High-flyer falls from grace

Another young Geraldton high-flyer has fallen prey to dealing drugs to service his debts, after he lost a $160,000 a year mining job.

Jamin Pierce Feddersen, 29, pleaded guilty to possessing the new psychedelic drug “N-bomb” with intent to sell or supply but his sentencing date was delayed because Geraldton District Court judge Andrew Stavrianou had inadequate evidence to understand how serious the drug was.

Feddersen was in his Woorree property on February 5 when Geraldton police executed a drug search warrant.

In the house police found a sheet divided into 52 multicoloured paper tabs of the drug 25I-NBOMe, similar to LSD, which was only listed on WA’s prohibited drug schedule in late 2014.

On Feddersen’s phone were also messages indicating that he was selling the tabs for $10 each.

Feddersen’s lawyer said in the years earlier he had been working for Rio Tinto, and while racking up credit card debt, he took on numerous debts to pay for his house, two motorbikes and a car.

However his lawyer said when Feddersen returned from a FIFO cycle to find his partner had been unfaithful he assaulted her, and the resulting court appearances cost him his job.

The financial pressure of maintaining his debts without his high-paying mining job drove Feddersen to dealing drugs, and his lawyer said he eventually bought the sheet of 70 tabs of N-bomb online for $60.

His lawyer said Feddersen’s operation was “not a sophisticated venture”; he’d used some of the drugs himself, the text messages police found on his phone showed that people still owed him money, and if he had sold all the 52 tabs police found in his residence he would have only stood to make $460.

Since the drug search Feddersen had also turned his life around, becoming a qualified electrician.

However the prosecution and defence could not come to a conclusion on the seriousness of the drug — while the defence argued it was “an inferior drug” to LSD based on information gleaned from “a Google search”, State prosecutor Sarah Keogh brought a research paper from Stanford University in the US indicating the effects about on par with LSD. Judge Stavrianou said there would have to be a further review of available literature before he could determine how serious the drug was.

He scheduled sentencing for December 22.