Gang leader with 84 convictions hands over $300k

Gang leader Jamie Pink has agreed to hand over $300,000 of his ill-gotten gains to the Crown - less than one-fifth of the amount police believe he has netted from crime.

The 52-year-old leader of the Tribal Huk gang, which is based in Ngaruawahia, will get to keep $22,700 and a 1994 Mitsubishi campervan after striking a deal with police.

Pink was sentenced in December 2020 to seven years and four months in prison for a brazen attack on the gang’s former sergeant-at-arms, Zion Coker, which happened on Ngaruawahia’s main street in view of a crowd of locals.

Coker was knocked to the ground, punched, kicked and hit with a claw hammer and an axe. He sustained serious injuries to both his knees and his left ankle, requiring surgery.

Pink was later tried and convicted of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, his 84th conviction and his 26th for violent offending.

Police estimate that Allan James Pink, known as Jamie, has made more than $1.6 million from his criminal activity, and have been pursuing him for the money under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009.

The act allows authorities to seize cash and assets gained through crime, and have it forfeited to the Crown under a court order.

Pink accepts that he has benefited through criminal activity, but not to the amount police sought.

He also argued that assets the police seized three years ago – a total of $322,713 in cash, and the campervan – marked the limit of his capacity to satisfy any court forfeiture order.

Pink and the police came to a deal in November last year, which has now been endorsed by Justice Grant Powell in the High Court at Hamilton.

Justice Powell ordered that $300,000 was the maximum amount recoverable from Pink under the act, and this should be paid over “in full and final settlement”.

However, he also ordered that the campervan and balance of the restrained cash, $22,713 plus any interest but minus any costs, should be returned to Pink.

When Pink was sentenced in 2020, district court Judge Robert Spear described him as a “curious mixture of a person” who engaged in charity work alongside his gang activities.

Through the Tribal Huk gang, he launched a lunch in schools programme which at one point was delivering 1000 meals a day, earning Tribal Huk the nickname of the “sandwich gang”.

He also held a Christmas Party for disadvantaged children in Ngaruawahia and gave cash to schools for drug education.

 - Ric Stevens, Open Justice reporter