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James Sweetin
Sweetin, worked as a 'cook'
in amphetamine laboratories run by
Peter
Pilarinos.
He once told the drug baron that they'd have
trouble finding the vital ingredient needed to make speed, methylamine, but
Pilarinos said he had a corrupt police officer who would give them what they needed.
Pilarinos met Detective Kevin Hicks
in the Agean Restaurant in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy.
He was quite prepared to
hand over the keys to the Attwood Police compound which stored confiscated drugs
and the chemicals used in their production.
Hicks
also told
Pilarinos exactly where the chemicals were stored.
Pilarinos,
Sweetin and Ken Milton, a
drug associate, drove to Attwood and parked a
short distance away from the compound.
Wearing gloves, and using the keys Hicks
gave them, they took 150 litres of methylamine.
The gang returned again and
again, stealing more chemicals and replacing the liquid with Coca-Cola, and red
phosphorous with tile grout.
That day in 1992, detective Lachlan
McCulloch went out to a Mulgrave company after he was tipped off about some
questionable purchases.
He asked for the dockets.
A quick scan confirmed his
suspicions. Whoever was buying the gear was setting up an amphetamines lab.
The salesman at the front counter
gave a detailed description of the man, later identified as James Sweetin, who
bought the equipment.
Better still, the salesman, had slipped out and jotted
down the man's car number. The car was a maroon Subaro station wagon registered
to a company but, in a routine car check, a policeman had written down the name
of the driver - Peter
Pilarinos.
At the time the name meant
nothing to McCulloch.
He returned to his office and briefed his sergeant, and an immediate
investigation, code named Cane, began.
The trail led to
Pilarinos's
huge Doncaster home, set on three blocks.
On July 13, 1992, at 4.35am, McCulloch
went through the garbage in the wheelie bin outside and found a ripped up note
in a used tin of Pal dog food.
He stuck it together: it was an amphetamines
recipe with prices next to the chemicals. But next to methylamine was written
$0.00.
That, police later found, was because
Pilarinos hadn't needed to buy the chemical. He had stolen it back from the Attwood
storage dump and his only cost was to pay off Hicks.
Police started to monitor
Sweetin's phone at his house in Ferntree Gully.
It seemed like a straightforward
job, but on 29 September police monitored a phone call from Sweetin and Ken
Milton.
Milton said he was about to find out if the phone was tapped. When he
rang back he was in no doubt: "Don't say my name, treat your rear-vision
mirrors like guardian angels, treat this thing like everybody is
listening."
The next day police secretly
broke into the gang's amphetamines lab in Ferntree Gully.
It had already been
packed up into storage boxes. McCulloch
knew he had been sold out and Operation
Cane was terminated.
Lachlan McCulloch started a one-man war against
Pilarinos.
He launched Operation
Austin in 1995 but again
Pilarinos was warned.
In 1996 he worked on Operation Redalen, which led to Sweetin being caught at a lab.
Finally Sweetin told McCulloch
who had sold him out during Operation Cane.
It was Senior
Detective Kevin Hicks.
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