Eye Spy podcast: Marea Smith reveals how she goes undercover to expose organised crime gangs

An Australian private investigator has revealed how she has found herself in a lot of sticky and dangerous situations including trying to bust open organised crime gangs.

A private eye investigating a “mind-blowing” widespread organised crime ring has revealed how her client had a gun shoved up his nose while one of the crooks ended up with concrete boots.

Marea Smith said the criminals had been running a series of rackets including bringing in drugs in motorcycle handlebars, and the man involved in retrieving the drugs and reselling the bikes had wanted out.

“He didn’t want to do it anymore, so he ended up dead,” Ms Smith tells the Eye Spy podcast.

“But he wasn’t my client.”

Ms Smith who runs the Blondell Group reveals how she has found herself in a lot of sticky and dangerous situations including trying to bust open a boat rebirthing gang.

“I had to get under the big tarps that was over this huge million dollar boat, multimillion-dollar boat with a monstrous engine.

Private Investigator Marea Smith has found herself in a lot of sticky and dangerous situations. Picture: David Swift

“I had a 15 minute window to get in there, get all the video and get out before the security returned,” she said. “I’m talking about rebirthing and organised crime.”

Ms Smith has a bat phone, an alter ego, a car with 007 number plates and a raft of disguises including a washing basket full of laundry and she said she has never been busted on a job.

“No one’s ever picked me for being a private investigator. I just look like a grandmother going about doing some shopping,” Ms Smith said.

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Ms Smith has specialised in debt collection often serving collection papers worth millions of dollars which has brought her into contact with all sorts of wise guys and organised crime figures. It can be a very nasty business as she has found out.

“I’ve had to sleep on the garage doors. I’ve hidden behind garbage bins. I’ve, uh, you know, a woman walking in with her pizzas. And I was watching her and I had to go and serve documents on her. So I just put the documents on top of the pizza box because she wouldn’t take them.”

Ms Smith in one of her many disguises. Picture: David Swift

Some of Ms Smith’s props. Picture: Will Anlezark

She has pushed court papers through car windows and front doors, and she has even been attacked.

“I’ve been assaulted by Mr. Businessman in North Sydney … And because he said that I tricked him, um, it was a secure building. So I snuck in and managed to get to where he was. And then when I served him, the small left his face pretty quickly and he started grabbing at me, pushing me back, and he cut off my exit to the elevators.”

She went straight to the police to report him.

It was the disappearance and murder of two school-aged girl friends at Wanda Beach … years ago that put Ms Smith on her career path.

She was at the beach the day the teenage girls, Christine Sharrock and Marianne Schmidt disappeared and were murdered and she was at the same beach when their bodies were found.

Ms Smith and her brother thought they knew who did it – a teenager they had seen around who carried a knife.

Friends Christine Sharrock and Marianne Schmidt, both 15, killed at Wanda Beach in 1965.

They told police but were fobbed off. Ms Smith said the police told them they already had a suspect.

Now however, there are new theories coming out and one includes a teenager that knew the girls.

“That’s when it all started. But I’ve always been a stickybeak, but now I get paid for it.”

Originally published as Eye Spy podcast: Marea Smith reveals how she goes undercover to expose organised crime gangs