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Appeal failed.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/q...39f95c5b838cb9

Former Australian drag-racing champion Brett Stevens to serve at least 10 years in jail

Melanie Petrinec, The Courier-Mail

April 11, 2017 1:23pm


FORMER Australian drag-racing champion Brett Stevens has lost an appeal of his 13-year jail term for producing and trafficking ecstasy.

Stevens was found guilty in 2015 following a six-week trial in which jurors heard the racing veteran masterminded an operation worth up to $1.2 million that produced about 100,000 pills a week.

Stevens, who has three national drag racing titles to his name, appealed the decision to the state’s highest court.

He argued the conviction was not supported by the evidence, and the sentence was manifestly excessive.

But the Queensland Court of Appeal this afternoon handed down its decision, rejecting both appeals.

All three Court of Appeal judges concluded there was ample evidence for a jury to convict Stevens.

Stevens became national champion in 2004, 2005 and 2008.

He was buying MDMA from Serbian contacts in Sydney and turning it into party pills devoured along the east coast to fund his racing team.

He would boast of operating from “Cairns to Sydney” and was soon in the crosshairs of investigators from Operation Brazen, launched in 2007 to investigate drug supplier Vlatko Tesic, the brother of Gold Coast nightclub baron Ivan Tesic.

His racing empire began unravelling when investigators caught wind of the drug connections to the drag-racing industry and Stevens, whose winnings on the track did not account for his mounting fortune.

Stevens has to serve at least 10 years of his sentence before being eligible for parole.