Gopali Dahl, Firos El Kotob, Bipin Thapa: members of $100m fraud scheme in court

Members of a mega money laundering scheme fronted by a Sydney security company have appeared in court, which heard how an ultra-religious upbringing and mountains of debt influenced the decisions of the different players.

Gopali Dahl’s early life was riddled with adversity. She rarely saw a single person outside her ultra-religious community perched on a northern NSW farm, which she shared with her polyamorous parents, her dad’s several wives and eight children.

At 12-years-old, she was holding the hand of her little brother when he was fatally hit by a car.

The 33-year-old woman gave evidence about her unusual upbringing and limited exposure to the outside world during a sentence hearing for her part in a complex $100 million money laundering syndicate linked to organised crime.

She told Downing Centre District Court she was manipulated and coerced into participating in the scheme by someone else who was involved.

Dahl gave evidence at Downing Centre District Court. Picture: Nikki Short

After a matter of months of meeting the person online, the court heard this person convinced her to move to from the Gold Coast to Sydney to “help” with a security company which serviced high profile locations, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

She told the court her dealings with this person were very fast-paced, volatile, forceful and at times abusive. She said they “instructed” her to open a number of other businesses in her name and restricted her from speaking about certain things with her family.

The associate Dahl was referring to cannot be identifed for legal reasons and is not referred to anywhere else in this story.

The court heard eventually Dahl realised the companies, including those linked to her name, were dealing with large quantities of cash – and much of it was not legal.

As it turns out, the main security business was used as a “front” in a mega joint-criminal enterprise which laundered money in and out of the hands of organised criminals in Australia and abroad and handled upwards of $100 million in just a few years.

Several people have pleaded guilty for their part in the ring.

Dahl, of Murwillumbah in far north-eastern NSW, pleaded guilty to two charges of dealing with proceeds of crime worth more than $100,000.

One of the ringleaders of the group, Firos El Kotob, pleaded guilty to five counts of the same charge, as well as receive suspected proceeds of crime worth more than $100,000 and knowingly or recklessly direct a criminal group to assist crime.

The crown prosecutor argued the 46-year-old former Bankstown restaurant owner supplied or had sources of money for the purpose of sending it overseas, generally to China, and the crimes could not have occurred without him as the source of the dirty cash.

The members of the fraud syndicate appeared before Downing Centre District Court. Picture: Christian Gilles

The defence claimed he was just as responsible for the group’s dealings as another co-offender, as opposed to more responsible.

The court heard Kotob’s mother was murdered when he was 10 and he looked after his brothers from a young age when his father became ill. He worked at Woolworths and as a taxi driver before becoming involved in promotional work with his restaurant in 2003, but faced crippling debt in his home country of Lebanon.

Reading from agreed facts, Judge Ian McClintock asked the defence lawyer, seemingly rhetorically as he did not receive an answer: “Your client is getting $100 million plus and giving it to [a co-offender]?”

Bipin Thapa

Another man to be sentenced was 32-year-old Bipin Thapa, who pleaded guilty to two charges of dealing with proceeds of crime worth more than $100,000 as well as receive suspected proceeds of crime worth more than $100,000.

Thapa began as a legitimate employee of the security company and was at the lowest end of the chain, the court heard. When giving evidence, Thapa’s wife told the court she suffered depression and anxiety because the charges against her husband meant the couple could not access their bank to repay their $500,000 mortgage. She said she had to pause her studies to become a registered nurse because she had to surrender her passport for Thapa’s bail conditions and could not do her English test.

Manminder Singh, a 34-year-old man from Westmead, pleaded guilty to two charges of dealing with proceeds of crime worth more than $100,000 and one count of participating in a criminal group.

Dahl, Kotob, Thapa and Singh will be sentenced in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court on May 13.