PROFESSOR IN DRUG TRADE WAS BETRAYED BY NAIVETY

In a tough and treacherous trade like drug dealing, the professor was
simply too trusting.

"We don't use guns; we use handshakes," he told the Police Integrity
Commission yesterday with an air of superiority as he recounted an
$87,500 ecstasy deal.

"I'm probably one of the worst drug dealers who ever lived," he said,
describing his arrest at gunpoint with his 14-month-old baby in his
arms.

The commission is examining the possibility that police robbed the
professor of between $21,000 and $52,000, reaching back to 1992 for
this fresh crop of old villains.

The professor, identified as A1, is an alcoholic, his "drug of
preference", although he said he also used cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis
and nicotine.

But he stressed that he was no scumbag drug dealer; he was a big note
in the "audio industry" for 17 years, and lived in one of Sydney's
most expensive suburbs.

Aged 44, he looks older, but denied alcoholism had impaired his
memory.

"I'm a professor - no," he said.

Professor of what was not revealed, but his most recent alma mater was
prison.

Until three weeks ago he thought he had been betrayed to the police by
either K2, a dealer and the lover of his wife's best friend, or by P1,
"my oldest friend", another alcoholic.

He trusted K2 to the extent of giving him 5,000 ecstasy tablets worth
$87,500 on credit.

Above all, he trusted P1, "my little safehouse", in whose care he left
30,000 ecstasy tablets, worth $525,000 wholesale and $1.5 million
retail, and a bag full of cash while the professor holidayed in Queensland.

But neither K2 nor P1 was the informant, according to the NSW Crime
Commission, which interrogated the professor before handing him over
to the PIC.

Instead, it was a housemaid at the Manly Pacific Hotel, who smelled
marijuana fumes coming from room 506, occupied by P1, who was waiting
for the professor's return, and called in Manly police.

They raided on February 4, 1992, arresting P1. The next day detectives
from the Major Crime Squad North arrested the professor when he
returned home.

He gave evidence that there was about $137,000 cash in a money bag.
P1, who counted it, says there should have been $107,000. The
arresting police said there was only $86,000.