R v Linton

[2025] NZHC 126

IN THE HIGH COURT OF NEW ZEALAND CHRISTCHURCH REGISTRY

I TE KŌTI MATUA O AOTEAROA ŌTAUTAHI ROHE

CRI-2023-009-007536 [2025] NZHC 126

THE KING

v

MATTHEW JOHN LINTON

Hearing:                   11 February 2025 Appearances:  C R Stuart for Crown

A M S Williams for Defendant Sentencing Notes:  11 February 2025

SENTENCING NOTES OF EATON J

This judgment was delivered by me on …….. at ……… pursuant to Rule 11.5 of the High Court Rules

Registrar/Deputy Registrar Date:

R v LINTON [2025] NZHC 126 [11 February 2025]

Introduction

[1]                 Matthew John Linton, you appear for sentence having pleaded guilty to a charge of money laundering.1

The offending

[2]                 You were arrested as part of a police operation regarding a multi-million-dollar methamphetamine and cocaine supply network to Christchurch which was being operated by the Tribesmen Motorcycle  Gang  (Tribesmen  MC)  between  September 2021 and October 2023.

[3]                 Th police obtained surveillance device warrants that allowed them to intercept private communications and covertly record locations of interest. The police executed multiple search warrants that revealed large quantities of cash and the seizure of multiple electronic devices.

[4]                 Ricky Poa (formerly Smith) is a patched member of the Tribesmen MC gang. He holds the rank of National Vice President. Mr Poa has entered guilty pleas to his role in leading this offending. He has been given and accepted a sentence indication, but he is yet to be sentenced.

[5]                 Mr Poa was the principal offender of the methamphetamine and cocaine supply network. He led the other persons who have been charged. He was the main financial beneficiary of the drug dealing activity. He was primarily responsible for sourcing kilogram quantities of methamphetamine and cocaine from organised criminal groups in Auckland and elsewhere. Consistent with that role, he did not have the controlled drugs or cash in his personal possession. Instead, the way this operation was conducted is that he arranged for trusted patched members and gang associates to manage the transportation and, particularly relevant to you, the storage of cash.

1      Crimes Act 1961, ss 243(2) and 66; maximum penalty seven years’ imprisonment.

[6]                 You are 41 years of age. You are a senior patched  member  of  the  Tribesmen MC. The material before me confirms you have been a member of that gang for the past 15 years.2

[7]                 Between 26 October 2021 and 12 October 2023, you engaged in money laundering transactions knowing or believing that all or part of the property was the proceeds of the offence of selling or supplying the Class A controlled drugs, methamphetamine and cocaine. The total quantity of cash attributable to the charge of money laundering to which you pleaded guilty is $761,879, which is broken down as follows:

(a)$566,765 transferred into offshore gambling accounts;

(b)$4,560 cash and a cash counting machine stored at your home address in New Brighton (14 December 2022);

(c)$19,707 cash and a cash counting machine stored at your home address found on a later date (25 April 2023);

(d)$133,825 cash was found in the storage unit at Storageplus in Riccarton (12 October 2023);

(e)$37,022 cash and a cash counting machine was located at your home address (12 October 2023).

[8]                 The summary of facts says that money represents only part of the proceeds from the sale of methamphetamine and cocaine by the network. It records that you assumed more responsibility in terms of the role you were playing after Mr Poa was arrested.

2      Although Mr Linton’s affiliation with the gang spans 15 years, the pre-sentence report outlines he has only been a member since 2022.

Personal circumstances

[9]                 I have a great deal of material about you, Mr Linton. That includes the Department of Corrections’ pre-sentence advice, your affidavit which has been sworn this morning, your handwritten letter which I have read. I have supporting letters from your partner and stepdaughter, and I have an affidavit from your aunt.

[10]              The pre-sentence report details your upbringing. I am only to refer to this material very briefly. You spent the first ten years of your life between your aunt and foster homes before being returned to your mother around age 11. In your affidavit, you have explained how you suffered throughout your childhood, leaving home at the age of 14 to get away from your mother’s abusive partner. While you were living with your mother you were introduced to antisocial gang behaviours. You have suffered mental health challenges as set out in your affidavit. Your affiliation with gangs became strengthened once you were in your twenties after you moved to Christchurch in 2004 and your affiliation with the Tribesmen MC began in 2012 whilst you were serving a sentence of imprisonment.

[11]              You now have a partner, with whom you have four children, two stepchildren, three grandchildren and a fourth expected in May this year. They are your “number one” priority. Your partner has said she was unaware of your offending, but that you were living in different houses at the time. She remains supportive of you and has offered her home as available to you when you are released into the community.

[12]              The pre-sentence report tells me that you accumulated 61 convictions between 2000 and 2023. You have been sentenced to eight terms of imprisonment. You have previous convictions for dishonesty, unlawful possession of firearms, non-compliance, violence and, most relevantly for today, for drug offending. You were sentenced to five years and eleven months’ imprisonment in 2012 for methamphetamine dealing. You were sentenced to five years and six months’ imprisonment in 2017, again for methamphetamine dealing and, on that occasion, associated with firearms offending.

[13]              You told the report writer that when your most recent parole conditions ended, you took an “opportunity” to clear your debt to the Tribesman MC gang and to improve your financial position. You told the report writer that your high-risk situations include

not having money, needing to find a means to obtain money, and associating with past associates. You said that drug use had not contributed to your offending. But you did describe a sense of obligation to the gang and to follow directions that had been issued to you.

[14]              You were assessed by the report writer as being a high risk of harm to others and have a high likelihood of offending. A sentence of imprisonment was inevitably recommended.

Approach to sentencing

[15]              Mr Linton, the Sentencing Act 2002 sets out the purposes and principles of sentencing that I am required to take into account when I sentence you today. The relevant purposes include accountability, denunciation, deterrence and rehabilitation. I need to consider the gravity of your offending, the degree of your personal culpability, the seriousness of the offending and the general desirability of consistency in imposing sentences for like offending. I am also required by law to impose the least restrictive outcome that I consider to be appropriate in the circumstances.

[16]              The essential context of your offending is a very significant Class A drug dealing network that was being run by the gang for whom you were a senior patched member. So, in sentencing you, I agree with Mr Stuart, it is important to recognise the close affiliation your offending has to methamphetamine dealing. Methamphetamine is a drug which causes serious harm in our community. The distribution of methamphetamine and cocaine has countless victims, people who often experience the very worst outcomes. That includes adverse mental health consequences, criminal offending to fund addiction, the breakdown of personal and employment relationships, and social deprivation.3 Society as a whole is harmed by the activities that you have involved yourself in.

3      Zhang v R [2019] NZCA 507, [2019] 3 NZLR 648 at [78]–[79].

Starting point

[17]              As Mr Williams has highlighted, the maximum penalty for the offence of money laundering is seven years’ imprisonment. There is no guideline judgment for sentencing for this offence. This reflects that the circumstances in which somebody might engage in money laundering can be so varied, that each case must ultimately turn on its own facts.

[18]              Nonetheless, there are common factors that I consider must be assessed in determining an appropriate starting point. That includes the nature of the offending from which the moneys were obtained — in this case Class A drug dealing; the total amount laundered; the degree of sophistication; the motivation for the offending; the length of time over which the offending occurred; and the extent to which the offender has personally benefited.4

[19]              I do not think there can be any doubt that you, over your 15 years’ association and as a senior patched member with the gang, were closely associated with Mr Poa and you must have been acutely aware that the moneys you were laundering on behalf of the gang were the illicit proceeds of  Class A  drug  dealing.  Relevantly,  the Court of Appeal in R v Wallace said:5

… those who launder money for drug dealers are nearly as culpable as those who actually participate in the dealing. They help the dealers avoid detection and in this way provide assistance in their activity … Sentences for money laundering should therefore bear a relationship to sentences for the particular principal offending and should be approached on a similar basis.

[20]              In another Court of Appeal case, Williams v R6, in relation to the observation in Wallace, it was observed that “it is always necessary to focus on the offender’s role in drug offending and allowances must be made for the differences in the maximum sentences”.

[21]As I have discussed, the total amount that you have admitted laundering is

$761,879. That is a significant sum. You were storing, banking and transferring those

4      R v Wilson [2022] NZHC 1901 at [12]; and Zhang v R, above n 3, at [104], [106]–[117] and [126]–

[127].

5      R v Wallace CA415/98, 16 December 1998.

6      Williams v R [2021] NZCA 333 at [18].

sums over a 19-month period. The use of offshore gambling accounts demonstrates to me what I describe as a modest degree of sophistication.

[22]              Most significantly, as a senior gang member your role indicates to me you were significantly trusted by the gang leader. You have said your motivation for the offending was to repay a debt to the gang and that you did not personally secure any financial benefit from your offending. That led Mr Williams to describe you as acting as a trustee for others within the gang. He suggests that you were taken advantage of, and you exposed yourself to significant risk for little to no personal gain. Mr Stuart, you heard this morning, takes issue with that submission. He says that sanitises your role. I am inclined to agree with Mr Stuart.

[23]              I very much doubt there was not personal advantage to you in offending. At the very least you would have achieved what you must have considered to be recognition of the standing you have within the gang, you being invested with the responsibility of storing and dealing in such large quantities of cash. And by your own explanation to the probation officer, you were motivated to engage in this offending for financial benefit, albeit to address the debt that you owed to the gang.

[24]              I have been referred to  a lot of cases by counsel.7   I have read them.   As    Mr Williams suggested, I have accepted I should inflation adjust the amounts discussed in those cases to ensure they are treated appropriately.

[25]              Mr Williams submits the appropriate starting point for your offending based on those cases and the role that you played should be no more than four years’ imprisonment. Mr Stuart, for the Crown, submits the appropriate starting point is higher, at 5.5 years’ imprisonment. When I read those cases and I assess the role that you played as a senior patched member, involved in a gang that was heavily entrenched in a significant Class A drug dealing network, I consider the appropriate starting point to be four years and nine months’ imprisonment.

7      Zhang v R [2010] NZCA 481; R v Daniels [2020] NZHC 275; R v Lowther [2023] NZHC 3515; R v Le [2018] NZHC 2199; R v Chase & Williams [2018] NZHC 1022; Williams v R [2021] NZCA 333; R v Wang [2021] NZHC 445.

Uplift

[26]              The Crown seek an uplift of around six months’ imprisonment to reflect your previous convictions, which I have outlined, for methamphetamine dealing in 2012 and 2017. Mr Williams says I should not impose an uplift because those convictions were not for money laundering. I cannot accept that submission. The reality is that you have been involved in methamphetamine dealing for many years. Your current offending arises directly from methamphetamine dealing. The prior sentences have not deterred you from your continued involvement in serious drug related offending, albeit I accept as I will discuss shortly, your association with the gang is probably the significant causative factor.

[27]              The minimum I consider I can reasonably apply as an uplift is three months’ imprisonment, which is about five per cent of the starting point I have assessed.

Personal background factors

[28]There are strong mitigating factors to be considered.

Guilty plea

[29]              You entered a guilty plea promptly after a significant amendment to the Crown charge list. You were facing a charge of participating in an organised criminal group. That charge was withdrawn and substituted with the charge of money  laundering. Mr Stuart submits a deduction of 20 to 25 per cent would be appropriate, the maximum being 25 per cent. I agree with Mr Williams that the maximum is available to you, and I allow that.

Personal background, remorse and rehabilitation

[30]              Mr Williams proposes a further discrete deduction to recognise your traumatic background, your remorse and your rehabilitative capacity.

[31]              I accept Mr Linton that you have had a life marred with abuse, mental health challenges, and addiction issues. You have appeared before the court many times. You

have previously engaged in rehabilitation, sometimes with some success. You have tried to break the shackles of addiction. I understand that.

[32]              The Supreme Court in Berkland v R said there must be a causative connection between a defendant’s background and the consequent offending.8 The Court said:9

Contributory deprivation, including that precipitated by historical dispossession and sustained by poor educational and other intergenerational outcomes, can help to explain an offender’s limited life options, poor coping skills or other criminogenic circumstances that made the offending more likely. Where these factors do help explain how the offender came to offend, they will amount to causative contribution and so will be relevant for the purpose of sentencing,

[33]              The background material about your childhood and your path that led you the Court today from both your affidavit and the affidavit from your aunt and from the other reports, they point consistently to a background of instability and a pattern of addiction and offending. It is encouraging to read the support letters from your partner and your stepdaughter (who calls you her dad). They clearly believe that you have the capacity to reform. You appear to have very strong relationships with your family generally. You have said in your letter to the court that you want to spend time with your family. You refer to children, grandchildren, to a goal of studying mental health and addiction. I acknowledge your desire. I accept it is genuine. You want to make changes in your life. You have completed a number of tertiary courses from within the prison. I accept you are remorseful for the harm that has been caused by your offending, harm to those who were impacted in the community by methamphetamine addiction and also the harm that has been caused to your family.

[34]              Mr Stuart reminds me that your stated motivation for the offending was financial, as I say, to clear a debt to the gang. Consequently, he submits the various background factors that have been advanced on your behalf have little by way of causal connection to your offending. I think that submission is too simplistic and ignores the linkage that I identify between your past, your use of drugs, your drift into the gang and the last few years of repeated criminal offending. To your credit, and as

8      Berkland v R [20222] NZSC 143, [2022] 1 NZLR 509 at [109].

9 At [109].

you have said in your letter to me, you accept you have made poor decisions and you do not offer any excuses or justifications for your behaviour. I applaud you for that.

[35]              I consider a deduction of 15 per cent is appropriate to reflect your background, your remorse and your prospects of rehabilitation. What that means is a net deduction of 35 per cent, from the starting point of four years and nine months’ imprisonment.

Result

[36]Mr Linton, will you please stand.

[37]              On the charge of money laundering, you will be sentenced to three years and one month’ imprisonment.

[38]              I just say this, Mr Linton, the future from here is in your hands. I suggest you keep a copy of the affidavit and the other material that you have made available to me close by, particularly when it comes time for your release and that you make good decisions. I wish you well. You may stand down.

…………………………

Eaton J

Solicitors:

Crown Solicitors, Christchurch

Counsel:
A M S Williams, Barrister, Christchurch