January 2023, Istanbul, Turkey.
A quiet neighborhood called Zakerakoy in the Sar district.
Expensive, private, the kind of address where people come to disappear.
Turkish special forces and narcotics officers bang on the door of an apartment.
Inside, a man who has been living in Turkey since 2011.
A man who has been running one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the Southern Hemisphere from a distance of 9,000 kilometers.
A man with an Interpol red notice against him.
A New Zealand arrest warrant.
Australian federal police wanting to talk to him and a Turkish indictment being prepared with 65 other codefendants.
He calls himself the negotiator.
Bullseye, Chuck Norris, Elmito, the myth.
He was born in Roaroua.
He went to high school in Sydney alongside a man who would later become one of Interpol’s most wanted.
He built a criminal empire worth an estimated $100 million.
He directed the importation of hundreds of kilograms of methamphetamine, cocaine, and MDMA into New Zealand from a luxury life in Istanbul without ever touching the product.
And as of July 2026, he has still not stood trial in New Zealand for any of it.
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Now, let’s go back to Roaroo.
Duak Hepa Nakuru was born in Rotarooa around 1980.
He grew up in Sydney.
In that Sydney high school, he sat alongside a classmate named Hakan Aayik.
The two boys would grow up to become the most wanted organized crime figures in Australia and New Zealand respectively.
The Facebook gangster and the myth running an international drug empire from Istanbul together.
But that is the end of the story.
At the beginning, there is just a New Zealand kid growing up in Western Sydney, finding his way into the Common Cerero Motorcycle Club during the early years of Mick Harvey’s presidency, rising through the organization during a period of violent turf wars with rival gangs.
In late 2009, after Harvey’s arrest on firstdegree murder charges following the Sydney airport brawl that killed a man in front of international travelers, Nakuru becomes the new Supreme Commander of the Common Chero.
He is around 29 years old.
He now leads the most powerful outlaw motorcycle club in Australia.
In December 2010, a tattoo parlor he owns in Kooji is bombed.
A dispute with the notorious motorcycle club over $25 million worth of Chinese heroin that the commoner took from a notorious drug dealer.
The bombing tells him something he already knows.
Being supreme commander in Sydney is not a safe position.
In 2011, he and his old school friend Hakan Aayik leave Australia.
They go to Turkey and from Istanbul they begin building something considerably larger than anything that could have been built from Sydney.
Turkey in 2011 is a different proposition to Turkey in 20126.
No extradition treaty with Australia.
A growing economy, a cosmopolitan city in Istanbul that welcomes international business and asks relatively few questions about the source of the capital behind it.
Nakuru and Aayik settle in.
Aayik becomes the owner of the King’s Cross Hotel, a 13- room boutique property in Istanbul’s upscale Levent Financial District, a spa, a Japanese restaurant, a business card with the slogan, “Sleep your way to the top.”
Their social media presence is flamboyant.
Luxury yachts, European travel, the kind of lifestyle that announces itself without caring who is watching.
Nakuru is photographed on a yacht in Turkish waters.
He calls himself Elmito, the myth, a man who by that point had been wanted in Australia and New Zealand for years, posting photographs of himself on a yacht in the Mediterranean.
He and Aayik are alleged to sit at a round table of organized crime figures controlling major drug smuggling routes spanning South America, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, South Korea, and South Africa.
The drug trade, according to Turkish authorities, spans at least six continents.
And at the Australian and New Zealand end of it, Nakuru and Aayik direct operations through encrypted communications, never touching the product, never appearing in the same country as the shipments they allegedly organize.
In 2018, the FBI launches one of the most audacious intelligence operations in law enforcement history, Operation Trojan Shield.
They create a0m, an encrypted communications device marketed specifically to organized crime figures as the most secure messaging platform available.
Every message sent through0m every single one goes to FBI servers first.
For 3 years, the FBI reads the private communications of the world’s most dangerous organized crime networks in real time.
Nakuru is one of them.
Using aliases including the negotiator, Bullseye, Chuck Norris, and Elmeito, he sends messages through A0M discussing shipments of 120 kg of methamphetamine, 150 kg of methamphetamine, a planned importation of 1 ton of cocaine into New Zealand, an alliance with members of the Watau Mongol mob to distribute product in New Zealand.
In May 2021, in a message later seized by New Zealand police, Nakaru tells Aayek the Australian Federal Police must accept that they have lost the war against organized crime.
He believes he is secure.
He is writing that message into a device monitored by the FBI.
Operation Trojan Shield is publicly announced in June 2021.
More than 800 arrests across 16 countries.
More than eight tons of drugs seized.
Nakaru and Aayik, despite being among the most significant targets of the intelligence gathered, are still walking free in Istanbul.
Senior New Zealand police officers begin talks with Turkish counterparts about extradition.
Those talks go nowhere for 2 years.
The NZ Herald investigation from December 2021, drawing on documents obtained from the A0M intelligence, reveals the specific scale of what police allege Nakuru directed.
Law enforcement suspects Nakuru sent hundreds of kilograms of methamphetamine, cocaine, and MDMA into New Zealand dating back to 2016.
His alleged right-hand man believed Nakuru made more than $100 million from drug dealing.
Funds were laundered overseas via gold bars or currency exchanges to Turkey.
A single seizure connected to his network, 137.5 kg of methamphetamine valued at $20 million wholesale.
In New Zealand, more than 1,200 charges were laid against 40 individuals connected to the network.
Operation Spy Glassass launched from A0M Intelligence seizes 9 kg of methamphetamine, four guns, 14 vehicles and motorbikes, and more than 1 million in cash.
His cousin Shane Ngakuru is arrested in Thailand on charges of being a super facilitator between the common cherro and Asian crime syndicates.
A New Zealand police report defines the term a super facilitator has links to a global network of manufacturers and supply and distribution chains to successfully import methamphetamine to New Zealand.
The super facilitator is usually based offshore and is never in direct contact with the shipment.
That is the precise description of what police allege Duax Nakuru himself was.
Based offshore, never in direct contact with the shipment, directing everything through encrypted messages using aliases borrowed from American action films.
14th of January, 2023.
Zeryako Sier Istanbul.
Turkish police acting on intelligence and immigration grounds raid an apartment.
Nakuru is detained.
He is handed over to the provincial immigration service for deportation proceedings.
The circumstances of his arrest, the specific intelligence that triggered it, the specific charges Turkish authorities move against him reflect 12 years of a man living just inside the edges of what the Turkish legal system would tolerate.
He is not arrested on the serious drug trafficking charges that New Zealand and Australia want to prosecute him on.
He is arrested on immigration grounds.
The distinction matters enormously.
A man arrested on immigration grounds can be deported, can be released pending deportation proceedings, can contest deportation through Turkish courts, and can, as the Nordic monitor documented in May 2026, find himself caught in a legal system that has become, in the words of that investigation, a revolving door for drug lords.
In October 2023, Turkish police conduct a second major operation, operation cage.
Hakan Aayik, the Facebook gangster, the school friend, the co-runner of the empire, is arrested.
37 full patch common members detained in Istanbul in a single day.
Turkeykey’s Minister of Internal Affairs announces it personally on Twitter.
In February 2025, Nakuru is indicted in Turkey as one of 66 suspects for leading an armed criminal organization engaged in international drug trafficking and money laundering between 2019 and the present.
He is simultaneously facing charges in New Zealand.
The question as of July 2026 is where he will actually be tried.
New Zealand has a warrant for Nakuru’s arrest.
Interpol has a red notice, meaning if he crosses an international border, he is to be detained.
New Zealand police are seeking extradition from Turkey.
But Turkey has its own proceedings against him, a 66 defendant indictment.
And Turkey, as the Nordic Monitor investigation from May 2026 documented, has developed a pattern with the specific category of internationally wanted drug traffickers who relocated to Istanbul.
Arrests happen.
Releases happen pending proceedings.
Suspects vanish before deportation.
The sequence of arrests, releases, vanished suspects, and renewed detentions has intensified questions about how internationally wanted traffickers repeatedly managed to operate inside Turkey despite red notices, foreign extradition requests, and extensive surveillance files.
Nakuru as of July 2026 remains detained in Turkey.
He has not been extradited to New Zealand.
He has not been extradited to Australia.
And in June 2024, he initiated a civil lawsuit against Turkish journalist Timur Soyan and a Turkish publishing house.
The book in question, Baron Invasion, details alleged international mafia activities in Turkey, including Nakuru’s purported role.
Nakuru alleges it damaged his personal honor and dignity.
A man facing drug trafficking charges in two countries and a 66 defendant criminal indictment in a third, suing a journalist for writing about what the court records say he did.
The lawsuit is ongoing.
The charges are ongoing.
The extradition proceedings are ongoing.
He has still not stood trial in New Zealand for any of it.
Here is what the full public record of Duaken Gakuru shows and the questions it cannot answer.
Born in Roarua, grew up in Sydney, rose to supreme commander of Australia’s most powerful outlaw motorcycle club at 29.
Fled to Istanbul in 2011, built an estimated $100 million criminal empire from a luxury apartment $9,000 km from the people importing his drugs.
Was monitored by the FBI for 3 years through a phone he believed was secure.
Had his private messages read in real time by federal agents while writing that the Australian Federal Police had lost the war.
Was arrested in Istanbul in January 2023 on immigration grounds, not on the charges New Zealand police have spent a decade building against him, is indicted in Turkey alongside 65 codefendants, is sued over a book about his alleged criminal activities, has still not stood trial in New Zealand.
The first question this raises when a man can direct the importation of hundreds of kilograms of methamphetamine into New Zealand from Istanbul using phones he believed were untraceable and then remain in legal limbo for more than 2 years after his arrest before standing trial anywhere.
What does that tell us about the gap between what law enforcement can detect and what the legal system can resolve?
The second question is harder.
Nakaroo’s drugs, alleged by police to have been flowing into New Zealand since 2016, did not disappear into a void.
They went into communities, into families, into people who are still living with the consequences of what those shipments produced.
While Nakuru photographs himself on a yacht in the Mediterranean, while he sues a journalist for writing about him, while extradition proceedings move through Turkish courts at the pace they move.
The third question, he went to the same high school as Hakan Aayik.
Two boys from the same Sydney school.
One becomes the most wanted drug trafficker in Australia.
One becomes the supreme commander of the commoneros.
At what point in those school years, if you had been standing in that corridor watching, would you have known what was forming?
And if you had known, what could you have done about it?
For our community in Alteora, this is not an abstract story about criminals in Istanbul.
The methamphetamine Nakuru is alleged to have directed into New Zealand went somewhere.
The $100 million went somewhere.
The 1,200 charges against 40 individuals in New Zealand, each of those represents a person, a family, a neighborhood that absorbed what a man in a Sierra apartment directed at them.
The lesson is not about Duak Nakuru.
It is about what happens when the systems designed to stop something like this, detection, prosecution, extradition, trial, each work on their own timeline, in their own jurisdiction at their own pace.
And what accumulates in the gaps between them?
What do you reckon when a man can direct a 100 million drug empire from 9,000 km away, get arrested, and still not stand trial 2 years later?
What does that tell us about which side is actually
