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Jul 21, 2023

Op Rider appeal: Yonghao Huang, who laundered Comancheros drug money, prison term reduced to home detention

Share this article A car dealer who was sent to prison alongside disgraced former radio personality Nate Nauer earlier this year after both men pleaded guilty to helping the Comancheros launder drug

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A car dealer who was sent to prison alongside disgraced former radio personality Nate Nauer earlier this year after both men pleaded guilty to helping the Comancheros launder drug money has successfully petitioned the High Court to have his sentence reduced to home detention.

But the decision, released to the media today, also chastises Yonghao “Chris” Huang, 39, for his “thoroughly unrealistic” expectation of what home detention will be like - including the resumption of his dealership, a twice-weekly badminton date “on the basis of a self-asserted medical need” and daily absences to drive his family to work and school.

“However, the fact that Mr Huang may have unrealistic expectations about what he might do if sentenced to home detention is not a reason for his remaining in prison when he poses little risk to others and little risk of re-offending...” Justice Gerard van Bohemen wrote in his 17-page judgment.

Huang was initially ordered by an Auckland District Court judge in May to serve a sentence of two years and eight months’ imprisonment.

Justice van Bohemen noted that Huang’s two co-defendants - Nauer and patched Comancheros member Vetekina Naufahu - also had their sentences reduced on appeal two weeks ago. As a result, both co-defendants would now be suitable for home detention - although Nauer is awaiting a suitable address and Naufahu has declined to request it because the reduced sentence means he is now eligible for release on time served.

It would be unjust for Huang to serve a prison sentence while Nauer, who was found to be more culpable, was on home detention, the judge said.

Nauer, a former Mai FM morning host, laundered about $420,000 of drug money through multiple cash purchases of high-end cars through Huang’s business, Baili Enterprise Ltd. In coded messages between the two, Nauer would refer to the cash payments as “noodles”.

Both men pleaded guilty to six counts of money laundering and Nauer initially received a sentence of two years and nine months’ imprisonment - one month longer than Huang’s.

During a hearing earlier this month, Huang’s lawyer, Paul Dacre KC, argued that the gulf between the two sentences should have been wider given his client’s “recklessness” as to where the money was coming from versus Nauer’s direct knowledge that it was drug money. The judge agreed.

“It is well established that those who launder money for drug dealers are nearly as culpable as those who actually participate in the dealing,” van Bohemen wrote. “Mr Dacre submits that the starting point adopted by Judge Dawson was based on an assumption that Mr Huang knew that the money he was laundering came from illegal drug dealing when, at best, the evidence establishes that Mr Huang was reckless as to the source of the money.”

The judge also agreed to increase Huang’s credit for good behaviour from 5 per cent to 12 per cent and a credit for remorse from 4 per cent to 5 per cent.

“He has lived his entire adult life in New Zealand,” the judge noted. “His only encounter with the law is a traffic conviction in 2015 for excessive speed, for which he paid a fine. To give him a discount of only 5 per cent for previous good character is manifestly inadequate.”

He based the very modest remorse credit increase on an affidavit in which Huang accepted his actions were “greedy, arrogant and self-centred”. But the judge said that statement was tempered by “the lack of any acknowledgement of the harm caused to society”.

Naufahu, the brother of the Comancheros’ New Zealand president, pleaded guilty to two money laundering charges and was initially sentenced to two years and four months’ imprisonment. Authorities said he laundered money by paying over $75,000 in rent via cash and by paying $16,000 for silicone calf implants to make his legs look more muscular.

A 2019 and 2020 investigation into the trio, dubbed Operation Rider by police, revealed purchases of a $100,000 BMW X5 for Nauer’s partner, a $176,000 Mercedes Benz E63 that was later seized from the home of Comancheros leader Seiana Fakaosilea, a $50,000 BMW M5 and two vehicles that were later seized from Naufahu’s home: a $178,000 Audi RS6 and a $275,000 Mercedes Benz G wagon.

“[I’ll] just have an even better car next time,” Naufahu taunted police during the June 2020 seizure.

Each of the vehicles had been allowed to remain registered in the name of Huang’s company in an effort to mask the recipients’ names, court documents state.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.

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