Crime boss George Marrogi smuggled billions of dollars worth of drugs into Melbourne from his prison cell
Crime boss George Marrogi used 15 separate consignments of tea trolleys over a two-year period to smuggle billions of dollars worth of drugs into Melbourne — and he planned it all from his cell in Barwon Prison.
Victoria
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Crime boss George Marrogi used shipment after shipment of trolleys to bring drugs worth billions of dollars into Melbourne.
Documents show how the Notorious Crime Family gang supremo’s pipeline bombarded Australia with 15 separate consignments over a two-year period, hidden in tea trolleys and others of the birdcaged style.
They were waved through by one customs broker after arriving from Malaysia via air cargo.
Most are suspected of containing 400kg of meth with an estimated street value of $160m each.
The Australian Federal Police material states that the first three arrived in Melbourne in November, 2019, December, 2019, and January, 2020.
They were inspected by the Australian Border Force and found not to contain drugs.
Sources say those first three loads of trolleys were likely to have been dummy runs before the colossal meth shipments he orchestrated with girlfriend Antonietta Mannella.
The first was in February 2020 and they continued regularly until September, 2021.
Marrogi was so busy at times that there were multiple loads in a month on three separate occasions.
“Customs broker (name redacted) undertook the clearance with respect to the last 11 consignments addressed to (redacted),” the AFP material said.
A customs broker is a licensed person or organisation used by importers to navigate the complex processes which surround bringing goods in from overseas.
The shipments were distributed and the proceeds laundered and invested by Marrogi’s gang members, who often bore NCF tattoos with their AK47 assault rifle emblem.
The AFP document says those members had been recruited from the Assyrian community and the prison system.
A Corrections Victoria search of Marrogi’s Barwon Prison cell as the net closed on him revealed how he was kept informed of how the organisation was operating.
A USB he had somehow obtained against jail rules contained screenshots of emails relating to the fifth of the shipments from Malaysia.
It also revealed images showing vast quantities of drugs, photos taken of messages involving high-level criminality, including drug trafficking, and stacks of cash running into the millions.
There were also images of guns in the hands of NCF members.
Marrogi was caught trying to conceal a mobile phone SIM card during the search in a clear indicator there was likely to have been a phone somewhere.
When investigators raided the home of Mannella, they found a trove of computer evidence linking her to consignments.
Ultimately, the pair was charged over a $55m cache of methamphetamine and heroin which arrived from Thailand in 2022.
The drugs were disguised as green tea and magnets and resulted in Marrogi being handed a 22-year prison sentence and Mannella receiving 13.
Marrogi was already serving a 32-year prison sentence for the murder of underworld figure Kadir Ors at Campbellfield in 2016.
He has since been accused of attacking jail staff inside maximum security Barwon Prison.
Originally published as Crime boss George Marrogi smuggled billions of dollars worth of drugs into Melbourne from his prison cell
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