Ace bodybuilder and Mr Australia Luke McNally back in court on drugs charges

He was the ball of muscle who was once crowned Mr Australia and set up a $40m supplement business before he fell into the seedy world of drug dealing.

A bodybuilder and former Mr Australia nicknamed ‘The Hulk’, who took covert police officers to an old brothel where he was doing drug rehab to sell them a bag of meth has been jailed

Luke McNally, who ran the nation’s largest supplements chain Mass Nutrition was sentenced to 17 years’ and eight months’ jail in the County Court on Monday after a jury found him guilty to dozens of drug-related charges.

He was found guilty of trafficking by manufacturing large commercial quantities of MDMA, methylamphetamine, P2P and cocaine.

Co-accused Wayne Doble, 65, was sentenced to five years’ and three months’ jail on charges of manufacturing and trafficking in a commercial quantity of MDMA, and possession of scientific glassware, equipment and substances for the purposes of trafficking.

He must serve a minimum non-parole period of three years and three months.

McNally, 38, ran the drug operation from three locations, including from the former Daily Planet Brothel in Elsternwick which at the time of the offending was purportedly a drug and alcohol rehab facility called the Wellbeing Planet.

The second location was next door to the old brothel and the third was an outdoor garage in Wallan.

In July 2019, McNally met two undercover police officers at St Kilda police station, and believing they were meth users, told them to come to the drug rehabilitation clinic where he sold them $400 of ice in the communal area.

The site of the former Daily Planet brothel, it had been turned into a drug clinic and was where McNally had been bailed to on criminal charges, and later set up a meth lab.

GCB Picture: Luke McNally.

McNally was arrested in December 2019 and has been behind bars ever since.

He pleaded guilty in February this year to selling the covert cops drugs, and to having a 12-gauge sawn off shotgun that he was seen on security footage carrying about the clinic.

He’d been no stranger to the criminal courts in QLD and Victoria.

The covert cops – his drug customers – were told in secretly recorded conversations he’d “destroyed evidence” at an ice lab in Rushworth, in Victoria’s north, before a police raid.

McNally was charged in January 2018 over that major lab as part of a Victoria Police operation dubbed Chinook.

A covert search warrant carried out months earlier found a lab in a shed containing bottles of various liquids, a vast array of chemicals and a fan blowing over an open tray holding a liquid and solid materials.

Luke McNally ran Australia’s largest supplements chain Mass Nutrition.

Born in Brisbane, McNally grew up in northern NSW, and was among 75 firefighters who received bravery awards during NSW floods in 2009.

He started Mass Nutrition in 2006 because of downtime in the fire brigade and built it up to a $40m business but the macho man soon hit the skids as police investigated whether the company was being used to distribute drugs.

Judge Rosemary Carlin said McNally did not have a problem with alcohol but had abused drugs and anabolic steroids. In 2014, he started taking methylamphetamine to overcome lingering stress from being a firefighter and that his illicit drug use led to him committing his first crime in Queensland.

Judge Carlin said the reason behind McNally’s offending was to make as much money as possible and described his letter to court in which he said he was coerced and was a reluctant drug trafficker as “self serving”.

He was ordered to serve 10 years and seven months before being eligible for parole.