EXCLUSIVE: Colombia had Escobar. Mexico had ‘El Chapo’. Britain had ‘Mr Nice’. And after having been found guilty over yet another blockbuster cocaine raid worth almost half a billion dollars and currently facing the prospect of the rest of his life behind bars, we can now say Australia has Kevin Michael Geraghty – our very own real-life Walter White who went breaking bad after life as a tough but inspiring high school teacher. With the latest lowdown on this unbelievable yet very true crime tale is his former student and True Crime News Weekly publisher, Serkan Ozturk.
To the outside world he was a happily married, muscled kickboxing champion, as well as a highly respected sports coach and PE teacher in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Yet that facade first came crashing down for Kevin Michael Geraghty spectacularly in 1997 after a blockbuster FBI raid involving fake US Airforce pilots at Panthers Leagues Club in Penrith of all places. Those pilots were actually agents for the US law enforcement agency and had been working in conjunction with local police in Australia for almost a year. At the time, it was said to be the nation’s largest attempted cocaine importation. After a trial that concluded in 2000, Mr Geraghty was sentenced to a lengthy stint of up to 25 years in prison. He ended serving just under 20 years in a number of institutions around the state, including the notorious Long Bay Jail. It was claimed while in jail he was on the receiving end of some rough treatment, and had been shivved by a few of his rivals over some matter or other. Probably drugs.
But, it seems despite the trials and tribulations of prison over a good many year, the bloke with the Walter White routine wasn’t too keen on returning to normie life.
Because just after a year or so of being released from the Big House into the fresh air of his beachside home at Clovelly, Mr Geraghty – now aged in his 60s – was once again arrested in early 2017 in a police raid worthy of featuring in a Scorcese crime film or Netflix series.
Maybe there should have been little surprise. While behind bars, it had been reported Mr Geraghty was still involved in the illicit drugs business, even acting as a sort of grand consultant for gangs such as Maroubra’s notorious Bra Boys. It’s been said that thanks to his services he was still pulling in big dosh. Yes, even behind bars. It is likely he is Australia’s most successful cocaine trafficker ever. How can we be so sure, you ask? How can he be labelled successful considering he got caught twice? Well, common sense regarding these matters suggests that one does not simply try to bring in tonnes of cocaine from South America to Australia if one has not, on at least a few occasions, imported hundreds of kilos of the Colombian marching powder previously. Mr Geraghty was a multi-millionaire many times over. Where all the money went, who will ever really know? Because he’s not speaking. He was found guilty of contempt of court earlier this year for not answering questions about his supposed business interests.
In February 2017 – after two years of watching the then-recently released ex-con and five of his alleged associates – Australian Federal Police pounced on Mr Geraghty just as he and a few mates were about to hop on a small boat to travel to a yacht that had been waiting in the Pacific Ocean. That yacht – called the Elakha – had earlier picked up 1.4 tonnes of cocaine from a mother ship out at sea. According to the police, it had a value of $312 million. Once again, it was claimed to to be this country’s largest ever cocaine bust.
Now that Mr Geraghty and at least three of his associates have been found guilty of serious drugs trafficking crimes and face sentencing sometime next year, it perhaps may now be a good opportunity to pay a sort of dark tribute to a life that one way or another has surely been remarkable.
Hugely criminal, but remarkable nonetheless.
Soon after his first arrest all those years ago, there were rumours around Randwick Boys High School – Mr Geraghty’s school at the time, as well as this reporter’s – that a police operation had taken place at the high school for months previously, even involving human surveillance within the school in the shape of an undercover police officer – Kindergarten Cop style. But high school. Which is still pretty babyish when you think about it.
Considering the confirmed elaborateness of both Mr Geraghty’s drug operations as well as the stings conducted by law enforcement both times 20 years apart, it is likely that this rumour is very much true. This reporter clearly remembers strange dudes with moustaches and other creepy vibes coming down to the school to have some kind of meetings with the PE teacher in his office, or sometimes within the gym itself. It would have been somewhat foolish and negligent of police to have not tried to ascertain information and keep a close watch on Mr Geraghty while at school. That’s where he spent most of his hours. That’s where he likely did the majority of his plotting and scheming.
The first time he was arrested in 1997, Mr Geraghty had chucked a sickie that day to run off to Penny Panfers. As explained at length in our first True Crime News Weekly expose of two years past, this reporter and former student of his has never really forgiven him. Largely, because right at the moment he was arrested all those years ago – more than two decades ago now – he was supposed to be taking our Year 8 gym class in period five in the afternoon.
Mr Geraghty not being there meant we missed out on possible participation in the game of ‘bombardment’ – otherwise known as throwing volleyballs at each others heads and bodies, real hard. It was fun, if you were fit and leethe and sporty, like I was but so many of my pals weren’t. With medical science now demonstrating the clear and real risks of brain damage in later life by persistent hits to the head in popular sporting pursuits such as football, perhaps a class action on behalf of all those who played the game of bombardment in high schools could be in the offing in future years. But that’s another story for another day.
Following our article about Mr Geraghty in February 2017 around the time of his second almost unbelievable arrest for major drug trafficking crimes, True Crime News Weekly was contacted by a number of former associates and students of the cocaine kingpin, including some of his pals from the underworld.
Many expressed their surprise that a then-newly launched and little known website was the first media outlet to portray with any detail the life and times of Mr Geraghty, perhaps one of , if not, Australia’s most successful drug traffickers over the past few decades. The story was actually this website’s first proper big hit.
One former underworld figure who contacted True Crime News Weekly claimed to have known Mr Geraghty since the 1980s. He also referred to the school teacher by a less than savoury nickname, which we won’t repeat here.
Another man also wrote to True Crime News Weekly to say he knew of Mr Geraghty during the late 1980s, and had seen him at various places around Sydney’s exclusive eastern suburbs.
“Last time I saw Kevin was around 1987, maybe 1988. Could have been the Sheaf or maybe even the Dark Coma (Kardomah Cafe). You could find him in numerous night clubs around the Eastern Suburbs. He wasn’t hard to miss,” the source wrote.
“He always had his back to the wall and a constant paranoid look on his face, combined with extreme and I mean extreme hyper vigilance. We locked eyes quite a few times, because I’m quite hyper vigilant too, or was. I’ve been working on it. I personally never met the man and never wanted to, yet I knew everything about him.”
The source then continued, writing:
“It was incredible that so many people would never stop pointing him out to me and say, “Do you know who that is over there?” I can’t remember how many times I was told where he worked, which kickboxers were his friends, what gym he went to, which girls he used to go out with and that he was the biggest coke dealer in Sydney with friends at Customs turning a blind eye.”
The man said it was a mystery as to why Mr Geraghty was lured into the world of drugs trafficking, all the while keeping up the Walter White routine of teaching kids things and stuff at a high school.
“Now, I’m not completely stupid,” the man said.
“No one gets away with what Kevin was doing without some friends looking after you. If the whole community is talking about you, then the cops know too. So forgive me for wondering why it took another 10 years before he was caught. I used to look at Kevin and quite often think, ‘who do you owe money to that is forcing you to keep doing this?’ Maybe I’m wrong. Sometimes we get caught up in things that we can’t just walk away from.”
Randwick Boys High School: The former stomping grounds of PE teacher turned Australia’s biggest cocaine trafficker, Kevin Michael Geraghty (Image: Google)
Local Sydney bouncer, Chris Zlomanczuk, shared a car with Mr Geraghty and a bunch of other shady characters a few months after his release from prison a few years back.
He told True Crime News Weekly the former teacher seemed to be a pleasant and sociable character.
“I remember the time I was in the back seat of a car and Kevin was there,” Mr Zlomanczuk said.
“I may have been in a car full of crooks, whatever their profession was before. But Kevin was actually a nice guy, even though he is now looking at a hefty sentence.”
Previously, True Crime News Weekly had reported on how there were consistent rumours floating around Randwick Boys High School that Mr Geraghty was even known to have enlisted former students to perhaps run drugs for him at a ground level. Like Jesse Pinkman.
According to one former student though our very own real life ‘Heisenberg’ was known to even bring his own product to his school office. That’s pretty badass, no matter what you think. This is real drugs kingpin shit folks. It doesn’t get any better than this.
“I remember him being a great PE teacher but I do remember one day walking in on him in his office and he was snorting white powder,” the man wrote.
“He told me it was baking powder and he needed to get the powder just perfect as he was baking a cake for his sick grandmother.
“It’s only now that I realise that it was not baking powder.”
This is movie-level shit. We will do our best to write it. One day very soon.
Although Mr Geraghty was found guilty by a jury in June following a trial in Sydney’s District Court, the decision was only publicised by media in late October. Indeed, the only story in the mainstream media seemingly published online or even at all came from the Sydney Morning Herald on October 21. And that too only arrived a few days after a reader to True Crime News Weekly had written a public comment under our first expose.
“I understand he was sentenced with the other guys,” the source wrote to True Crime News Weekly on October 19.
“I don’t understand the media sometimes … When they were all arrested back in Feb 2017 this was all over the media … Come sentencing not a whisper. I can’t find one story since! Does anyone know the outcome? I hope the writer of this great piece, Serkan Ozturk does a follow up article.”
Thanks for the praise. We’ll accept that.
Chris Zlomanczuk: The local Sydney bouncer rode in a car with Kevin Michael Geraghty and other assorted shady characters (Image: Supplied)
It’s likely the reason for the media’s large silence is because there is much, much more to the story of Mr Geraghty and how he became so successful. And it’s perhaps a story the police forces of Australia don’t want the public to be fully made aware of. But, as that newly launched media freedom campaign states, True Crime News Weekly believes the public has “a right to know”. You would think so anyway; we’re just talking about the biggest ever and likely most successful cocaine trafficker this nation has known.
It’s not bullshit at all to point out that it’s a sad state of affairs when perhaps the overwhelming majority of Australian adults know of Pablo Escobar and even Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman – two blokes from South and Central America – or maybe even Welsh cannabis dealer extraordinaire Howard ‘Mr Nice’ Marks but have no idea whatsoever on who Kevin Michael Geraghty is.
The question has to be asked, why exactly is that?
Days after the publicising of Mr Geraghty’s most recent guilty finding, True Crime News Weekly got in touch with a number of former teachers and students to discuss the downfall of this one-time sporting and education success story.
One former teaching colleague, now residing overseas in Europe, said he was quite “disappointed” to learn of the former PE teacher’s guilt again.
“He’d already served a sentence for this dating back to the 1990’s and been released early,” the former teacher told this publication.
“They say everyone deserves a second chance, but that surely can only happen when there is remorse and repentance. Kevin blew his second chance, in a spectacular fashion, and it is possible he will die in prison, depending on the sentencing outcome in December.”
Reminiscing on better days, the former high school teacher said that he recalled Mr Geraghty as someone who had “everything going for him” and found him to be a successful teaching colleague.
“A kick boxing champion with a strapping physique, stable employment at the respected Randwick Boys High School, and happily married,” he said.
“I don’t know how many people have been hurt by Kevin’s actions, but they have my utmost sympathy.”
Former students, meanwhile, were eager to share their memories of the massive, muscle-bound former PE teacher in short shorts.
“Geraghty was perhaps the best PE teacher you could have asked for,” one former student said.
“You actually learned something about athleticism and he had this demeanour that made you want to impress.
“I’m shocked he’s gone out and made the same mistakes. But perhaps unsurprising from his point of view, given the world he was in before, and the world he’s just come out of. It’s a shame. Who knows what drives the choices he made and still makes today. One thing I know for sure is that I never again had a health and fitness teacher as good as he was.”
Another student had even greater praise for Mr Geraghty’s actions as a school teacher. He said the former kickboxer stood up for him against childhood bullies.
“Mr Geraghty was my high school PE teacher for a couple of years,” the former student explained to True Crime News Weekly.
“I thought he was a nice guy. He defended me from bullying. I was bullied quite a bit in Year Seven, when I first started school.
“He looked out for me and defended me, and kind of prevented a lot of kids who were bullying me from doing that. From my perspective I thought he was an awesome person for doing that.”
However, the same student told this publication that it was almost absurd to the point of being cinema fiction that this same teacher is Australia’s very own Escobar, El Chapo, Scarface, Walter White. What have you.
“When the second arrest happened, I was thinking this guy is like trying to become the [Titanic film director] James Cameron of drugs importation,” the student told True Crime News Weekly.
“He’s out there trying to beat his own blockbuster records!”
The only known public image of Kevin Michael Geraghty is an old photo of the former PE teacher in a Randwick Boys High School yearbook from the 1990s (Image: Supplied)
It was a sentiment repeated by many others.
“Being a former student of Mr Geraghty, I was shocked to see him at it again after spending a few years behind bars,” another said.
“To most of my fellow students and me, never in our wildest dreams would we had thought he would be behind the biggest drug bust in Australian history. Not once. But twice.
“Like they say, old habits never die.”
This reporter remembers Mr Geraghty as a highly intelligent, super fit guy who could inspire. But also a bully. With a slight stench of sleaze. And the wild eyes that would come from too much steroid use. When he went into a rage, spittle would fly from the corners of his mouth. Indeed, following our first expost in 2017 some former female students at schools at which Mr Geraghty formerly taught at during the 1980’s recalled in posts on social media about alleged lecherous behavior from him during gym classes and events such as sports carnivals.
At his most recent hearing in court in October, Mr Geraghty’s defence lawyer argued that the drugs king pin, believed to be 65-years-old, was now “broken” with “no great motivation to go on”.
He then painted a picture of Mr Geraghty as “a pensioner who really doesn’t have any money and works as a removalist”. His lawyer claimed the gang Mr Geraghty was involved with and led was nothing but a rag-tag assortment of “geriatrics and ex-crims”.
The picture painted by his lawyer went totally against the manner in which his client had reportedly been living his life following his release from prison over his first set of drug trafficking charges. Locals in the eastern suburbs who contacted True Crime News Weekly a couple years back said they had seen the gym junkie at fitness centres, at burger joints tucking into giant hamburgers, hanging out with old mates, and sinking a few quiet ones at local holes enjoyed by slightly dodgy blokes in the east.
However, his lawyer did also suggest the court take the former school teacher’s age and health into account and to let Mr Geraghty serve out a possible sentence of home imprisonment for life.
With even his defence team arguing for some form of life imprisonment, it’s likely Mr Geraghty may be lifting weights behind bars for a long time to come.
Perhaps until the day he dies.
In a strange way, he is yet another victim of the muddled thinking behind the “War on Drugs”. For Mr Geraghty was only so successful for so long because of the help he received. The assistance that came from corrupt Customs officials, dock workers, police officers and other dour, brown bureaucrats who looked the other way and pocketed some cash and coke. And the media too. Anyone who who has watched The Sopranos or Goodfellas or Narcos knows what’s up. Here is Australia’s most successful cocaine trafficker, and yet barely a thing is known about him in the public domain. Remember Breaking Bad’s impresario Gustavo Fring giving money to the DEA through the guise of charity and engaging in other PR pursuits in a bid to inoculate himself from a potential investigation? Well, something similar has happened here too.
But, in this instance, it won’t all be solved by an old man named Hector blowing up his wheelchair by pressing that fucking annoying bell, over and over and over.
This is real life. Not a tv show.
When approached for comment, a spokesperson for the Australian Federal Police simply referred this publication to a media release that was released over two years ago. We had asked for a response to our information which suggests Mr Geraghty is likely to be this nation’s most successful ever cocaine trafficker.
“[The media release from 2017] is the extent to what we can provide on this matter at this time, particularly given the matter is currently before the courts,” the spokesperson added.
Although the court case has dragged on for over two years, and is not expected to be finalised until sometime next year when Mr Geraghty will finally be sentenced, a spokesperson for NSW Justice confirmed to True Crime News Weekly the drugs kingpin has “been in custody throughout the whole proceedings”.
We can only add that it is a travesty so very little is known about the life and times of one of this country’s most successful criminals and that it should be a source of deep shame that it is left up to this reporter – a person who works in a retail shop for minimum wage for four days a week and operates this minor, unfunded media website in their moments of spare time – to reveal some elements of truth and reality of this nationally and, even, globally important story. The cocaine almost always came from Los Angeles or thereabouts, first by way of Colombia. It would be interesting, to say the least, to know how exactly Mr Geraghty first got involved in a transnational illicit drugs network that he was seemingly a part of for many years, possibly over a number of decades.
He is next expected to appear at Sydney’s District Court on Thursday, December 19.
Serkan Ozturk from True Crime News Weekly is now working on a book and feature-film idea about the life and times of Kevin Michael Geraghty.
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