DRUG lord Steven Spaliviero has spoken about his former life as an ecstasy kingpin and his doomed relationship with Swedish model Charlotte Lindstrom.
In an exclusive interview with news.com.au, just weeks after walking out of Long Bay jail, Spaliviero has spoken about his life as one of the world’s biggest ecstasy manufacturers.
From Lamborghinis, yachts and exclusive clubs to drug labs in the Sydney suburbs and the Amazon jungle, Spaliviero’s life was a cross between Breaking Bad and Miami Vice.
His sensational account in the new book Narco X, of his drug lord life and times with Lindstrom was one of high fashion, fast cars and hard partying and may be destined for a TV series.
Spaliviero told news.com.au he finally has closure over his love affair with Lindstrom, who he planned to marry. The love story fell apart while the young model served three years for conspiracy to murder drug witnesses.
Lindstrom made international headlines when she turned Crown witness against her former fiance and was deported back to her native country of Sweden after wasting away behind bars with anorexia.
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Spaliviero is forging a new life with a young Sydney model, he said, and adjusting to a “different world” on the outside after 11 years in one of Australia’s toughest prisons.
At one point, Spaliviero was classified as an “Extreme High Risk” inmate, forced to wear orange overalls and handcuffed and shackled whenever he moved between facilities.
He said his new girlfriend, Chelsea Coates, who he met via Tinder while trying to master new technology — a smartphone — initially “freaked out” when he revealed his true past.
“I didn’t put my age on Tinder, or that I’d just been in prison, just to give me a bit of a chance,” he said.
“But we met and the second time I told her, and she Googled me and then asked “have you killed people ... how safe am I going to be ... do you still love Charlotte?”
Written while he was still in prison, Narco X tells the story of how a boy from a migrant family in suburban Sydney became an ecstasy kingpin.
Already lauded by US readers on Amazon.com as a “thrilling” tale of fast cars, sex, love and the drug trade, it is all drawn from Spaliviero’s real life.
“I’ve mixed things up to protect [people], but it’s all true,” Spaliviero said.
Now aged 52, Spaliviero has emerged from prison to start a new “legal” life away from the drug trade.
He credits his youthful looks and fitness to “good genes and 11 years with no alcohol or smoking” while incarcerated in Silverwater, Goulburn, Cooma and Long Bay prisons.
During that time, Charlotte Lindstrom gave evidence against him, some of which was sensationally overturned, but Spaliviero does not resent her for it.
He reveals that although it was reported last year that he was still “in love” with Charlotte Lindstrom, that is not longer the case.
“We were deeply in love and we wrote to each other in prison,” he said.
“The last letter I got from her said ‘when this is all over please find me’. She begged me, “I still want the fairytale’.
“When she went back to Sweden, she was forbidden from contacting me.
“After [my trial for drugs and conspiracy to murder] I didn’t know where she was.
“She was like a missing person, but then [a relative of Spaliviero] got a Facebook message from a girl who knew Charlotte under a complete new identity.
“I still had four years to go, but when I got out on works release [day leave] last year, I found her on Facebook.
“Instead of directly contacting her, I got a friend she used to live with to send her a message, just to say sorry and Steve is coming out.”
Spaliviero paused. “I felt really embarrassed by this, I just needed closure, but they put me back in maximum.
“I got locked up. It didn’t matter, I had three months to go.
“It was obvious neither she nor her parents wanted any contact from me.”
In the few weeks since his release from prison in late October Spaliviero has been working as a bartender on a friend’s boat, renovating his mother’s properties and enjoying nature, in the form of swimming in the harbour and watching the sun rise.
“I can’t live the lifestyle I used to, but I am happier than I was before. Jail has made me more spiritual,” he said, showing a text he sent on his new smartphone.
It was sent to the friend with the boat, saying he’d be slightly late for work. “Be there in 25 minutes. Just catching the sunrise over Sydney Harbour. I missed so many”.
It’s a far cry from Spaliviero’s former life, as captured in Narco X.
Spaliviero’s story takes off in the 1980s.
The young Italian Australian, who had a self-taught knack for mechanical engineering, landed a job fixing luxury cars in Los Angeles.
In 1989, he was convicted of running a stolen Porsche racket, stripping luxury cars and sending the parts back to Australia, in Newport Beach, California and imprisoned.
In jail he met a Dutch drug cook, Igor, who taught him how to make ecstasy from precursor drugs like pseudoephedrine.
Spaliviero was released from Avenal State Prison and extradited to Australia to face charges over the Porsche racket.
On bail, he attempted to put Igor’s lessons to work and attempted to manufacture ecstasy at Palm Beach, but was caught.
He spent four years in prison for the conspiring to manufacture ecstasy and the car part scam.
On release he opened up a gentleman’s (strip) club, Joannas, in partnership, but the business failed and he started manufacturing ecstasy.
Spaliviero made thousands of pills a week from warehouses in and around Sydney.
He told news.com.au that since leaving prison he had watched the TV series Breaking Bad, and that his business was massive by comparison.
“You know when they pour in the [chemicals] we had to use a forklift to do that,” he said.
In Narco X, details of ecstasy making are set in the Amazon in South America, and merged with his contact with the Sinaloa drug cartel.
In prison in the US, where he shared the yard with drug lords, bank robbers and gang leaders, he had been protected by his friendship with an accountant who worked for the Sinaloa.
Spaliviero bought precursor chemicals from China, and did travel back to make a drug lab in a South American jungle.
In 2002, he opened another club, Minx.
It was then he met Charlotte Lindstrom, a Swedish backpacker and model who was working at the Sydney club Hemmesphere, and applying for a job with Spaliviero.
The relationship proceeded swiftly and Lindstrom moved into his waterfront apartment, from where the couple lived what to outsiders must have seemed a fabulous life.
Spaliviero, however, was still granted bail while facing drug charges and in August 2005 celebrated his fiancee Charlotte Lindstrom’s 21st birthday at Icebergs in Sydney’s Bondi, giving her a $5000 necklace.
But he knew freedom was going to be short-lived when he received a final tip off that his car and house were bugged, and Spaliviero found a tracker hidden in his bumper bar.
Police would eventually charge Spaliviero with manufacturing 44kg of ecstasy at Riverstone, in northwestern Sydney, and other locations.
This time he was imprisoned, and subsequently charged with conspiring to murder to witnesses in his drugs trial.
In May 2007, Lindstrom was also arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder after she met with an undercover police officer posing as a hit man.
She negotiated a plea deal to provide evidence against her fiance in exchange for a reduced sentence.
At Spaliviero’s 2009 trial, she made headlines when she arrived, her emaciated body swamped by a bulletproof vest.
Spaliviero was found not guilty of the conspiracy to murder charge.
He pleaded guilty to running the Riverstone drug lab, but further drug charges were dropped.
He was sentenced to a maximum 16 and minimum 12 years’ prison, reduced to eleven years on appeal.
In prison, Spaliviero said he changed, as all inmates do, but for the better.
He studied counselling, psychology and life coaching, mentored younger inmates and trained with youth counsellor Ken Marslew of Enough is Enough.
His prison record is clean and now with five years parole to go, he doesn’t plan on returning.
“I can’t count how many times in prison the guys from the underworld who came up to me and said we have the chemicals and we will give you fifty-fifty,” Spaliviero told news.com.au.
“They begged me to come and work for them.
“I said, no I’m over that. How can you put a dollar figure on eleven years of your life in prison?”
Spaliviero said as his release drew closer, he “started coming alive again".
“I hadn’t been with a woman for eleven years and one of my main priorities was to move on and find a soulmate,” he said.
Since meeting Chelsea, the fledgling couple have spent time together “enjoying the little things”.
“We’re going camping in Jindabyne, in a tent,” Spaliviero grinned at the comparison with his once luxury lifestyle.
His mechanical nous, which he once used to strip luxury cars and make massive drug labs to boil up chemicals in the jungle, will be put to proper use.
“I’ve invented something mechanical. It’s to do with the transport, the automotive industry.
“It’s legal.”
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