• Israel Brambila, a Mexican drug dealer, was arrested in Auckland with $360,000 and almost 14kg of methamphetamine.
• Brambila pleaded guilty to possession of meth for supply and was sentenced to six years in prison.
• The High Court ordered the forfeiture of the money to the Crown under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act.

A Mexican drug dealer who entered New Zealand on a tourist visa got less than two months to see the sights before he found himself looking at the walls of a prison cell.

Israel Brambila, a 36-year-old man posing as a tourist, had the bad luck to be spotted with a “person of interest” by an existing police surveillance operation in the weeks after he landed in New Zealand in December 2022.

The existing investigation was into the importation and sale of Class A drugs.

Police seized almost 14kg of methamphetamine and $360,000 of cash as a result of Operation Settler in 2023. Photo / NZ Police

After sighting him in connection with that operation, police raided Brambila’s room at the Ibis Budget Hotel in central Auckland on February 9, 2023, and found $350,000 packed into a black suitcase.

Brambila was carrying on his person another $10,000 in a bundle secured by a rubber band.

Inquiries then led police to an Airbnb on Auckland’s North Shore, where they found nearly 14kg of methamphetamine.

Meth had street value of nearly $5m

The meth had a street value of just under $5 million and police said it would have caused about $15.5m in harm to New Zealand society.

Brambila was arrested as a part of Operation Settler, a month-long investigation into a “transnational organised crime group” operating out of Mexico.

“These organised crime groups are constantly targeting New Zealand and, on many occasions, they are inserting their own people into the country,” Detective Superintendent Greg Williams said after Brambila was arrested.

“Once established here, they are importing illicit drugs, establishing supply lines to domestic markets and moving their profits out of the country.”

It was not an isolated incident. Police said more than 25 transnational organised crime groups had been busted over the previous five years.

The following year, Customs officers intercepted a consignment of 175kg of methamphetamine at the Port of Tauranga. The container was full of scrap metal and had come from Mexico.

Police, supported by Customs, then raided more hotel rooms and Airbnb units in Auckland’s CBD, uncovering another 5kg of meth that they believed originated in Mexico.

A number of men in their 20s and 30s were arrested as part of that investigation, dubbed Operation Fix.

Questioned about the progress of Operation Fix, police said this week it was still before the courts and they could not comment.

In Brambila’s case, police said they still did not know how the methamphetamine had been brought into New Zealand.

Brambila admits possession for supply

But Brambila later pleaded guilty to possession of 13.85kg of meth for supply.

In December 2023, he was sentenced to six years in prison.

With the criminal case against Brambila concluded, police then went after the money taken from him, under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009.

The act aims to confiscate money and assets that have been “tainted” by being acquired through significant criminal activity and forfeit them to the Crown.

Brambila was served with an application for the restraint and forfeiture of the money soon after he was sentenced in December 2023.

Brambila did not contest the confiscation of the money but there was a complication in having it turned over to the Crown.

When questioned after the police search, Brambila claimed that he did not know who the $350,000 found in the hotel room belonged to.

He also declined to make a statement about the $10,000 he was found to be carrying.

The Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act says the courts cannot make a forfeiture order over property that no one has claimed an interest in unless certain other grounds have been met.

These include a restraining order remaining in place over the assets for at least a year and the police making “all reasonable efforts” to contact anyone who may have an interest.

This meant an order forfeiting the money to the Crown could not be issued by the High Court before February 14, 2025 – one year after a restraining order had been made.

The civil action was set down for the first criminal proceeds list after that date, on February 16.

Justice Michele Wilkinson-Smith ordered the forfeiture of $360,000 seized during the investigation into Israel Brambila. Photo / NZME

High Court Justice Michele Wilkinson-Smith heard the case and said Brambila was a Mexican citizen who had arrived in New Zealand on a three-month tourist visa on Christmas Day, 2022.

He declared on his arrival form that he was not carrying cash or equivalent funds of more than $10,000.

After noting the discovery of the $360,000 in Brambila’s possession and Brambila’s criminal conviction, Justice Wilkinson-Smith said that he had no known source of income in New Zealand and had never opened a bank account here.

She found that the money was “tainted” and issued an order forfeiting the money to the Crown.

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.