A CAREER criminal, who police once suspected of being involved in an underworld drug hit, has pleaded guilty to a lone count of drug supply, stemming from his involvement in the largest cannabis syndicate Northern Territory police have dismantled in living memory.
South Australian James Weston, 52, also known as Rodney James Stanley, pleaded guilty in the NT Supreme Court on Thursday to supplying a commercial quantity of cannabis. Weston’s precise role in the alleged million-dollar Adelaide to Darwin drug supply racket will be thrashed out at a disputed facts hearing later this year, with police set to allege he was the main Darwin connection in a supply ring which sent more than 400kg of cannabis to the Top End.
The syndicate’s alleged principal, Guiseppe Romeo, 65, was committed to stand trial earlier this month and will face an arraignment hearing in September, when his legal team will likely indicate whether his case will go to trial. Weston’s former “partner of sorts” Leanne Haley, 51, last year pleaded guilty to her “peripheral involvement” in the syndicate, admitting she helped Weston repackage drugs and feed thousands of dollars in cash through an electronic money counter at a house in Darwin’s northern suburbs, where a drug squad raid uncovered 9kg of cannabis, $70,000 in cash, scales and a sales ledger.
The court last year heard Haley was the subject of “violence of a domestic nature” at the hands of her then-partner, who Chief Justice Grant said had previously been “involved with an outlaw motorcycle club”. Weston has a serious brain injury the result of a brutal bashing at the hands of members of the Finks bikie club.
Another of Weston’s co-offenders, doting suburban grandma Yasmin Powell, 57, remains behind bars for her role in the syndicate. South Australian police in 1999 arrested Weston alongside his father, Geoffrey James Stanley, then 54, and charged both men with the 1998 murder of Mitchell Park pensioner Leo Joseph Daly, 33, whose body has never been found but is thought to have been dumped at sea.
The charges were dropped a fortnight later. He faces up to 14 years behind bars.
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Source: The West Australian