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True Crime: 'Spraycation' derailed
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Editorial: Danielle Ford
Photography: Grant Condon and supplied
When a prolific Australian graffiti tagger found himself behind bars in a Californian jail following a month-long ‘spraycation’ across the US, he had no idea it was a tip-off from police in Melbourne that led to his overseas arrest and conviction.
The Australian national was arrested at San Francisco International Airport in December 2018, as he awaited a flight back to Sydney.
Unbeknownst to the offender, it was a specialised team from Victoria Police’s Transit Divisional Response Unit (DRU) that had alerted US law enforcement agencies to the fact he was travelling to their country in November 2018.
The Transit DRU Digital Forensic Investigation Team (DFIT) is a specialised group of police who are trained to infiltrate established criminal social media networks to help identify graffiti offenders using various covert methodologies.
This particular offender, who DFIT operatives have decided not to name due to the known desire for notoriety among graffiti taggers, had been the target of an ongoing DRU operation for more than 12 months.
DFIT Sergeant Duncan Browne said the team had been using various online covert techniques to monitor the offender, who was well known to police across Australia.
“A big part of the thrill for a lot of graffiti taggers is the capture and sharing of footage and pictures of their offending,” Sgt Browne said.
“It can become a game of who can pull off the biggest ‘job’ and they then share it to social media to brag about their efforts.
“So, we are able to use specialised covert techniques to infiltrate social media networks to identify repeat offending and link it to individual offenders.”
The arrest of this Australian national in San Francisco came after more than a month of DFIT operatives tracking his offending across the US, from New York to California.
“We tracked his graffiti journey throughout the US via these covert techniques and were able to provide this information to US law enforcement, which police in San Francisco used to link him to several offences committed in that area,” Sgt Browne said.
“From this, they were able to execute the arrest and bring the offender into custody.”
Despite having enough information to make the arrest, the offender was not in possession of any evidence to make a strong conviction, but a seemingly inconspicuous piece of paper led to the discovery of information that would be pivotal to cracking the case.
“We had been able to help San Francisco police link him to offences on several trains in California’s Bay Area alone due to the tags that were sprayed on the trains, but there was no solid evidence of him being the person physically committing the crime,” Sgt Browne said.
“But a shipping receipt that was found in his luggage when he was arrested showed that he had sent a package to an address in Melbourne the day before he was due to fly out.
“We were able to intercept this package and found 26 SD memory cards inside.”
The highly-specialised skills of DFIT once again came in to assist after this package was discovered.
Knowing the cards were likely to contain significant evidence relating to the offences, the assistance of Victoria Police’s E-Crime Squad would usually have to be called upon to extract the data.
“The E-Crime team are extremely busy and have so many requests at one time that we could have been waiting months for this to happen,” Sgt Browne said.
“But when DFIT was established, we gained approval and training to use a specialised technology to forensically examine computers, tablets, phones and electronic storage devices.”
Having this ability within the team, DFIT operatives were able to extract the content of the SD cards within days and provided it to police in California.
“On each of the SD cards were photos and videos from each offence in the San Francisco area,” Sgt Browne said.
The Australian national is pictured tagging a train during his time in the US, an offence which resulted in a finding of guilt in a San Fransisco court (document pictured below) and a four-month jail sentence.
“We provided this content to police over there and the offender ended up pleading no contest to all charges.”
Due to the efforts of the team, the Australian man was sentenced to four months in prison with three years’ supervised probation and he was also ordered to pay restitution for the cost of damage to the trains, totalling nearly $12,000.
“This offender has been known to police across Australia for a while and it was hard to track him down,” Sgt Browne said.
“The work of DFIT operatives in this case was exceptional and their work in tracking graffiti offenders wherever they go resulted in an impressive outcome for our team.”
Transit Safety Division Investigation and Response Manager Inspector Andrew Gustke said the Transit DRU, and DFIT in particular, play a big part in tackling graffiti crimes across Melbourne and, as with this case, the world.
“They are recognised both nationally and internationally for their capability and expertise,” Det Insp Gustke said.
“This is a great example of how intelligence collected by Victoria Police can assist international police, while also furthering our knowledge of an offender.”
