Farrell's high life over as he starts his year behind bars

JUST a week ago Tony Farrell was living the high life with his wife and friends at a luxury resort in Bali. Now he's spemding the next 12 months behind bars.

Former Coffs Harbour police officer Anthony John Farrell is spending his first nights behind bars. . Picture: Neal Patel

JUST a week ago Tony Farrell was living the high life with his wife and friends at a luxury resort in Bali.

Today, the former police officer is behind bars in a Sydney jail.

It's a long way to fall for a man who thought he had it made when he took a transfer to the Coffs Harbour station five years ago.

From the outside, he appeared to have the ideal life.

He was an active member of the local surf lifesaving club, enjoyed regular holidays and nights out with friends and was paying off a house in an exclusive Sawtell street which he loved to call the "S...St resort and spa".

When he accepted a position as a detective with the State Crime Command's Joint Investigate Response Team, which covered cases from the Mid-North Coast to the Northern Rivers, his work went relatively unsupervised.

The subject matter was less favourable than the working conditions.

Child abuse cases were at the top of the list and as a pre-sentencing report would later reveal, they were beginning to take their toll.

Along with the apparent trauma he was experiencing, Farrell, who was approaching 40, was going through what his wife Angela suspected was a "mid-life crisis".

A psychologist report tendered in a Sydney court on Wednesday, indicated Farrell had been suffering from anxiety caused by low hormonal levels which made him feel like "less of a person".

Farrell is described in the report as a person with "low self esteem" who is impulsive, eager to please and has difficulty recognising "black and white rules".

It was when Farrell became obsessed with working out and began to supplement the injections of testosterone he was receiving from his doctor with other substances that he started down a dangerous path.

His wife said in a report her husband had adopted a "cocky attitude", was irritated, aggressive and causing trouble at home.

The first in a string of tele- phone intercepts between Farrell and his gym buddy - local champion body builder Andrew MacLeod - revealed the extent of his obsession.

He admits lying to his wife about his use of steroids and tells MacLeod about the results he is getting on deca and "GHRP-6".

He says he is on a cycle of ethanate, is ready for another and wants to know what MacLeod can access and if he has "any s**t".

The pair discusses another man, "Billy Dollar", who has recently been busted for ethanate.

When MacLeod says "that makes me want to crawl into a hole and burn everything", Farrell says he will always give him the "heads up" if he is "under notice" as he gets "all the intel reports and stuff".

Farrell then explains he is "not on anything detectable anyhow".

The discussion turns to the product Stenazol and "decas".

Farrell asks MacLeod to "keep some aside for me and agrees to meet him the following Monday with "cashola" in hand.

Police later found Farrell had accessed seven intelligence reports relating to MacLeod.

Two were also linked to a prominent Coffs Harbour car dealer known as "Shine".

Farrell was also found to have given a female retail worker the licence number and home address of a customer at the centre of a dispute over hired equipment.

He sent a text message to the father of one his son's karate friends, disclosing the domestic violence history of a neighbour.

During a raid of his home and backpack at the Coffs Harbour JIRT office, police found anabolic steroids.

On every occasion he misused the COPS database, Farrell was found to have entered false information in his reasons for access.

Farrell was arrested at Sawtell on June 1, 2011 and taken to the Coffs Harbour station where he declined to be interviewed.

While he was eventually suspended without pay, Farrell, whose income had been provided by the State Government for almost 10 years, continued to enjoy an extravagant lifestyle.

APN Newsdesk can reveal that since May 2011, Farrell took off on four overseas holidays - Hawaii, Phuket and twice to Bali.

Photos splashed across the couple's Facebook pages, posted in public view, show Farrell partying at strip clubs, relaxing poolside and walking on exotic beaches.

Late last year Farrell and his wife took on work as trainers at a local gym.

Most recently, they were photographed at Sydney's International Airport, just a week before his sentence, getting off a flight from Bali with friends.

The pattern of behaviour seemed to conflict with arguments in court that Farrell could not be placed in jail as he was needed in Sawtell at all times to care for his quadriplegic sister.

Farrell's family though, insisted he was privately remorseful.

Judge Colin Phegan accepted that up until he began to make dodgy decisions Farrell was a man of "good character".

Though he would have been more satisfied if he had been able to hear the words from Farrell himself, (he opted not to take the stand), he also accepted Farrell had some responsibilities towards his sister but none of the evidence, Judge Phegan said, could be used as an excuse for the criminality

He said while the criminality was not on par with child-sex offending, Farrell's breach of trust could be likened to a situation where someone in a position of trust had access to a child victim.

He noted Farrell appeared to have taken a "perverse satisfaction" in using his position to pass on information he knew was confidential.

In sentencing Farrell to two years jail with a non parole period of one year, Judge Phegan said a message of "general deterrence" needed to be conveyed to members of the NSW Police Force that corruption would not be tolerated.

He said it would have been "especially difficult" to convey that message had someone who had disregarded their responsibilities as a police officer in "such a blatant way" been able to escape custody.