Gold Coast prison guard allegedly arranged to smuggle $200k of drugs during relationship with criminal

A Gold Coast prison guard has faced court after allegedly arranging to smuggle $200,000 worth of drugs into one of the state’s most notorious jails while engaged in a relationship with an inmate.

A Queensland prison guard has faced court over allegations she arranged to smuggle drugs into one of the state’s most notorious jails – while engaged in a relationship of steamy love letters and phone calls with a prisoner.

Gold Coast woman Nicole Lisa Georgiou, 43, was suspended from duty at Wacol’s Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre on July 7 after a tip-off alleging she had accepted $5000 to smuggle almost $200,000 worth of the drug buprenorphine into the jail for a prisoner, according to court documents.

Police allege that at the same time Georgiou was involved in a relationship with a former Arthur Gorrie inmate who was later transferred to Woodford Correctional Centre.

She faced Southport Magistrates Court for a brief mention on Thursday on charges of supplying a dangerous drug within a correctional facility, participating in an intimate relationship between staff members and offenders and misconduct in public office.

Gold Coast woman Nicole Lisa Georgiou, 43, outside court at Southport.

According to police records on the case, Queensland’s Corrective Services Investigation Unit launched a covert probe codenamed operation Uniform Durif on July 1 to investigate the supply of dangerous drugs into Arthur Gorrie.

According to police documents, the operation started after a tip-off implicating Georgiou in a plot to smuggle buprenorphine – a drug similar to methadone with a street value of about $500 a strip, into the jail during her shift on July 4.

She was intercepted by detectives as she arrived for work.

While she was not found to have had any drugs in her possession, documents allege that subsequent search warrants conducted at her Varsity Lakes home and in her Dodge Nitro SUV uncovered a quantity of drugs, more than $1500 cash in $50 notes and a series of handwritten letters from prisoner Teariki Touna May.

The drugs were allegedly concealed in four heat-sealed bags in a pair of corrective services work trousers.

The Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre at Wacol. Picture: NCA NewWire / Dan Peled

Police documents allege that further investigation found a number of steamy, sexually-explicit letters in May’s Woodford cell, signed ‘Nikki”.

Officers accessed CCTV footage of 20 occasions where Georgiou travelled to Woodford to visit May, while recordings of telephone calls between the two also included sexually-explicit conversations.

According to court documents, May confessed to being in a “friends with benefits” relationship with Georgiou for several months, after he “pursued” her with handwritten notes while he was incarcerated at Arthur Gorrie.

He later told detectives he regretted the relationship as it could jeopardise his chances of gaining parole.

Georgiou declined to talk to The Courier-Mail after Thursday’s brief court appearance.

Her defence lawyer Ashkan Tai said he wanted to learn more about the allegations against Georgiou before making any comment.

“It’s not appropriate for me to comment any further at this stage,” he said.