an observer on board too. That's, uh, checking things for like power lines or things that they've got to look out for, but you're just driving along. Okay, follow the highway, cut across here, that can't be too bad.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had no clue how to get there, except for roads.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  What was, what was driving, adrenaline would have kicked in. You said you were shaking at some point in time, but. Are you a thrill seeker? Do you like, just like taking a risk like that?

• 39:07Speaker 01

  No, I was never.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  Or are you just confident?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  I was never a thrill seeker. I was just confident in, and I wanted to do something and, and that was the, that was the thing to do at the time. But I, I definitely, I never played contact sports because I didn't want to get hit or hurt.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  I was always scared about getting hurt and now I'm doing things that'll kill you.

• 39:28Speaker 00

  Uh, is this a, a, in your mind, a calculated risk that you're taking?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  You've got, and I can understand how you'd feel comfortable if you're doing a lot on machines.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:38Speaker 00

  At the six of a helicopter, but yeah, if the machine stops, you just stop. Like if the helicopter stops, it's not, not good.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  It's not good, but you've got, there, there are procedures in place. You can do an auto rotation, but I haven't actually learnt how to do that yet. And, and I'm not comfortable doing it on my own. So if that was to happen, I've just got to, at that split second, you've just got to. Count on your abilities to, to do it. Yeah.

• 40:03Speaker 00

  Okay, you're up, I, I get the, the takeoff with your audience there and you, you fluke that. You're up in the air, you're heading in, in the right direction and yeah, let's just fly under the flight path. That can't be that complicated.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  Good, good thinking, good, good thinking.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  I come up with that.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a great, great plan. How do you find the place that you're, you're looking for? Because in the air, it, it looks a little bit different from the ground. Are you just looking out for, for me a places or?

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Really simple. I'm sitting up, going across the backyards of West Vancouver, North Vancouver. From there, it, it dives down and I can see the city of Vancouver right there, Stanley Park, Thousand Acre Park right there. So the United States is that way.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  This little airport that I needed to go to and then the, the border rent from there all the way. And you've got to think, I'm, I'm up on top of the mountain. I can see where the border's going.

• 40:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  I just roughly picked a forty five degree angle that I figured if I punched through those mountains, I'd come out. Near that airport that I wanted to be at, this little uncontrolled manned airport. So that's exactly what I did. I just roughly went on a forty five degree angle. I didn't look at the, the compass. I didn't go, you need to be heading two, six, zero. Didn't look at any maps. I just went, US is there. Canada's back that way. I need to go to this little airport. If I go too much that way, I'm gonna end up in the US. So about a forty five degree angle.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, but aren't you meant to talk that shit like two, six, zero, uh, taking off and a call sign and?

• 41:35Speaker 01

  I just stayed low and just cruised, because a part of it was, it's a very small community around that. And they would hear my voice.

• 41:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  So I just decided to stay off the air. Stay off the air.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  And fly and hopefully not run into anyone.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Well, lucky you didn't cross the border into America. You might have got shot down by a fighter plane.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Well, they were on my headsets. I could hear, uh, would be naval base. I could hear F sixteen's on my headset.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  Okay, you've landed. How'd you feel?

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Oh, the confidence is just going up and up and up. You're king of the hill now. Yeah, you're at the top of the pile.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  Do you think a little bit overconfident?

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Oh, hundred percent.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  Oh, good. I'm glad, I'm glad.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise and Goose had nothing on me and Terry.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  The first run, drug run, what, what was the plans? Nighttime, what daytime?

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Looked good.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  It was executed absolutely horrible.

• 42:32Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  It was shit from the time we took off till the time we got back.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  Run, run, run this. So this is, you, you've picked up the helicopter, you've bought the helicopter and I, I would take it. That's with all the people involved in the operation, contributing to the purchase of the helicopter.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  They got their pilot now.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  Um, you've got the helicopter. Okay, now we're ready to roll. What, what do you do?

• 42:55Speaker 01

  I go and pick, I, I hated, I didn't hate flying that thing, but that thing scared the shit out of me. So when I'd go. I, I just wasn't that confident in it, but I told everyone else I was confident. So when I'd go look for new landing spots, I would take my, my pickup.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  It's very simple to take the helicopter out and go and have a look, but the less I flew that thing, the better. So I drive around and go, look, this looks like a good place for a helicopter to get in. So I'd picked a little town called Cultus Lake and it's a little town on the edge of a lake. And I picked an old quarry that we could, we could do the first pickup from. And that's where we're gonna pick the drugs up from. Unfortunately, I couldn't get down to the US where they wanted me to drop them off. So they were just gonna send me coordinates on where they wanted me, this, this to go.

• 43:46Speaker 00

  Right, okay. So you couldn't go and check where you were landing. They were sending you coordinates.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  They sent me coordinates.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  A part of the issue there as well is I didn't know how to work the GPS or those big screens in, on the helicopter.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  Don't worry about that shit.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  I had no clue how to do that. So we went to a fishing store and bought their handheld Garmin GPS. And my mate held it and I said, these, all these numbers down here have got to match these numbers up here. So you just tell me left, right. And when we get to the longitude and latitude, we'll just work our way along till everything matches up and that'll be our spot. And that was our navigation. And we're still mates today. Yeah.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  Well, you're two lunatics.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  So, so Terry just sat with me that morning and I offered him the job and I said, nobody else could know. Um, and then as we strapped into the helicopter, because I didn't know how to turn the lights on either. We couldn't find the heat, the lights or the navigation. So Terry had a flashlight, we had big coats on. And he would take my gloves on and off so I could use my fingers to start this, but we knew. In the middle of winter, no heat, no lights, no navigation.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  Freezing.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. Okay. So nighttime takeoff with your torch, with you?

• 45:04Speaker 01

  With the torch, with everything and.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  You, you got the, you got the, uh, uh, drugs loaded in the back?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Well, it was a complete debacle. I sat, I, all morning I flew around because the guy picking the drugs up was running late.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  So I'm burning fuel. It was just, I, I sat for about three hours. I flew over a federal penitentiary, which you're not allowed to do. And then I end up parking up on top of a mountain for about an hour while Terry went and smashed some windows in this old building that had holes all through it. Till I looked on the map to see where we were sitting, waiting for this load to come in. Had a big round mark around it and that was a Canadian bombing range for the A ten War Hog. So that was an active bombing range that I was sitting in. And Terry was breaking out the windows.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  Why was he breaking out the windows?

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Well, he just went over to do that and the, all the holes in the building, clearly that was getting demolished, but it wasn't. It was target practice for the A ten War Hog fighter jet.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  And that was active and I fired the helicopter and said, we can't sit here.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  They're dropping bombs. So then we, we left there. Then finally it would have been eight o'clock in the morning. They said, okay, the van's moving, moving through Chilwak. And I went, and I flew over Chilwak and I could see the van making its way through the, through the streets and to the back of the town. But I, I could also see three cop cars all around. And so I seen him drive up around the back and then start making his way into the quarry.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  And I looked at Terry and said, mate, we, we've got to make a decision. We've got to get down there. So I just nosedived the helicopter straight down towards the ground, flew in, flew in on the road and then flew up behind the van.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  The, the stupid thing is I parked the helicopter facing the van with the rotors spinning over the, the van. But I couldn't see the police behind me because you're strapped in pretty tight.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you haven't got the view.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  You don't have the view. And it was, and I just, I'm yelling at him, get the bags in, get the bag, yeah. The adrenaline is through the roof at this point. And we finally get the helicopter load in about thirty seconds, but it feels like it takes three hours. And I pop up in the air and I just, I just do a vertical takeoff. And then we head out over the lake and we're heading south. So yeah, we're not talking at this point. I'm pretty stressed, yeah.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  But the reason I bring up the fact that we weren't talking is because later on that day, we'd be talking a lot and we thought we were the new swinging dicks of, of the world. Yeah. On the way down, Terry's got the compass, he's got the, the navigation and I rounded a corner and hit some wind. Normally you, you wouldn't fly into wind like this, but clearly I hadn't looked at wind charts and this thing was pulling me, me down and Terry could see me fighting with the helicopter to keep it off the power line, those big power lines that run through the mountains. But it just kept slamming me into the side and I didn't think I was going to be able to keep it in the air and he could see I was pretty stressed. And as we got to the end of there, it took about five minutes

• 48:09Speaker 01

  to get out of that wind and then I ducked in this other little, little valley.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  And I got out of that wind and I just, I sort of heart stopped for a minute. And then I, then I looked over at Terry and he just had a real worried look on his face. And I said, what's up, mate? He goes, oh, we've been going the wrong way. I said, you're kidding? Where we gotta go? And he said, we, we're about 10 miles back the other way. I said, do you mean I've got to go through the same wind as we just came through and we did it for no reason at all? He goes, I'm really sorry.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  Risking your life.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So back through the wind we go. Yeah. And we eventually found where we needed to drop drugs. After phone calls to Canada and everything, it turned out it was some guy's house. Him and three mates were gonna walk out in the backyard, wave to me and I could land over there and then pull the bags out and they were gonna take off. They had some trucks and stuff there and that's what I did.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  What a great run operation. I can't see any, any failings or potential failings, failings in that.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  It was a shit show.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  So after, after, how much did you make from that?

• 49:12Speaker 01

  I made about seventy five thousand dollars that day.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  That day. Yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 00

  And so when you're saying you're talking a lot after, you're high fiving each other thinking you're.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Oh, once we dumped it off and I, I managed to clear the power lines and the trees and then start heading back to Canada. We had Sweet Home Alabama playing on a Uwe boom. We just, we just thought we discovered bread, fire, air and everything. It was, it was crazy.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  You were both bit up yourselves at that.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Oh, a hundred percent.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  We've got this.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  We just did something that every kid, yeah, this is how arrogant you were.

• 49:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Everyone sits there in the back of the plane heading to Bali going, if the pilots get fucked, I can fly this thing. We've all said it.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  But rarely anyone gets to do it. We've all watched like the, the classic movies like Godfather, Blow, um, Made in America, Goodfellas, all of those, you know, what was it? What was it? There was, yeah, Blow, which was the Johnny Depp one.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, Ma- Made in America.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Made in America was Tom Cruise with, with the cocaine quarterback.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  There was one, there was one other famous movie, Scarface.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  You know, Tony Montana, he had a two O six.

• 50:27Speaker 00

  So you, you were roll, roll up all into that.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  We, we've all sat there and watched those movies and thought, I could do that. But could you really do it? We just did it.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  There's things in those movies I thought I could do, but not what you just did.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  That, to me, that's, okay, there's one thing, uh, yeah, believing in yourself, but don't let your, uh, your belief outrun your abilities.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  Flying a helicopter, I just think, okay, okay. I prefer, I'd, I'd see myself more in the shootout situation rather than flying the helicopter. I didn't know how to fly. Well, you're living, living the dream, living the dream.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Your death was always around the corner.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Cause another couple of blokes died about a month later in a helicopter, in a two O six, bringing back 400 kilos of coke.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  Cause that, that became the, the big thing, didn't it? The, the extra money you'd make for getting across and then the helicopters running, running the drugs across the border.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Oh, the backlog.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  I was making a hundred grand a day just running weed.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Until I pitched to pick up 200 kilos of coke.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Now you made the decision not to go down that path, but what was it based on? Uh, what was that decision based on?

• 51:37Speaker 01

  It was a very calculated decision. Basically my wardrobe was full of money.

• 51:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  That I couldn't spend. And I was just looking at a wall of money that I had nowhere to spend it. So what's the point in adding more money to it when I can't even spend this money?

• 51:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  And if I get caught with that, I'm gonna do 20 years.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  I'm okay with a hundred grand a day. At some point you gotta realise, I'm okay. I don't need a pay rise. I'm good to go.

• 52:04Speaker 00

  And, and cocaine, you, the sentence would be higher too, I would imagine.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  You're running into a completely different, pills and powder.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Is where you start, right? The money, they'll offer me four hundred fifty thousand dollars for one hour's work.

• 52:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  And that's, that's hard to turn down.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  And so when you got, cause we have, we've seen the movies where they've just got so much cash coming in, I don't know what to do with it. You shoved it in suitcases and it's in the walls and, uh, it's everywhere. What, what perception of, of, have you got on life? Are you just thinking how, like, I see a lot of people that go into that, yeah, criminal world, make their money. And I, I, and I've sat down with people who have been caught and going deeper and darker than, than what you've got. But I think you've made your money, you could have walked away from it. Why didn't you walk away from it? The initial was to get a, you know, foot up and, and start making something for yourself. Is it the adrenaline that keeps you in there or?

• 52:59Speaker 01

  It, it's no different than that coal miner. You get so comfortable with the, with the process.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  And, and the risk that you've managed it all. You've managed the risk, you've managed the process, you've managed what, what will happen. But it's all based on lies and misinformation when it comes down to the sentence and everything like that.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Because I, I felt like, I, I never wanted to get in the drug business. It was more about the helicopter and doing something that people say couldn't be done.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  I should have flown with Dick Smith around the world instead of doing that.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  I, I was gonna, I was thinking about that prepping for the, uh, the podcast, you know, you had the skills to fly a helicopter, you could have made, had a real interesting career flying it legitimately.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  And, uh, and having, having some fun and adventures that way.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  Did it cross your mind?

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Oh, it's always crossed my mind, but it, the cards weren't in it for me.

• 53:55Speaker 00

  Were you worried about being the knock on the door or the, you know, the blokes in the black overalls kicking doors in with shotguns pointed at you?

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Well, a bunch of things started happening. Our first ground crew got hot and they were all under investigation. So they all ran. They ran to Spain and different places. That, that sent off a little tickle in me, but my handlers sort of put it all straight and said, don't worry, we got, we got a new team coming. Like you don't, nobody said anything. They've all taken off. So you, our operation hasn't been, hasn't been compromised. I'm like, okay. You start to get really comfortable with, with the, um, with just cat and mouse. What's the worst that's gonna happen? And you really justify it. So you understand

• 54:44Speaker 01

  that in America, that, uh, the Kennedys made all their money running moonshine from Canada down into the US.

• 54:50Speaker 00

  For history, historically.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Back in the days and, and you know, you, you sell it to yourself is we're just the modern day moonshiners of the north.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  And, and so you, you don't really, you don't really think about it.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and from a moral point of view, you, you didn't think about, uh, okay, well, I'm a drug dealer, like drug running.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't, I didn't think about it. Crossing into pills or powder was a different animal alone.

• 55:16Speaker 00

  Because you would have seen the, the damage that can be done there.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so just doing the, the weed.

• 55:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  And making that sort of coin. I was, I, I, I mostly was getting very addicted. You know, you gamble in the morning.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Basically I'd fly back, put the helicopter away and then I'd drive into the city because I used to live in the city.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  You stop off at the casino and start playing blackjack at $10,000 a hand because that's the only thing that can get your adrenaline.

• 55:42Speaker 00

  You're cha- chasing the rush?

• 55:44Speaker 01

  You're just chasing the rush. Yeah.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  Did you, uh, start using drugs yourself? Was that part of bringing you down or?

• 55:50Speaker 01

  A little bit, but, but I, I really kept a cool head through that, through that flying part. You really did need to. And I looked at it like a business and, and I was like a fighter pilot. I had to, I had to have a clear head, you know, I, I had a lot of stress going on. So I wouldn't go out with the boys or anything like that till I knew I had 10 days of clear weather or something like that. So I, I was quite disciplined in that regards.

• 56:19Speaker 00

  Well, that's probably, uh, the difference between you.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Living and dying.

• 56:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I was gonna describe the crash, but it was too horrific. I won't tell you, but it probably crossed your mind. Uh, Tim, we might take a break here. A bit of a spoiler alert. You did get caught.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:35Speaker 00

  I know, like you, you're taught, like people listening to this will be thinking a criminal mastermind, you and your mate, uh, mate Terry. But Teza, but, uh, yeah, it did come, uh, come crashing down. We'll talk about that. Talk about your time in, uh, the US prison system because I don't know, I, I know the prison system's over here, but the American, US prison systems have a horrible reputation and there's some, uh, yeah, some bad places you can find yourself in. So we'll talk about that. And then the other sentence you got on, uh, MAFS as a contestant. And more, more importantly, like we've seen there, I appreciate your honesty. Talk about what you, what you're doing now and, uh, turning your life around and see if you've got any other adventures planned.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 57:19Speaker 00

  Fly to the moon or something like that. We'll take a break and we'll be back for part two.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Thanks very much. Cheers.