From masterminding the establishment of a nationwide drug trafficking network to riddling the house of a rival with a spray of bullets, Jim “JD” Thacker did not do things by halves.

But the man who led the meteoric rise of the Mongols gang in New Zealand - in doing so instigating what was arguably the most intense gang war in the country’s history - has now experienced a fall every bit as dramatic as his ascension to power.

Jim David Thacker, 33, was jailed for 22 years and four months when he appeared in the High Court in Hamilton on Friday.

It was a sentencing that took place in the presence of anguished family members and angered supporters, who appeared to be taken by surprise by the length of his sentence.

“F... them. F... them,” one supporter muttered, as Thacker bid them a lengthy farewell from the dock after his fate was revealed.

His brief grasping of his partner’s hand will not be repeated for some time. Justice Melanie Harland ordered a minimum period of incarceration of 50 per cent. Under current legislation, this means it will be the maximum 10 years before he can be considered for parole.

Thacker had been deported to New Zealand from Australia - where he had lived since he was four years old - in August 2018, under the controversial “501” legislation.

He had come to the attention of Australian police through, among other things, a peripheral role in the notorious 2013 gang riot in Broadbeach on the Gold Coast.

Business savvy and charismatic, he had established a popular motorcycle repair business in his homeland - but this endeavour was accompanied by his joining the Highway 61 gang, and then the Bandidos.

Thacker rose quickly through that gang’s ranks and by the time he was unexpectedly kicked out of Australia had become president.

Hone Ronaki joined Thacker in establishing a chapter of the Mongols. Photo:Stuff.

With fellow “501ers” Bandidos Hone Ronaki and Leon Huritu, he set about establishing a chapter of the gang in the Bay of Plenty.

A falling-out with the Australian hierachy led him to rebrand under the moniker of the Mongols - a US-based motorcycle gang established in 1969.

Under Thacker’s leadership, dozens of kilograms of methamphetamine was sourced in Auckland, taken to the Bay of Plenty to be “washed”, and then sent onwards to other parts of the country for distribution and sale.

Other Bay of Plenty gangs - notably the Mongrel Mob and the Greasy Dogs - did not take kindly to the Mongols’ attempt to muscle in on the region’s drugs trade.

The Mongols’ anarchic campaign to establish dominance over their rivals led to businesses being torched, a house being riddled with bullets from high-powered weaponry, and pitched gun battles in the orchard-lands west of Te Puke.

Thacker, Ronaki and Huritu took part in the late night, tit-for-tat shooting up of the house in Haukore St, Tauranga, in January 2020. Inside the home was the daughter of a Mongrel Mob leader, her partner and their children, who were watching television in the lounge at the time.

Justice Harland said it was “a miracle” that no one was killed or even injured in the attack.

However the gang’s swift rise to dominance was stymied, first by the initial Covid outbreak and lockdown in March 2020, and then when police swooped on the gang’s senior hierarchy in June of that year.

The police crackdown was followed by a further blow when, after a three-month trial, a High Court jury found those gang leaders guilty of a slew of firearms and drugs charges in November last year.

Now, what may prove to be the final chapter in the saga has been written with Thacker’s jailing on 53 charges including possession of methamphetamine for supply, supplying methamphetamine, possession of prohibited firearms, discharging firearms with reckless disregard, money laundering, and participation in an organised criminal group.

Thacker’s mother, Tamaku​ Thacker briefly addressed the court prior to his sentencing. As her son wept in the dock, she told the judge there was another side to the man who had stood trial: “The kind, loving, generous man that he is”.

Thacker has spent much of his time so far in prison in solitary confinement, due to bad behaviour - including passing covert notes to his partner during a visit, which led to a conviction for attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Thacker’s sentencing followed that of his immediate deputy, vice president Hone “Oner” Ronaki, on Thursday. Ronaki received a jail term of 16 years on 107 firearms and drug charges.

Leon “The Wolf” Huritu, 40, the gang’s sergeant-at-arms who also took park in the Haukore St shooting, was also sentenced on Friday, to seven years and two months.

However that sentence follows a sentence of seven years and 10 months that he recently incurred for his role in the Waikeria Prison riot. The new sentence will be served cumulatively, on top of that stretch - making for a 15-year term.

On Tuesday another member of the gang - a 29-year-old Auckland man who has ongoing interim name suppression - was jailed for 14 years and nine months on a range of gun and drug charges.

Eleven other leaders and members of the gang were sentenced in June including Jason “666” Ross, the head of the South Island chapter, who incurred a 12-year jail term, and Hawkes’ Bay boss Kelly “Rhino” Petrowski, who earned a stretch of 10 years and two months.

-Mike Mather/Stuff.