Xavier Valent is a name now associated with a notorious drug smuggler sentenced to life imprisonment last week, but it isn’t even the offender’s original name.

NZ Herald crime reporter George Block tells the Front Page podcast that the drug kingpin’s birth name was, in fact, Harry Whitehead.

And while he did attend Auckland Grammar for a while, his real education came during a five-year stint in prison starting in 2010 when he was only 21 years old.

“Some of the people he met in prison became crucial to his forming the syndicate,” says Block.

“He, like many in this world, calls prison university, because of how valuable it is for making these connections, networking and meeting the people who tell you how to take your criminality to the next level.”

Upon his release from prison, he made some critical connections and got straight into importing ephedrine, a key precursor chemical for ephedrine.

“He was bringing in ephedrine through the post, through customs, through courier packages. A lot of them would get picked up, but a lot of them would also get through. Customs started noticing that they were all going to people who were linked and they started an operation, where they were tracking the packages and doing surveillance.”

In 2016, arrests were eventually made, but Valent managed to evade capture and headed abroad where he continued to run a lucrative trade by sourcing drugs in China, Panama and Colombia and then selling them in the New Zealand market for jacked-up prices.

“It was an incredible logistical operation,” says Block.

“Valent used this encrypted messaging app called Wicker and he had these ‘minions’ in New Zealand to whom he would dispatch orders every morning. The people working for him were actually on salaries, which could be docked if they didn’t perform well.”

So how did it all come apart? What type of leader was Valent? And why were his associates so willing to cooperate with the police after working with him for so long?

Listen to the full episode of The Front Page podcast to hear all the sordid details from Block’s six-week stint in the courtroom listening to the Valent case.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am.

You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.