By Goya Dmytryshchak
A man jailed for 12 years for importing ice valued at $60million in car engines has had his sentence increased to 20 years.
Jared Samuel Brown, 34, has been convicted of two charges of importing a total of nearly 50 kilograms of methamphetamine.
The Director of Public Prosecutions appealed against the term and argued it was manifestly inadequate. The Court of Appeal this month agreed and increased Brown’s sentence from 12 years with a minimum of seven, to 20 years with a non-parole period of 15 years.
Court of Appeal judges Chris Maxwell, Joseph Santamaria and Christopher Beale said Brown’s offending involved the importation of dangerous drugs in huge quantities – totalling almost 65 times the commercial quantity threshold.
In March, 2013, a vessel carrying, among other goods, four motor vehicle engines containing about 4.4kilograms of methamphetamine arrived in Melbourne from California. Brown and another man took the engines to an Altona premises where a friend of Brown’s lived.
The court heard the engines were dismantled and the packages removed, before Brown stored the drugs in a cubby house at his parents’ home in Warragul.
Brown later handed the drugs over to a man in a carpark at Chadstone shopping centre.
In July the same year, another vessel arrived in Melbourne from California containing nine motor vehicle engines. Secreted in the engines were 103 packages containing 44.6 kilograms of pure methamphetamine.
The packages were detected by authorities and the drugs substituted with salt before the packages were replaced in the engines.
Brown was arrested in August after taking the packages to his apartment in Richmond.
The Australian Federal Police had not been aware of the first importation until Brown’s arrest, when they discovered messages containing extensive details about his involvement on his phone.
