The pizza party where Nicola Gobbo got people to ‘roll’ on Tony Mokbel’s drug cartel

A damning ruling on the Lawyer X convictions could today give drug lord Tony Mokbel a roadmap to challenge his convictions. Here’s how Nicola Gobbo and police brought down his cartel with pizza.

It was the beginning of the end for drug lord Tony Mokbel.

As Mokbel began his 15-months on the run, fleeing his 2006 cocaine trial bound for Greece, the police operation aimed at destroying his thriving drug empire was about to go full throttle.

Victoria Police’s anti-gangland taskforce, Purana, was hell bent on “alienating” those in the Mokbel criminal cartel from the inside, both criminal and legitimate.

It was dubbed Operation Posse, and its mission was to topple the Mokbel clan by stealth.

As it would turn out, Mokbel’s confidante and lawyer, Nicola Gobbo - aka Lawyer X - would be its secret weapon.

Tony Mokbel’s confidante and lawyer, Nicola Gobbo, would end up informing against him.

The tall, blonde, barrister not only, allegedly, told her client Mokbel to abscond from his trial while also informing on him to her police handlers, she was about to set up a sting on Mokbel’s disenchanted drug cook, “Mr Cooper’’ (pseudonym).

Mr Cooper was also her client, and Gobbo knew him intimately.

On April 22, 2006, as police raided the drug labs she tipped them off to in her new role as registered informer 3838, she waited for her phone to start ringing.

Gobbo knew as she sat in the courtyard of the Emerald Hotel in South Melbourne precisely what was about to unfold.

When informed of Mr Cooper’s arrest, she asked her police handler: “Who’s next?’’

Mr Cooper was asked 29 questions by police investigators and gave no comment.

It didn’t matter.

Soon, just as she predicted, Gobbo got the call to join her frantic client and made her way to the St Kilda Road Police Complex.

Gobbo told her client Mokbel to abscond from his trial. Picture: ABC News

For months, Gobbo had prepared for this moment, building a profile of Mr Cooper for her police handlers, “Mr White’’ (pseudonym) and “Mr Smith’’ (pseudonym), right down to the cigarettes police should offer him.

Over the course of an hour, she sat with her client in gloom.

They held hands and she even cried for him.

Mr Cooper, instead of fretting about his own predicament, worried about Gobbo and whether she also could be implicated down the track.

The condemned was comforting his executioner.

Many years later, the duped client described the scene and the actress who was playing the role of his lawyer but was really working for the police.

“She looked so distressed. She was shaking her head from side to side saying: ``No, I can’t fix this…’’

“I told her not to worry ... she said, ‘They know everything’.’’

Of course they did. Because she had told them everything.

Gobbo warned her client he was staring down a 30-year jail term, maybe 23 if he was lucky.

She told him he owed the Mokbels nothing. To think of his family who would lose everything.

Gobbo told him to “roll’’, if not for himself, for his kids.

“I couldn’t fathom the idea,’’ Mr Cooper would later say.

“She told me I needed to make a deal. Let me go speak with them and sort something out.’’

Tony Mokbel in Athens before he was extradited back to Australia. Picture: AFP

Gobbo walked out of the interview room and repeated the conversation she’d had with her client without his knowledge.

She then left him, only for Mr Cooper to call her back in.

Soon, Gobbo and Mr Cooper walked into the midst of a “pizza party” in the boardroom of the Purana taskforce on the 14th floor of the police complex.

Gobbo and a handler, “Peter Smith’’, pretended not to know each other.

Two other police officers were also aware of Gobbo’s status.

Phase two was put into action.

One of the officers spoke with Gobbo and Mr Cooper in another room.

It was called “the pitch’’.

Mr Cooper was shown photos of his family, given his options, and agreed to take a deal.

All he had to do was “roll’’ on the Mokbels, sting his associates, plead guilty and testify against them if need be.

Tony Mokbel (left) arrives at the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne last month. Picture: AAP

In the subsequent days he stung other cartel members, including Milad Mokbel, who was immediately arrested, alongside Mr Cooper, who was arrested for show.

A man known now by the pseudonym “Mr Bickley’’ would also “roll’’ after he was implicated.

Over time, Mr Cooper would make 40 sworn statements against the cartel, including Tony Mokbel and his brothers.

He would also be paid, in secret, while he was in prison.

Mr Cooper is still looking over his shoulder, wherever he is.

He told the Lawyer X royal commission he had no idea Gobbo was an informer until her name became public in 2019.

The commissioner, Margaret McMurdo, described it as a “high point of Gobbo’s duplicity’’.

In November this year, following a five month trial about the facts of Tony Mokbel’s convictions, Justice Elizabeth Fullerton went further, labelling four police members as being part of a “joint criminal enterpise’’ with Gobbo.

In her ruling, she stated the members of Victoria Police “participated with Ms Gobbo in that agreement to achieve that unlawful objective’’.

Nicola Gobbo appeared on the ABC’s 7:30 Report in 2019 after the Lawyer X scandal became public. Picture: ABC

Two of them are understood to be police handlers, who have had pseudonyms since the Lawyer X royal commission began.

The other two are believed to be investigators.

Victoria Police has reacted by seeking to suppress the investigators’ names.

Operation Posse was meant to be the future of policing.

Before Gobbo was recruited as an informer, the Posse intelligence dossier illuminated the force’s frustrations with organised criminal cartels.

‘’It has been shown that going head-to-head with criminal identities such as the Mokbels is a waste of time,’’ the 2005 Posse intelligence report states.

“...all of the main characters are extremely surveillance-conscious. They are guarded in their telephone conversations and rarely give valuable information on open lines.

‘’They are also well-versed in legislation and how it affects their activities.

‘’But like any organisation, there is an Achilles heel, and that is their associates and business partners.

‘’It will be through targeting these persons and groups that the operation will achieve success.’’

The importance of Operation Posse was made clear in the report’s conclusion.

‘’The reputation of the Victoria Police and other law enforcement bodies will rest on the outcomes of the operation,’’ it stated.

Should the operation fail, then the Mokbels, as well as other criminals such as Italian organised crime identities will continue to run rampant in the belief that they are able to outsmart the police.”

Gobbo had also tried to help police hunt Mokbel down after he fled, possibly on her tip-off.

Still, one of the first phone calls Mokbel made when he was captured in Greece in June, 2007, was to Gobbo.

She didn’t go to Athens, as he requested after his capture, but kept talking to him about his extradition.

Gobbo even charged him $1800 for the legal advice.

She also told police about those conversations.

By the time Mokbel returned to Australia on a chartered Gulf Stream jet in 2008, his drug empire was in tatters.

But she might now be the key to his freedom.

Originally published as The pizza party where Nicola Gobbo got people to ‘roll’ on Tony Mokbel’s drug cartel