A Wairoa couple convicted of selling drugs stand to lose more than $800,000 worth of cash and assets – including six properties.<\/p>\n
The Gisborne High Court ordered the forfeiture on Wednesday, which came after a long-running police investigation into Aria Hubbard and her partner Samson Edwards – a Mongrel Mob Barbarian Motorcycle Club member.<\/p>\n
Acting Detective Sergeant Shaun Kennard said the pair was arrested in 2021 and convicted on charges of supplying and distributing methamphetamine in Wairoa.<\/p>\n
He said the forfeiture of the couple’s criminal proceeds included one commercial property, five residential properties, more than $150,000 in cash, five vehicles, a motorbike, jet ski and jewellery.<\/p>\n
The investigation found the pair had deposited more than $200,000 into their bank account and spent almost $400,000 in cash, Kennard said.<\/p>\n
“The cash was used to facilitate the purchases of vehicles, jewellery and residential property, as well as paying for renovations on the various properties they owned.”<\/p>\n
He said some of the property was under different names “in an apparent attempt to separate themselves from the offending and impact the efforts to identify and seize it”.<\/p>\n
Kennard warned businesses to be careful when accepting large cash payments from gang members to avoid unwittingly laundering money.<\/p>\n
Police said once forfeited to the Crown, proceeds would be used for a number of things, such as projects aimed at reducing the harmful effects of drug and organised crime in the Hawke’s Bay community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Wairoa couple convicted of selling drugs stand to lose more than $800,000 worth of cash and assets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-549919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549919","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=549919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}