Deen brother jailed for elaborate plot to steal $1.3m worth of products

The man behind a once infamous Brisbane demolition group has been jailed for orchestrating an elaborate plan to steal industrial items worth $1.3 million from a business, before concocting a fake story to mislead investigators.

Sultan Mohammed Deen, known as George Deen, was well known in Queensland in the 1970s and ’80s as one of the Deen Brothers – the group responsible for the controversial demolition of Brisbane heritage landmarks such as the Cloudland ballroom and the Bellevue Hotel.

Deen ran the business with his four brothers before it collapsed in 1993.

The now 76-year-old on Monday pleaded guilty to two counts of stealing property of more than $5000 in the District Court in Brisbane.

Between late 2018 and August 2019, Deen stole several items owned by Contec Proprietary Limited, including concrete moulds, from a site in Richlands in Brisbane’s south-west.

Crown prosecutor Cameron Wilkins said Deen was the orchestrator and conductor of two well-planned and executed operations to steal the items, which were valued at $1.3 million.

“The first [time], he sold $746,376 worth of products, which he cut and sold for scrap metal,” he said.

Deen and the group again raided the site in August 2019, taking $458,000 worth of items. These too were cut down and sold for scrap metal at a business in Rocklea, the court heard.

The court heard Deen in total received about $30,000 for everything he had taken.

Wilkins told the court Deen had to “pay his band of merry men”, so it was unclear how much was leftover from the $30,000 for Deen.

“The moulds are gone, the money’s gone, it wasn’t covered by insurance,” Wilkins said.

The court heard Deen’s group worked from dusk to dawn, and the offending was captured on CCTV.

Deen later lied to police, concocting a story that a man had given him permission to take the items, and claimed he met the man at the location.

Wilkins said a mobile number supplied by Deen, said to be the fake man’s, was in fact Deen’s own mobile number, saved in his phone under his initials “SMD”.