September [music] 2024, New Zealand police announced that almost the entire Comanche gang had been taken down.
137 charges, 17 office holders, 10 patched members, 14 prospects.
So why nearly 2 years later is police running a brand new operation, arresting another 24 people and seizing weapons, drugs, and millions of dollars in assets?
The answer isn’t that the commoneros made a comeback.
It’s that they never actually disappeared in the first place.
What’s in this video next includes details police have never fully laid out in one place anywhere else.
Hit subscribe right now because by the end of this you’ll understand exactly why case closed was never the full story.
July 2021 New Zealand police stood up the national organized crime group and launched operation scuba.
The initial target money laundering.
Police identified that drug profits from the commoneros were being cleaned through professional facilitators, intermediaries who legitimize dirty cash.
The operation wrapped up the following March.
11 people charged 5.8 million in assets restrained, including the gang’s southside pad in Weimoth.
But that was only the outer layer.
Next came Operation Brewer.
200 kg of methamphetamine discovered concealed inside agricultural machinery.
A smuggling method designed to slip past customs disguised as legitimate industrial freight.
Then Operation Avon, targeting the cash and drug transport route between Oakland and Christurch, the lifeline connecting the gang’s two largest distribution hubs on the North and South Islands, and finally, Operation Embargo, which exposed the most disturbing part of the entire structure, the Commission Scheme.
This wasn’t a gang dabbling in drug sales.
This was an organized business model.
According to police, for every kilogram of drugs a member sold, $5,000 in commission was funneled back into a central fund.
What was that fund used for?
Buying a gang pad, the organization’s physical headquarters.
Buying two businesses to launder proceeds and provide legitimate cover, buying firearms, and most alarming of all, funding military-style training for 15 members run by a trainer specifically brought into New Zealand for that purpose.
An internal directive issued three years before the investigation began ordered all members to comply with the commission scheme as mandatory rule.
This was no longer street level crime.
This was an organization with a budget, a strategy, and its own training program across four investigation phases since 2021.
62 search warrants executed nationwide.
206 kg of methamphetamine seized, equating to $215 million in social harm had it reached the community.
1.76 kg of cocaine, 15 firearms, 1,184 rounds of ammunition, five properties, 14 vehicles, 41 commancherero patches seized, $9.2 million in assets restrained.
Police Commissioner Andrew Costa called it a comprehensive strike against nearly the entire organizational structure, but nearly the entire structure was never the whole story.
The man identified as acting national commander of the commonro motorcycle club at the time of the offending, Sayiana Fakawa.
According to high court records, he was convicted of possession and supply of class A drugs along with conspiracy to import methampetamine.
Intercepted communications referenced plans to import a further 600 kg of methamphetamine from South Africa.
December 2022, the court sentenced him to 13 years and 2 months imprisonment.
But the fight didn’t end there.
The defense appealed, centering their argument on covert tracking data from a device fitted to a vehicle which they claimed had not been fully disclosed in raw form.
A serious legal question followed.
Was the prosecution relying on surveillance evidence the defendant had no full right to examine?
On 9th of October 2024, the Supreme Court of New Zealand dismissed the appeal.
The reasoning there was no basis to find a substantial miscarriage of justice had occurred and more importantly the case did not rest solely on location data but primarily on the content of directly intercepted communications.
The conviction stood, but the question of where lawful surveillance ends remained open.
April 2025 in Howick.
Police arrested a national vice president of the common cheros.
Police stated this was the last remaining member of the gang’s leadership yet to be charged.
The allegations involvement in methamphetamine importation through the port of Taranga alongside a separate cocaine importation into New Zealand.
According to the official statement, the entire senior leadership of the common cheros was now facing serious charges.
On paper, this was total victory.
But the reality in early 2026 told a different story.
4th of February 2026.
In Flatbush, two people connected to the common cheros were arrested.
Police located a cocaine brick press, specialized equipment used to compress drugs into transport ready blocks.
A loaded handgun, cutting agents used to dilute purity and increase profit margins.
Roughly 64 grams of methamphetamine, a distribution link, was still active, just months after police declared they’d arrested the last remaining leader.
13 March 2026 under Task Force Morpheus, police arrested three more people, seized an AR-15 rifle, cash, and methamphetamine.
Police described the Comancheros as one of the leading organized crime groups operating across both Australia and New Zealand in the importation and distribution of cocaine, methamphetamine, and other controlled drugs, not remnants, not leftover fragments, a system still running.
It began in early 2025 targeting a widespread drug issue linked to the Wiccato chapter of the Common Chero MC.
Police made an initial arrest in July 2025.
Investigation continued to expand from there with the operation carried out in multiple phases between March and June 2026.
Results announced on 30th of June 2026.
42 search warrants executed across Wicato and Tamaki Makoro.
24 people arrested aged between 22 and 49.
Firearms seized.
Two shotguns.
Four rifles [music] and one sornoff22 caliber rifle, 500 g of cocaine, over $100,000 in cash, and most notably 134 kg of pseudo ephedrin, a methamphetamine precursor, intercepted at the border before it could enter the supply chain.
Assets restrained under the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act 2009, two residential dwellings, multiple motor vehicles, and a motorcycle worth up to $1.95 million in total.
Those arrested included patched Kancherero MC members, four nominees, six associates alongside patched members of the Mongols MC and Mongrel mob.
One critical detail, this is no longer just the Comancheros operating in isolation.
This is the crossover between several of New Zealand’s largest motorcycle gangs operating within the same distribution network.
Charges [music] laid.
Importation of methamphetamine and pseudoephedrin.
Possession and possession [music] for supply of cocaine and methamphetamine.
Money laundering unlawful possession of firearms.
Participating in an organized criminal group.
Detective Inspector Albi Alexander of the National Organized Crime Group [music] confirmed the operation brought together dozens of officers from multiple policing districts.
Coordinated over the course of a full year, this isn’t a one-off win.
It’s evidence of an uncomfortable truth.
You can arrest an entire gang’s [music] leadership and the organization still doesn’t collapse.
Because the common cheros don’t operate as a group of people.
They operate as a system with their [music] own financial mechanism, the commission scheme, their own supply chain through agricultural freight, through ports, through precursor chemicals, and the ability to regenerate leadership the moment one link is removed.
From Operation Scuba in 2021 to Operation Texas in 2026, 5 years, four major investigation phases, hundreds of charges, tens of millions of dollars in restrained assets, and the gang is still there.
The question is no longer when will the Comancheros be wiped out.
The question is whether an organization with this kind of financial structure and capacity for regeneration can ever actually be wiped out at all.
New Zealand police have spent 5 years, hundreds of officers, and dozens of separate operations only to still be making arrests in 2026.
Do you think this is a war being slowly won or proof that the top-down takedown model has hit its limit?
