How a coffee date with Nicola Gobbo sealed Rob Karam’s fate
When Rob Karam entrusted his lawyer, Nicola Gobbo, with an envelope containing the details of a massive shipment of ecstasy, what was meant to be paperwork for an unprecedented payday for a drug cartel became a one-way ticket to more than 275 years in jail.
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They were so close that Karam, over coffee, told her about his major illicit drug importations.
On June 5, 2007, the same day Tony Mokbel was captured in Greece, Karam made a life-changing mistake.
He gave Gobbo an envelope for safekeeping.
Inside was a shipping document, written in Italian, which was the key to the largest ecstasy (MDMA) importation in history.
Gobbo, who was representing Karam over another massive drug case at the time, swapped her lawyer hat for her secret informer one.
She photocopied the shipping document and used her bat-phone to tell her police handlers what she had been gifted.
What was meant to be paperwork for an unprecedented payday for a drug cartel led by mob boss Pat Barbaro, instead, became a one-way ticket to more than 275 years in jail.
Their precious cargo, aboard the MV Monica, consisted of 3034 tomato cans filled with 15,193,798 ecstasy tablets, bound for Melbourne.
But none of these pills, with a street value of $440m, would hit the nightclubs.
The cargo reached Melbourne’s docks 23 days after Gobbo uncovered the importation plan and was duly seized by the Australian Federal Police.
Her role would be hidden by Victoria Police — even from their counterpart, the AFP — and would years later be credited to a “routine” inspection by Australian Customs officers.
An AFP head would put it down to intelligence from a source in The Hague.
It appears the AFP never learned the truth about Gobbo until it was too late.
Documents, seen by the Herald Sun, show a day after the 4.4 tonne drug haul was discovered, a joint operation was established.
The AFP, Victoria Police and Australian Customs joined forces for an intense year-long probe, involving heavily resourced surveillance teams, a massive bugging operation, and the foiling of murder attempts along the way.
Some of Australia’s Mr Bigs were imprisoned among the 32 syndicate members successfully prosecuted.
These mob bosses continue to squabble, usually over trivial things, like Saverio Zirilli’s insistence on watching nightly TV drama Home And Away.
Karam is the odd man out. Like his drug-trafficking mates John Higgs and Tony Mokbel, he is not mafia.
Now, 13 years after he doomed himself and his cartel to prison, Karam curses the day he met Gobbo as he writes letters from the maximum security Barwon Prison’s Acacia Unit.
He was the first to challenge his conviction on the Lawyer X principle in 2016.
If he overturns his convictions, and walks away from a 37-year prison term, he will have Barbaro to thank.
Barbaro is using Karam as a legal Trojan horse to test the case.
Barbaro spends his days lifting weights and sketching pictures of Gobbo with a “Wanted’’ sign over her.
He’s even depicted former Victorian chief commissioner Simon Overland as Pinocchio.
Of the 32 convicted in connection to the tomato tins importation, subsequent drug-offending and the laundering of $11 million, only 10 remain in prison.
Barbaro, who is serving 30 years to life, filed his own appeal in late July.
Other mobsters Saverio Zirilli, Francesco Madafferi, Salvatore Agresta and Jan Visser are already in the appeal queue.
They rely on Gobbo’s copying of the shipping document, as Karam’s lawyer, as a “fruit from the poison tree” defence.
They argue everything is tainted thereafter, and Gobbo’s deployment to gather more intelligence from Karam, her client, and others, feeds into their defence.
Gobbo represented, or gave legal advice to, at least half a dozen syndicate members following their arrests in August 2008.
She also provided crucial intelligence, such as who was involved with who, activities, cars and phone numbers.
After the initial tip, she was asked to find out if the container was being transferred from one ship to another.
As they deployed Gobbo, Victoria Police tipped-off Australian Customs to the shipment and informed the Australian Crime Commission.
The AFP was initially kept out of the loop.
Victoria Police then used Customs as a “conduit” or “corridor” to provide information to the AFP.
Inter-agency rivalry and mistrust appears to have been a reason to keep the AFP at arm’s length.
By June 20, more than two weeks after Victoria Police learned of the drug importation, the AFP was told of the incoming container.
It arrived on June 28, 2007. By July 1, documents reveal the AFP was going to question Victoria Police about the human source that had provided the intelligence”.
On July 3, Victoria Police met with Gobbo and confirmed that “customs are not looking to identify the human source”.
In August, Victoria Police refused to identify the source to the AFP.
A year later, in August, Victoria Police met with Customs to ensure that it had kept the source secret from the AFP.
Throughout, Gobbo’s handlers worried the AFP might suspect her of being a syndicate member and discover her secret phone.
So they took it from her.
The pure weight of MDMA pills was 2900 times what law enforcement considers a “commercial quantity’’ of a banned drug.
But after the container’s arrival, and months of attempts by the syndicate to get to it, they abandoned it.
Their problem was that they now owed $10m to their European suppliers.
More drug shipments followed to pay the debt.
Syndicate members fell out, and murder plots were hatched, as the AFP watched and listened.
On August 8, 2008, raids across the country nabbed most of the cartel.
Gobbo turned up to offer legal advice to some syndicate members.
She met Frank Madafferi as he sat in a cell.
Ringleader Barbaro became a new client, as she fought for his bail.
His right-hand man, Saverio Zirilli also became a client, and she won him bail.
Zirilli says she advised him to plead guilty because the case against him was strong.
Many of her other clients have reported that she offered them similar advice after their arrests.
Gobbo had been engaged to act for syndicate members by their friendly Italian lawyer of choice, Joe “Pino’’ Acquaro.
What she didn’t know was that Acquaro would also years later be outed as a police informer.
Acquaro would eventually be shot dead in a Brunswick laneway outside his restaurant in 2016.
The reasons for his murder are before a court.
But the Tomato Tins men want to know if he duped them too.
They already know another lawyer did — the girl from a good Italian family who couldn’t say no.
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LAWYER X: THE EXTRAORDINARY FULL STORY
How one woman played off police and criminals in Australia’s biggest gangland war — and how journalists Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon fought to expose the truth.
Lawyer X, by Dowsley and Carlyon and published by HarperCollins Australia, is out on September 7. Pre-order your copy now at Booktopia