undercover investigators<\/a> watched Lomu stop at a house in M\u0101ngere, South Auckland, while driving the truck from the FedEx depot to the Customs site. <\/p>\nOn his return journey, he met Vaivai, a former FedEx employee.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The parcels Lomu provided to Vaivai, which had just arrived from overseas, contained \u201ccontrolled drugs\u201d, the summary said.<\/p>\n
Vaivai would remove the drugs from the fresh packages and allow Lomu to take them on to Customs.<\/p>\n
Investigators counted 15 times when Vaivai imported drugs, 14 of which were aided by Lomu.<\/p>\n
In one instance, a package sent at the end of August 2023 was labelled as \u201clightings\u201d, valued at $277 and supposed to weigh 14.95kg.<\/p>\n
Customs, searching the package after Lomu delivered it, found used clothing instead of lights and noticed it weighed 3kg less.<\/p>\n
A short list labelled \u201cprojects\u201d that was later recovered from the notes app on Vaivai\u2019s phone included bullet points that read \u201cIce\u201d and \u201c7712 LED lights\u201d.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
An examination of Vaivai\u2019s Wise app showed that he had received more than $350,000 between January and August 2023.<\/p>\n
![\"John]()
John Lomu used his job at the FedEx facility in East T\u0101maki, Auckland, to help smuggle illegal drugs into New Zealand. Photo \/ Google<\/p>\n
Rhodes submissions on behalf of his client also did not line up with the summary of facts, to which Lomu had pleaded guilty.<\/p>\n
The summary said Lomu had just over $250,000 in his Wise banking app, but Rhodes said there was a \u201cmore likely\u201d lesser amount of money that had come from the offending.<\/p>\n
Judge McIlraith said Lomu\u2019s possible \u201cpressures\u201d and other new information found in the submissions could change his sentence starting point.<\/p>\n
At the start of the hearing, Crown prosecutor Aysser Al-Janabi said the Crown opposed the judge \u201cplacing significant weight\u201d on the new information.<\/p>\n
But once it was confirmed that new affidavits were needed from the defence, Al-Janabi said the Crown would respond.<\/p>\n
Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro Magazine. She has an interest in court and general reporting. She\u2019s currently based in Auckland covering justice-related stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The submission from Lomu\u2019s lawyer Jasper Rhodes said his client had been put under pressure from loan providers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[234272,5263,8136,31468,3401,2082,16773,5126,159965,159966,111,139,69,9764,10890,213],"class_list":["post-462079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-adjourned","tag-all","tag-blacks","tag-brother","tag-drug","tag-for","tag-great","tag-john","tag-jonah","tag-lomus","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sentencing","tag-smuggling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}