Devastated family break their silence after Melbourne pilot dubbed The Broker mysteriously died in a Brazilian plane crash surrounded by 200kg of cocaine – but they thought he was alive…and in AFRICA
The heartbroken family of an Australian pilot killed in Brazil during a suspected drug drop believed he was alive and well, living 7000km away in South Africa.
Timothy James Clark, 46, was flying over Coruripe, on the coast of the Alagoas region in Brazil’s remote north-east, when his plane crashed around 1.30pm on Sunday.
Clark, the sole occupant of the aircraft, died at the scene, surrounded by Australian snacks and 200kg of SpaceX-branded bricks of cocaine on board the kit aircraft.
On Tuesday, his father Ray was inadvertently told the tragic news of his son’s death by the Daily Mail while seeking a tribute for the former high-flying stock market trader who used the nickname The Broker online.
‘I have got a son called Tim,’ he told the Daily Mail, but insisted his son was in South Africa and not Brazil.
‘No he’s not in Brazil. He’s in South Africa … he does have a pilot’s licence but he doesn’t fly … he’s got his learner’s licence,’ he said.
Mr Clark, from Lilydale in Melbourne’s east, said he knew ‘nothing’ of the deadly crash and expected authorities would have informed him already.
Timothy James Clark (pictured) studied finance at university and trained as a pilot
Timothy James Clark, 46, was flying over Coruripe, on the coast of the Alagoas region in Brazil’s remote north-east, when his plane crashed around 1.30pm on Sunday
‘I would have thought so,’ he said. ‘There’s probably a lot of Tim Clarks around.’
Daily Mail contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs both before and after contacting the Clark family.
‘The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is aware of reports that an Australian has died in Brazil,’ a spokesperson said.
‘The Australian Embassy in Brasilia is liaising closely with local authorities.’
The department did not answer any further questions, including whether or not it had since made contact with the Clark family.
Clark’s Victorian driver’s licence – which still bears his father’s home address – was located among the wreckage and was captured by photographers at the scene.
An online search of the Sling aircraft Tim Clark crashed revealed it was registered in South Africa in January 2023 and had been based at Tedderfield Airfield, just south of Johannesburg.
Additional fuel tanks were found in the wreckage of the Sling 4 aircraft, along with a home-made refuelling system to allow it to fly beyond its standard range.
Mr Clark – who began flying planes 15 years ago and posted several videos of himself flying in Australia – had also checked into the Tedderfield Airfield on Facebook.
Clark, the sole occupant of the aircraft, died at the scene, surrounded by Australian snacks and 200kg of SpaceX-branded bricks of cocaine on board the kit aircraft
A driver’s licence indicated the deceased was Tim Clark from Melbourne
‘According to the Military Police, the foreigner was carrying an Australian identification card and South African club cards,’ one international media outlet reported.
‘In the wreckage of the plane, in addition to the cocaine, police found fuel cans, foreign-branded food, and even an irregular mid-flight refuelling mechanism, suggesting long-distance flights without regular landings.’
The plane had reportedly been operating in Brazil for at least the last two years, and had been photographed at a Brazilian airfield 400km north of the crash site in 2023, nine months after it was registered in South Africa.
Where it was headed on its last flight remains unknown, with no flight details recorded with authorities. Its registration had also been changed to the African nation of Zambia.
Testing identified the drugs found onboard as cocaine, which were wrapped in bricks carrying the SpaceX branding of Elon Musk’s spacecraft and rocket division.
The Daily Mail can reveal Clark was the director and secretary of a number of investment businesses that operated in Australia over the past few decades.
His companies included Stock Assist Group Pty Ltd and Gurney Capital Nominees Pty Ltd (which both remain registered with ASIC), TJC Nominees Pty Ltd (which was cancelled in July), and Bluenergy Asia Pty Ltd and Tick-Tack-Toe Pty Ltd (deregistered in 2021 and 2018 respectively).
Stock Assist Group owned millions of dollars worth of shares in Western Australian mining company Victory Mines and underwrote millions more in Classic Minerals, according to stockholder reports.
His aircraft crashed into a sugarcane field in Coruripe (pictured) with local police saying packages of SpaceX-branded cocaine were found in the wreckage
This year, the business offered to pump $5million into Classic Minerals as part of a share purchase.
Back in 2012, his company Tick-Tack-Toe Pty Ltd also pledged $6million to Marion Energy, an Australian natural gas exploration company predominantly operating in the United States.
The move followed Gurney Capital Nominees two years earlier funnelling $7million into Nex Metal Explorations Ltd, a Western Australian gold mining company.
Clark attended a Seventh-day Adventist Church-run school, the now-defunct Lilydale Adventist Academy.
He later went on to study finance at La Trobe University before training as a pilot.
In 2015, he worked for a company operating small planes to King Island, in Tasmania.
Photos posted online show him posing in the cockpit and alongside passengers. Other pictures feature him enjoying holidays with family, and partying with glamorous women at Melbourne bars.
It is unclear if he was employed as a pilot for a private company or if he owned the plane that crashed, but it appears to have travelled to Brazil from Africa around the same time as him.
A sample of the drugs found onboard the doomed aircraft
The drugs had been branded with Elon Musk’s SpaceX logo
Local law enforcement estimated the seizure was worth around nine million Brazilian Real (around AU$2.5million) to the shipment’s drug lords.
But while it remains unclear where the illicit substances were intended to be sold, 200kg of cocaine would have an estimated street value of $80million in Australia.
In Brazil, one gram of cocaine costs $5, about the same as the local price of a packet of cigarettes, while the same amount may fetch between $250 and $400 in Australia, which has among the highest prices for the drug in the world.
Although very little cocaine is made in Brazil, with Colombia topping the production list and contributing around 70 per cent of the world’s supply, the former Portuguese colony plays a major role in global drug distribution.
A 2016 report by the United Nations found that Brazil was the most frequently cited departure point of cocaine arriving in African, Asian and European markets after Colombia.
This is largely due to Brazil being surrounded by coca plant-producing nations – Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, to the north and west – with loosely monitored and sparsely populated borders.
The nation is also the world’s second-largest consumer of cocaine (after the United States) because the drug, which is typically used by the upper-middle class in most countries, is most accessible across socio-economic groups.
