Vic Cuoco: Wollongong lawyer’s cocaine shame revealed
The details of a high-flying lawyer’s coke-fuelled party weekend on Sydney Harbour, supplying drugs to women and his pals, has been revealed. Find out how a bugged hotel room and a ‘false key’ helped cops bring the respected legal identity down.
Illawarra Star
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The details of a high-flying lawyer’s coke-fuelled party weekend on Sydney Harbour, supplying drugs to women and his pals has been revealed.
Vittorio ‘Vic’ Cuoco, a prominent legal identity and founding father of one of the Illawarra region’s leading law firms CVC Law, has pleaded guilty to supplying cocaine he had hidden inside a fake key to five different people on a party weekend in March.
Court documents reveal the Balgownie father had organised through work associates a chartered cruise of Sydney Harbour on March 6, to be enjoyed by two mates including Paul ‘PJ’ Jewell, owner of the Muffler Centre in Fairy Meadow.
As the trio enjoyed the harbour cruise, where they met a woman, police planted bugs inside their room at Pitt St’s Meriton Hotel.
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The men, with the woman from the cruise, returned to the room later that night and their new female friend asked “where’s the coke?”, court documents state.
Cuoco then supplied cocaine, kept inside a ‘false key’, to everyone inside the hotel room before the group kicked on to the underground Marble Bar.
Later on, Jewell returned to the room solo before Cuoco, his male friend and a new woman arrived to stay the night. Police facts reveal Cuoco supplied cocaine to the woman that night and the next morning.
The agreed statement of facts revealed Jewell offered to pay for the cocaine the next morning, before coming to an agreement with Cuoco that he would simply cover his share for the hotel room.
Later that month police raided Cuoco’s Market St, Wollongong office and found a bag of cocaine hidden in a sports memorabilia football boot, with a search of his Balgownie mansion locating an unlicensed poker machine which had been delivered the day before.
An unregistered air rifle, found with shotgun and rifle ammo, was also found at the address.
Cuoco recently pleaded guilty to a number of drug supply and weapons offences and will be sentenced in December.
Jewell was recently sentenced to a two-year community corrections order for cocaine supply, charged as part of the same police investigation.