Today, the public gallery at the Manukau District Court was at capacity with the families of John Makatoa Lomu, 50, and his co-defendant Silila Vaivai, 28.
Lomu was to be sentenced for a representative charge of possessing a controlled drug for supply, while Vaivai was facing one for importing controlled drugs.
The submission from Lomu’s lawyer Jasper Rhodes said his client had been put under pressure from loan providers at the time of his offending.
"It helps explain," Rhodes told the judge. "Otherwise, [there’s] no explanation how or why he became involved in this."
In relation to Vaivai, the Crown said sentencing submissions from his lawyer "reflected an attempt to sanitise his involvement".
Judge McIlraith said the matter would be recalled on June 25, giving lawyers time to file affidavits on the new information and other details.
Lomu was a ramp agent for a FedEx depot in East Tāmaki, Auckland, and one of his jobs was to use a Budget rental truck to deliver packages from the FedEx depot to the air cargo inspections facility.
Customs noticed some of the packages appeared to have been opened and tampered with before being delivered by FedEx to customs.
In August 2023, undercover investigators watched Lomu stop at a house in Māngere, South Auckland, while driving the truck from the FedEx depot to the Customs site.
On his return journey, he met Vaivai, a former FedEx employee.
The clandestine meeting was enough to persuade a judge to allow the use of surveillance devices on both men, including GPS tracking and covert cameras.
The devices helped to prove that, between June and September 2023, the two defendants met to exchange packages when Lomu should have been driving straight from the FedEx depot to the Customs site.
The parcels Lomu provided to Vaivai, which had just arrived from overseas, contained "controlled drugs", the summary said.
Vaivai would remove the drugs from the fresh packages and allow Lomu to take them on to Customs.
Investigators counted 15 times when Vaivai imported drugs, 14 of which were aided by Lomu.
In one instance, a package sent at the end of August 2023 was labelled as "lightings", valued at $277 and supposed to weigh 14.95kg.
Customs, searching the package after Lomu delivered it, found used clothing instead of lights and noticed it weighed 3kg less.
A short list labelled "projects" that was later recovered from the notes app on Vaivai’s phone included bullet points that read "Ice" and "7712 LED lights".
There was also a direct credit transaction of nearly $200,000 in November 2023, and his Wise banking app was found to contain $250,000.
An examination of Vaivai’s Wise app showed that he had received more than $350,000 between January and August 2023.
Rhodes submissions on behalf of his client also did not line up with the summary of facts, to which Lomu had pleaded guilty.
The summary said Lomu had just over $250,000 in his Wise banking app, but Rhodes said there was a "more likely" lesser amount of money that had come from the offending.
Judge McIlraith said Lomu’s possible "pressures" and other new information found in the submissions could change his sentence starting point.
At the start of the hearing, Crown prosecutor Aysser Al-Janabi said the Crown opposed the judge "placing significant weight" on the new information.
But once it was confirmed that new affidavits were needed from the defence, Al-Janabi said the Crown would respond.
- Ella Scott-Fleming, Open Justice reporter
