Aussie bikie Jordan Curry escapes life sentence after lawyer turns to Shakespeare

The lawyer for an Aussie bikie, who boasted of controlling the country’s cocaine trade, cited William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde as part of his legal case.

Jordan Curry of Australia, who pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to launder money and import cocaine from South America through the United States to Australia, will spend 11 years behind bars.

EXCLUSIVE

A bikie who boasted of controlling Australia’s cocaine trade has avoided a life sentence in the US after his lawyer turned to William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde to argue for a lighter punishment.

Jordan Curry, an Australian national who was based in Dubai, will instead spend 11 years behind bars after he was busted in a two-year transnational sting operation.

The Lone Wolf bikie was a key figure in The Commission, a cartel of cocaine traffickers which controlled Australia’s market to keep street prices at some of the highest levels in the world, maintaining their lucrative profits.

Jordan Curry is a member of the Lone Wolf Motorcycle Club. Picture: NSW Police

But Curry’s lawyer Fritz Scheller told a US judge the 42-year-old should not be sentenced based solely on the “simplistic narrative” in the charges against him, declaring they told “a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing” – a famous line from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

US law enforcement authorities said Curry was facing a life sentence after he pleaded guilty in July to participating in a conspiracy to import cocaine and launder money from South America through the US to Australia.

In meetings with undercover operatives for America’s Drug Enforcement Administration in the Bahamas, Bulgaria and Spain, Curry sought help to launder $1m from Australia to Colombia to pay for a cocaine load, and then arranged another 50kg shipment worth $3m.

His courier was caught in Queensland with the cash in 2021, with Curry arrested several months later on the Greek island of Mykonos before he was extradited to the US.

He had boasted to a confidential source for the DEA that “all the crews just started a commission in Australia” to keep cocaine prices high, trafficking up to 200kg a week.

Jordan Curry being transported to trial.

But Curry’s lawyer pushed for a reduced sentence by arguing the bikie’s childhood in New South Wales was “a human-created hell of neglect, and abandonment”.

Mr Scheller told the court Curry’s parents were both drug users. He said he started drinking at the age of seven and using drugs from the age of 15.

In telling the court of his “horrific childhood”, Mr Scheller pointed to a quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: “If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.”

The lawyer also sought inspiration from Wilde – who wrote that “every saint has a past and every sinner has a future” – in his sentencing request to the federal court in Florida.

Mr Scheller said Curry suffered from severe heart disease and that his heart had stopped beating twice since he was arrested, once in Greece and once in Miami, with his life saved by an implanted defibrillator.

Chief US District Judge Cecilia Altonaga handed him a 135-month sentence last month, with credit for the time he had served since his arrest in Greece three and a half years ago.

Originally published as Aussie bikie Jordan Curry escapes life sentence after lawyer turns to Shakespeare