Christopher Noti fronts County Court on drugs charges
A businessman ran a heroin trafficking empire out of his St Kilda cafe in cahoots with his girlfriend and a drug ring player.
Inner South
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A drug addict business man used his St Kilda café to run a heroin trafficking empire alongside his partner and another man, a court has heard.
Christopher Michael Noti, 45, pleaded guilty in the County Court to attempting to possess a marketable quantity of cocaine and another of trafficking heroin.
He was snared alongside his girlfriend Veronica Sabo and drug ring player Duncan Peck following Joint Organised Crime Task Force investigation ‘Operation Rhyolite’.
Sabo was sentenced in early December to an 18-month community corrections order while Peck has pleaded guilty to attempting to possess a marketable quantity of cocaine and possessing and trafficking heroin. He will be sentenced in February 2025.
The trio were linked to the importation of 1.8kg of heroin concealed in a disc jockey smoke machine that arrived into Melbourne from the United States by air on July 31, 2021.
A controlled delivery was organized and an investigator, posing as a DHL delivery driver, delivered a carton to Noti.
Covert operatives observed Peck arrive at Noti’s café on Robe St in St Kilda and over the next half an hour, four others came to the premises for the drug dealing.
Peck also collected half gram deal bags that Sabo left at a property at St Kilda then “arranged payment at a later date”.
A consignment of cocaine from the US, masked as ‘Children’s Board Game’ and bound for a Balaclava property, arrived in Melbourne via Hawaii in September 2021.
Australian customs initially cleared the consignment but investigators who intercepted the coke asked it be sent back to FedEx.
After their arrest on December 7, 2021, investigators raided Peck’s Bentleigh East home, Sabo’s St Kilda unit and Noti’s St Kilda cafe and seized drugs.
Noti will be sentenced at a later date.
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