While Simon McIntyre and his young child waited for their baggage to come through from their Sunday evening Rex flight from Armidale, other passengers watched in astonishment as detectives from the Terrorism Investigations Squad handcuffed the property manager and led him away.
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In McIntyre's car, which was parked at Sydney airport's domestic terminal, they found a loaded black Ruger pistol, $5000 in cash, a large machete-like knife, a smaller military knife and three UHF two-way radios.
What Federal police later found in a cabin at McIntyre's remote property in Meryla, near Moss Vale, according to a police statement of facts, was even more astonishing: $2.4 million in cash hidden in a Louis Vuitton bag, 13.4 grams of the drug ice, and more prohibited weapons including an automatic rifle, a Norinco SKS rifle with a folding bayonet and a double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun.
When the former Nomad bikie associate appeared in Waverley court on 22 February, McIntyre, 48, told the court he was a building project manager earning $2000 a week.
Three weeks earlier, on February 1, 2017, detectives investigating Australia's biggest tax fraud were listening as McIntyre's boss, property developer Daniel Hausman, a former bankrupt, allegedly discussed the blackmailing of syndicate members.
Earlier that same day solicitor Dev Menon, 33, had hosted an extraordinary meeting at his firm Clamenz Lawyers's office in Sydney's Martin Place.
According to police, during that meeting Daniel Rostsankovksi, known as Big D, who was aligned with Hausman, demanded a payment of $5 million or he would use crime reporter Steve Barrett to expose the involvement of Menon and Adam Cranston, the son of the then Deputy Commissioner of Taxation, Michael Cranston, and others in the fraud.
Just after midday Rostankovski called Hausman to tell him the good news. "So we're going to call Sevag, they'll pay a million dollars today," said Rostankovski.
As it turned out the extortion attempt allegedly netted $24 million which was paid into the trust account of Rostankovski's lawyer Sevag Chalabian, who was also a former lawyer for the Obeid family.
More than three months later, on May 18, police finally swooped, arresting nine people in relation to what is alleged to be the biggest white-collar fraud racket in Australian history .
Among those arrested were Adam Cranston and his sister Lauren, good friends Jason "Jay" Onley and Simon Anquetil, Daniel "Big D" Rostankovski, Hausman and lawyer Dev Menon.
They are alleged to be part of syndicate which skimmed up to $165 million which should have gone to the ATO as payroll tax.
According to corporate records, March 16, 2016, was a very busy day for Dev Menon.
One of the companies Menon established that day was Consolidated Real Estate and Investments Ltd (CREI).
CREI still lists as its current directors two former outlaw bikie gang associates Peter Larcombe and his mate Simon McIntyre.
The ultimate shareholder in this company was hidden by using a straw director based in Camperdown.
No one appears to have alerted ASIC that Larcombe is dead, having fallen to his death at Los Angeles airport in August 2016, and McIntyre is in jail, bail refused.
Larcombe, who had links to the Comancheros, had reportedly fled to Dubai after falling out with the ATO syndicate members. Previously, he and Adam Cranston were involved in a company Aventis Partners.
McIntyre had been to visit Larcombe in Dubai in February 2016 along with a former business partner of Larcombe's Christian Madison, a London entrepreneur who spruiks his own brand of mineral water sourced from the Himalayas. McIntyre also saw Larcombe in Los Angeles three weeks before Larcombe died.
Because of his death, Larcombe was to be the fall guy for the corrupt scheme should it come to light, according to a call intercepted by police at 8.19pm on the same day as the blackmail meeting.
"So I need to put down… the list of directors for everyone's coverage…but obviously Peter Larcombe was running this," Menon told Rostankovski, according to a 270-page AFP affidavit recently tendered in court in a Proceeds of Crime application.
Rostankovski suggests they could also put in "the other bloke, Tristan".
On the same day Menon set up CREI, he set another company CREI Camperdown, whose directors were Hausman and Tristan Waters.
Waters, who ran security for the now closed Canberra nightclub Minque, was arrested in 2008 after cocaine and MDMA were found in his car.
In 2013 an ACT Supreme Court judge noted that the police couldn't prove the drugs were Waters and he was not charged. However, during the trial of his associate the court heard that when he was given the chance to make a call, Waters phoned his uncle, Egon Struss. The arresting officers weren't aware at the time that Struss was wanted in relation to drug-trafficking, money-laundering and the distribution cocaine and ecstasy in the Newcastle area, the court heard.
Waters other corporate entities included Dispose All Pty Ltd and Legit Industries.
The shareholders in Waters and Hausman's company CREI Camperdown were companies associated with the alleged blackmailer Rostankovksi and property developer Michael Teplitsky.
In documents tendered before court, the Federal police contend that Teplistky and Hausman used bank accounts connected to them allegedly to launder the $24 million Rostankovski allegedly received from his blackmail endeavour.
Both Hausman and Rostankovski have been charged with demand with menaces with intent to obtain or gain or cause loss.
Teplitsy, 48, has not been charged in relation to the alleged ATO payroll fraud.
