Topless waitress, B4L gang boss and their traffic light ‘hook-up’
SHE was the mother of two working as a topless waitress. He the feared leader of the Brothers For Life gang. Amber Williams’ chance encounter with Farhad Qaumi at a set of traffic lights would change the course of her life. FIND OUT HOW
NSW
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A CHANCE meeting at a set of traffic lights resulted in a mother-of-two becoming the pawn of a feared gang boss, visiting him in jail, importing steroids for him and even marrying one of his associates.
As her trial was due to start this week, former topless waitress Amber Williams pleaded guilty to trying to smuggle steroids into jail for murderer and ex-Brothers For Life leader Farhad Qaumi and his brothers.
Williams and Qaumi met after their cars stopped next to each other at a set of traffic lights on the Central Coast in 2013.
A few days later the pair caught up face-to-face and a friendship began.
At the time Qaumi was leading the Blacktown chapter of the BFL as it waged a violent war against the rival Bankstown chapter.
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Williams said Qaumi once berated her outside Anytime Fitness in Erina when he saw her talking to male friends.
“He took me outside and started yelling at me,” she said.
“(He) said: ‘I’m not going to be put on show’.”
Qaumi then warned her: “If you back a cat into a corner it’s going to scratch,” Williams told the court.
In January 2014, Qaumi was arrested in a sweeping crackdown on the gang.
He is serving at least 43 years behind bars for his role in an underworld murder, shootings — including one that targeted a teenage girl — drug dealing and firearms.
Once inside jail, Williams said Qaumi continued to contact her through letters and weekly phone calls.
She claimed he asked her to visit him, his brothers, Mumtaz and Jamil Qaumi, and associate Mohammed Kalal in Long Bay and Goulburn Supermax jails.
Her jail visits with Kalal blossomed into a wedding with Williams marrying the inmate over the phone from jail and converting to Islam in 2015.
Williams, 30, cried in court this week as she described how she thought marriage would stop Qaumi calling her.
“I thought that Islamically they would have to leave me alone,” she told a pre-trial hearing in the Downing Centre District Court.
It didn’t work.
“He used to say he owns me and there is no getting out,” she said.
Williams said she once called up Supermax and asked if they could take her number off Qaumi’s calling card without him knowing but it couldn’t be guaranteed that he wouldn’t figure it out.
Williams said Qaumi asked her to order steroids, deposit money into the jail accounts of his incarcerated brothers with a cheque provided by his lawyer and scope out whether another criminal was going to make a statement against him.
She ordered the steroids online.
Defence barrister Charles Waterstreet asked her why she carried out the instructions.
“Because I didn’t know what else to do,” she said through sobs.
”He knows people in the RTA (former Roads and Traffic Authority) that can get an address and he would find me. He used to say he owns me and there is not getting out.”
She is due to be sentenced in December.
Outside court Mr Waterstreet said he couldn’t comment ahead of sentencing but Williams was “stuck between a rock and a hard place”.