The volatile lives behind Australia's booming cocaine trade.
The man in the balaclava finishes scanning the Melbourne townhouse for listening devices.
There's a knock at the door. In walks a hulking figure wearing a ski mask, sunglasses and a camouflage raincoat.
Jason* unzips his bag, takes out the corner of a cocaine brick and sits it on a dinner plate.
The crumbly white rock is worth roughly $50,000.
The smell of fumes drifts across the room — a by-product of the petrol used to process it.
"We've sold to football players, professional athletes, lawyers, celebrities on TV, people in the media … surgeons, doctors, nurses," he says.
It's so ubiquitous, even those meant to be upholding the law are using cocaine.
"I've personally seen judges take it with a glass of single malt."
Jason is a trafficker operating at the highest levels of organised crime. He deals kilos of cocaine a week. He's never been caught.
The high-grade cocaine sitting next to him could be sold on the streets for up to $600 per gram — six times what he paid for it wholesale.
He's in a lucrative market. Australians are the highest per capita users of cocaine in the world – 4.2 per cent of Australians aged 14 and over used cocaine in 2019 – and as an island nation, pay some of the highest prices globally.
We're in the middle of an unprecedented cocaine boom. In just the four months between November and February, authorities seized almost 7.5 tonnes of cocaine destined for our streets.
That's 3 tonnes more than the previous annual record for cocaine seizures in Australia.
To understand how this shadow economy works, Four Corners met with people across the cocaine supply chain, from street dealers all the way to the highest-level operators like Jason. They reveal a world of big money and big risk, power and paranoia.
Verifying what they say is hard, but what they describe stacks up with the public record and what people in the underworld have told the ABC.
For some, this is breaking a code of silence in an industry regulated by violence.
The street dealer
In Australia, the dealers selling to consumers are generally operating at the bottom of the supply chain.
One of these street dealers agrees to meet at an apartment complex in west Melbourne. He comes to the door wearing a mask and never removes it.
"This is just one of my three stash houses," the dealer says. "We're just waiting for my main supplier to come and drop off what I need."
Over an encrypted app, he places an order for four ounces of cocaine. He then posts on Snapchat, Wickr and Signal, letting his customers know he's "on for the week".
The dealer is a solo operator, running cocaine direct to consumers and supplying other dealers with diluted or "cut" product.
He works with a couple of different mid-tier drug traffickers who claim to be associated with outlaw motorcycle clubs.
"When I was young, I grew up in housing commission and I saw dealing as like a way out. I saw my mates doing it, and how they started making money fast, buying cars, and nice clothes and stuff. I thought, 'F*** if these guys can do it, why not me?'"
While he waits for his order to be dropped off, he prepares "cutters" — fake cocaine that he uses to dilute the drug and "rip off" clients.
The dealer crushes Panadol into a fine powder before spraying it with hairspray until it forms clumps. He then wraps it in plastic film and compresses the powder with the bottom of a perfume bottle.
This will be mixed with the product he gets to maximise his profits, or he'll bag it up and sell it to people he doesn't know in a nightclub or bar.
"Probably got around a gram and a half there of Panadol. So I'd charge about $650 if I'm doing a rip," he says.
It's not just clients he's willing to rip off. He receives another message from a mid-tier supplier offering a cocaine bargain.
"He reckons it's A-grade. Selling it for 5,200 an ounce."
It's a suspiciously low price.
"I can tell he's probably trying to rip me but we're going to do him one over before he can get us."
He hatches a plan to send in a crew to steal the coke.
"My guy sits in the car, has a chat with him. Builds the trust a little bit, just pulls out a gun when he least expects it and goes 'give me everything now'. Pretty simple."
The dealer shows video of two guns he recently purchased.
"For a clean one, you're looking at anywhere from $18,000 to $28,000 depending on what it is. Dirty, you can buy them for $4,000 to $8,000 depending on who it is and how dirty they are. These ones have been used a fair bit though."
The dealer is caught in the tussle of a volatile lifestyle. At every turn, he feels as though he has everything to gain and everything to lose.
His own cocaine habit costs him $4,000 to $5,000 a week.
"At my worst, I was probably going through an eight ball [an eighth of an ounce] every day for about 3-4 years straight. Every single day. Just to get through the day.
"You can f*** your life up pretty quick. Thinking people are trying to set me up. Causing a lot of fights and arguments in my relationships, friendships, yeah, it's just a downhill spiral.
"But you love the feeling so much you just keep doing it."
The corporate dealer
Remy* wraps a Burberry scarf around her neck and makes her way to the train station in Sydney's leafy north shore.
She works in a high-powered role in sales, dines at upmarket restaurants and is looking to add a new Rolex to her collection.
When Remy first entered the corporate world, it opened a whole new market for her other business — cocaine.
"I realised that working in the corporate world and working in cocaine, really worked well together," Remy says.
"I started to network, go for the after-work drinks, hang out with the managing directors, meet their managing director friends — some of the biggest coke heads I've ever met.
"So most days, I'd [do] up deals on my lunch breaks."
What became a glamorous double life started as a fight for survival.
Remy's conservative Lebanese childhood was turned upside down when she was just 12 years old.
"I had one wall that was completely decked out with Alyssa Milano from Charmed [who] at the time was my celebrity crush.
"I started to dress in a more tomboyish type of way. I started to take on a bit more of a masculine persona."
One night, Remy's stepdad went through her phone and read flirty messages with her girlfriend.
She was told to: "Pack a bag and get out."
In her desperation, she went to the only place she felt safe — a 24-hour diner in Parramatta where she found solace beneath the cameras.
Remy eventually met an older woman she describes as a "mother hen" who offered to help her make money.
"I was taught the basics of how to survive and how to get by, which obviously meant I felt I had a certain level of loyalty and I had to repay her."
By age 13, she was selling cocaine and rapidly climbing the ranks. During this time, Remy was repeatedly stabbed, bashed and sexually assaulted.
The trauma still haunts her.
"I had a gun rammed into my mouth so hard that I had an already sort of chipped tooth in the back of my mouth knocked … clean out of my mouth."
Moving to the corporate world brought Remy safety and access to new customers, but also new problems. She became addicted to the money and to hard drugs herself.
"You feel invincible. You've got all this money. But you can have 100 grand one night and be $250,000 in debt the next week."
For more than five years, Remy kept up her double life — selling coke to wealthy professionals during her work hours. At just one corporate event, she says she could turn over $15,000.
"I just see dollars, dollars, dollars. That's another street thing. I'm very, very money focused because it's about changing our narrative and our generational wealth."
By the time Remy was in her early twenties, she knew she wanted out of the cocaine business — but it wasn't easy or quick.
"Being able to step away from that much money and go, 'Is it worth it long-term?' is a question that you eventually have to ask yourself," she says.
"Do you want to live a life of crime and potentially be in and out of jail your whole life and dealing with scumbags your whole life?"
International trafficker
In the murky world of cocaine trafficking, there are operators who believe it is worth the long-term commitment.
Jason breaks open the corner of a cocaine brick.
"It has a particular sheen to it. A lot of people call that pearl or mother of pearl," he says.
"The percentage is in the mid-80s. You don't really see anything in the 90s. The final product on the street, during COVID, was as low as 5 per cent, and after COVID it's generally around 50 per cent cut on the street."
Jason has been dealing for 30 years and operates at the highest levels. In order to survive for as long as he has, he subscribes to a code.
"I work with people that have a code. A code that defines how they work. Some people break the code, they talk, or violent people take things too far. If you can get down to the human level, tell people I'm giving them my word, money for good product, there will be no trouble.
"Sometimes you have to project strength. In this industry you need the combination of being respected, in a loving way, and a little bit of fear but not too much."
He says there have only been two occasions in which he has had guns pulled on him.
"If someone pulls a gun on you, they're generally trying to scare you. If someone pulls a gun and they're going to use it, you won't see it."
He hasn't been caught by law enforcement either. He is well-versed in digital hygiene, police surveillance and management in the drugs business. Jason, who had a balaclava-clad associate scan for listening devices, doesn't let us keep an audio recording of the interview.
Caution comes with the territory.
"When you're dealing with higher amounts of quality cocaine, it's always done by introduction. You have to be vetted. You have to work your way up. At a certain level, there's heaps of paranoia. When we're dealing with the millions," Jason says.
Three years ago, Australian Federal Police targeted a so-called "Aussie Cartel" of nine traffickers the authorities believed were responsible for about 30 per cent of all drug importations, worth billions of dollars.
Jason says that isn't the case anymore, and these days the industry has splintered into a growing number of smaller syndicates.
"The cartel that you're talking about, their traditional lines were taken out by the encrypted apps that the police made. A lot of the bigger players got taken out and the traditional ways of getting cocaine into the country was compromised so there's new ways and different people on the scene."
As Australia's appetite for cocaine grows, dealers and traffickers like Jason are getting on with the business of meeting that demand.
There is a cost. A recent Australian study linked cocaine to almost 400 deaths in the past five years.
Jason justifies his role, saying he's like a "well-paid Uber Eats driver".
"I get it from a line to the person, with the least amount of trouble as possible," he says.
"If I can give you something that you want for a reasonable rate but good quality, I don't feel like I'm doing anything wrong. As long as I'm doing my part, I can sleep well."
*Names and some identifying details have been altered.
Watch Four Corners lift the lid on this shadowy underworld, speaking with the people involved throughout the cocaine supply chain on ABC iview.
Credits:
Story by: Mahmood Fazal, Amos Roberts and Dylan Welch
Photographs: Amos Roberts and Mahmood Fazal
Digital production and design: Nick Wiggins
