An ex-soldier has admitted helping traffic $230,000 worth of party drugs in Sydney, working alongside her partner who was head of a cross-border drug ring.
Police first launched their investigation into a criminal group with the capacity to supply large quantities of cocaine and MDMA within Sydney, the NSW Monaro region and the ACT in November 2021.
Surveillance and monitoring of tens of thousands of dollars' worth of drugs being moved across the border eventually led to the arrest of Jonathon Towers, 33, and Jemma Dann, 28, in their Caringbah South home in Sydney in November 2022.
According to agreed facts filed in Dann's case, the MDMA was supplied in spade-shaped and grenade-shaped tablets.
"The dosage of MDMA was particularly high in these tablets," the document says.
Encrypted chats shared between those in the syndicate hailed the potency of the "more than double strength normal eccies".
"There's cheaper pills out there but nothing like these. These are next level everyone is frothing," one man wrote.
Dann appeared at Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday where the First Nations woman pleaded guilty to two counts of knowingly taking part in supplying a prohibited drug and one count of supplying a large commercial quantity of a prohibited drug.
On two occasions in September 2022, she drove with Towers to the car park at Bunnings in Caringbah.
Each time while there, $85,000 was handed over to the couple by one of the syndicate's drug runners who had sold around 280 grams of cocaine in 10 knotted plastic bags.
That runner lived in the ACT and had met the buyer at a service station in NSW just across the border before he proceeded to Sydney to pay Towers, court documents reveal.
Dann accompanied her partner to the car park, on one occasion collecting the money from the runner's vehicle.
In November 2022, the former soldier also took part in supplying 3000 MDMA tablets for $60,000 which was concealed in a plastic supermarket bag.
She parked with her partner nearby the Caringbah Bunnings where another member of the drug ring got the pills out of their boot in exchange for the cash, the agreed facts say.
During this handover, one of the runners was heard to claim he had bulk orders for MDMA to sell at the Groovin the Moo music festival in Canberra.
While Dann admits knowing that the amount of drugs supplied in these three transactions was greater than a commercial quantity, crown prosecutors have conceded they can't prove she knew the exact quantity being sold nor the amount of money received.
After the ex-soldier's guilty pleas to the three counts, Magistrate Margaret Quinn sent the matter to the District Court for a brief hearing on October 25 when a sentence date will be set.
A further 14 drug-related charges were withdrawn.
Towers has already faced a sentence hearing and will learn his fate on October 18.
