Convicted of a record heroin bust, a former child refugee caught in a diplomatic deadlock may never leave New Zealand

Friday, 18 September 2020

When Sam A Lam arrived in New Zealand in July 1998, he told Customs officials he was looking to set up a frozen foods business.

In fact, Lam was part of a Triad-connected drug smuggling syndicate attempting to move $70 million of near-pure heroin between Thailand and Australia in three tacky artworks that weren’t worth the cost of postage.

Twenty-two years later, Lam is caught in a bureaucratic stalemate between New Zealand, his country of birth Vietnam and the nation he fled to as a child, the United States.

Since his release from prison in 2008 he’s been convicted of a dozen crimes including drink-driving and theft, became business partners with a key figure in one of New Zealand’s largest methamphetamine rings, and attempted to open a brothel in suburban Auckland apparently using a fake home address.

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Despite a decade-long effort to repatriate him by Immigration NZ and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), there is no sign he will be allowed to return to Vietnam or the US.

And given the length of time he has been in the country, a human rights advocate says Lam should be allowed to remain permanently in New Zealand.

In July 1998, on the day France beat Brazil in the Football World Cup, and weeks before then-Prime Minister Jenny Shipley sacked her deputy, Winston Peters, Lam’s arrest made front page news in several New Zealand papers.

Lam had walked into a carefully laid trap by Thai authorities, New Zealand police and Customs.

The scheme began to unravel even before the drugs had left Thailand thanks to three tacky resin sculptures used to conceal the drugs.

Staff at a courier firm in Bangkok became suspicious about the 'rather ugly pieces of artwork' and couldn’t believe the sculptures were worth the NZ$660 it cost to send them.

Customs officers in New Zealand were alerted and intercepted the 10.26kg shipment in air cargo at Auckland Airport on 9 July 1998.

The next day officers replaced the powder with another substance before the package was delivered to an address in Glendene, Auckland, in a joint police and Customs surveillance operation.

They hid a listening device in the package before a customs officer posing as a courier driver delivered it to Lam at a Glendene house.

Lam and an associate were arrested outside an NZ Post outlet in Newmarket after repacking the parcel and posting it to Sydney.

Lam, then 27, described as a driver from Daly, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chinese-born Bill Wei Zhao, 23, were charged with possession of heroin for supply, importing the drug and attempting to export it, and possession of counterfeit immigration stamps.

With a street value of between $50 and $70 million, around $100m in today’s money, it was then the country's highest-value drug seizure, five times larger than the previous volume record haul of heroin, and with a purity of 70 per cent.

A third man, Jin Hong Lee, was extradited from Australia to stand trial. The ringleader, who operated under multiple pseudonyms but came to be referred to as Wong.

It was thought Wong was tipped off after a call was placed from the Ellerslie house rented by Lam and Zhao were living to a Sydney address. At the time the call was placed, only police and customs officers searching the property were present.

The day after the Auckland raid, Wong fled to South America and has never been caught. This would later lead to accusations and angry denials that corrupt officers had warned him.

In a hint of troubles to come for the prosecution, the preliminary depositions hearing at the Auckland District Court in late 1998 was delayed after a Mandarin-speaking interpreter was sworn in, only for Zhao's counsel to advise that his client spoke Cantonese.

At the trial, held over several weeks in July 1999, Lam’s defence was he had been befriended and deceived by the mysterious Wong, who had offered him a job working in a frozen fish business.

Lam’s lawyer Roy Wade, who went on to become a District Court judge, said although Lam was suspicious, he thought at worst the tacky artwork might be stolen. He did not suspect it contained heroin.

Meanwhile, the case against Lam’s co-accused was not going well. A police interview with Zhao could not be played to the jury after it was ruled to have breached the Bill of Rights.

Reports at the time said the Crown had difficulty proving the case against Lee as he was out of New Zealand when the drugs arrived.

And then there was the phone call. Roy Wade skewered the head of the Asian crime unit, Detective Sergeant Simon Bennett, in a tense cross-examination captured verbatim by a court reporter from the New Zealand Press Association.

Roy Wade: Do you see there [on the bill ] at a time when only police and customs officers were at 3A Carrs Place, that a phone was used to ring that address in Australia?

Detective Sergeant Bennett: It appears to be the case, yes.

Wade: Can you explain that to us?

Bennett: No.

Wade: You would be very concerned if any police officer or customs officer had picked up the phone and rung an address in Australia, wouldn't you?

Bennett: Yes.

When the verdicts came down, Lam was the only one of the trio to be found guilty.

In handing down a 13-year prison sentence, Justice Bruce Robertson acknowledged the Lam’s difficulties growing up “in a country torn by war”.

“You were provided with the opportunity to make a new life and you chose instead to fall into this for reasons of money. I accept that because of your isolation from family and friends the serving of a term of imprisonment will have a particularly severe impact upon you but that is the inevitable consequence for people who go to another country and indulge in criminal activities.”

Lam was among the more than 800,000 Vietnamese that fled their homeland after the war ended in 1975. Often referred to as ‘boat people’, many were left traumatised by violence and humanitarian crimes such as the widespread use of napalm bombing and chemical weapons such as Agent Orange by the United States.

Lam was released on parole in May 2008, and under normal circumstances would have been deported forthwith. But there began the three-way dance that shows no sign of ever being resolved.

Almost immediately after his release Lam began reoffending. His rap sheet includes four drink-drive offences, theft, careless driving and three incidents of driving without a licence.

It’s understood he hasn’t been charged with an offence since 2012.

When I spoke to him at his Pakuranga home that year, he was curious how media had come to find out about his story. “So you guys interested now, eh? How did you get the story? Nobody knows about this.'

Asked about returning to Vietnam he replied: 'They want to take me back, that's where I'm born, but I can't.'

In June 2012, Lam became a director of J & F Decorators & Construction, an Auckland-based painter decorator company. One of the other directors was called Felix Lim.

An investigation by the NZ Herald in 2017 revealed how Felix Lim was the key to police unlocking a sprawling international drug syndicate responsible for bringing 744kgs of pseudoephedrine into New Zealand – another record contraband haul.

The Operation Ghost case was broken open by an undercover agent posing as a drug dealer from Wellington, who befriended Lim and bought small amounts of methamphetamine from him.

Police officers tapped Lim’s phone calls to gather evidence and identify the higher-ups in several drug smuggling networks, that ultimately led to $20 million in cash and assets being seized, and 30 operatives sent to prison over the course of four separate trials.

Lim skipped the country before police could arrest him.

Police said they were prevented from commenting on whether Sam Lam was suspected of involvement due to privacy.

The spokesperson said Lim remains a “person of interest in Operation Ghost”.

”Until he is located Police cannot rule out charges for his role in serious drug dealing matters should he return to New Zealand. His current whereabouts is not known.”

In 2016, Lam incorporated a company called the Great Relaxation Centre. Companies Office records show it was supposed to operate as a massage parlour in Porana Rd in the industrial North Shore suburb of Wairau Park.

But when Stuff visited the premises earlier this year, the site was empty. It’s unclear if the business ever operated.

We also tried to speak to Lam at an address in Pakuranga that he told the Companies Office was his home address, however none of the labourers living at the house recalled his name or recognised his photo. A person who said she was the owner of the house said she had never heard of him.

When asked if they were aware whether Lam had registered a false address with the Companies Office, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) said they would only investigate after receiving a complaint. The Great Relaxation Centre is overdue in filing an annual return and is due to be removed from the Companies Office register.

Exhaustive attempts to find out what efforts have been made to repatriate Lam were declined by MBIE, the parent agency of Immigration NZ.

In a March 2018 Official Information Act response, MBIE’s acting general manager for compliance, risk and intelligence services, Peter Devoy, acknowledged that numerous communications existed between Immigration NZ and the US Government in relation to Lam.

Devoy refused to release the information, saying to do so would prejudice national security, international relations, and may be a breach of trust where information had been shared in confidence.

Devoy added that MFAT's Consulate-General in Ho Chi Minh City had acted as a liaison between Immigration NZ and Vietnamese authorities, but refused the release of any other information on the same grounds.

Subsequent requests for information under the Official Information Act were largely rebuffed, due to privacy and legal reasons.

Stuff complained to the Ombudsman’s Office over MBIE’s delays, lack of transparency, and evolving stance to releasing information, citing a high level of public interest in the case.

After the Ombudsman’s intervention, MBIE released a few more basic details.

A former Immigration Minister was aware of one case where a refugee who had committed a series of attacks against women was deported after he was deemed a threat to national security. But he added it was a very high bar to cross.

“Normally you’d attempt to negotiate with the country of origin. If he fled as a kid and got refugee status the chances of documentation are limited so it could be we can’t get rid of the guy. If that is the case their hands are tied.”

Prominent human rights lawyer Deborah Manning said that given the length of time that had passed since Lam arrived in New Zealand, he should no longer be liable for deportation.

'We've got to be careful about how we look at cases involving criminal justice when someone happens to be a refugee or from a migrant background.

'If they're a member of the community and they've spent a significant amount of time here then his refugee background is irrelevant.”