Deadline: Did Sydney removalists cop blame for botched interview?

The Sydney removalists got a bucketload of blame from Victorian authorities — but should the officials who interviewed them be under the microscope instead?

Melbourne’s top crime writers Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with their weekly dose of scallywag scuttlebutt.

UNLOADING ON REMOVALISTS

A team of Covid-infected Sydney removalists copped a fearful bucketing from our blame-hungry authorities last month.

They and their employer were blasted for not being upfront about driving around Victoria, resulting in yet another round of lockdowns.

But there are suggestions those officials who were meant to get answers from them were not especially good at their job, either.

Well-connected sources say it would have helped if they had used interpreters who could actually understand the removalists’ language.

Once the right interpreter was found, the “accused” and their bosses were more than happy to tell all, in detail.

“They’ve been thrown under the bus … made to look like shitheads when they’re not,” one source says.

After a lot of huffing and puffing, the only breach actually detected was that one of the Sydney crew failed to wear a mask inside a restaurant and was fined $200.

CCTV footage of the removalists in action outside a Maribyrnong apartment complex. Picture: Channel 7

BIKIE FOOTWEAR FASHION VICTIM

Crooks love buying expensive, fashionable stuff. Not only as a status symbol but because it’s resaleable if and when they need cash.

That might help explain the criminal taste for exotic pets, from reptiles to rare birds and tropical fish.

Same goes for their tendency to hoard designer labels — not just clothes and handbags but shoes, too.

In fact, one fashion victim arrested during recent raids on the Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang has had his stash of designer footwear seized as “proceeds of crime”.

Impeccable sources say the Mongol had close to 100 pairs of shoes in a collection worthy of Imelda Marcos.

The moral of the immoral Mongol’s story: when your luck sours, the bookies will take the shirt off your back and the cops will take the shoes off your feet.

TRAINERS OUT THE GATE

Call it the Mokbel curse. In the latest drama at the property now called Barree Stud near Kilmore, trainer Amber Hendry has just moved on after working for Sean Buckley’s Ultra Thoroughbreds for several years.

Barree is the property once controlled by the cashed-up Tony “the Wig” Mokbel, along with the town’s Red Lion hotel.

Bemused locals are fascinated by the comings and goings at the place, which the automotive tycoon and innovative horse breeder Sean “UltraTune” Buckley bought in 2004, three years before Mokbel literally sailed into the sunset and a brief interlude as an international fugitive.

It seems Buckley is an ultra-keen boss who likes things done his way.

Ultra Tune owner Sean Buckley and his former partner, Jennifer Cruz Cole.

That might explain why he has fallen foul of Victorian racing authorities, who have banned any Buckley-linked horses from racing in the state pending an inquiry into his breeding program: that is, whether registered thoroughbreds have been bred using artificial insemination in breach of Australian Stud Book rules.

Since Hendry’s exit last week, the stud seems to be managed by a robust character once regarded as colourful in his own right.

He’s calling the shots with the expert assistance of veterinarian Adam Matthews, who has had a few troubles with the authorities, too, but is a dab hand at treating horses.

Brent Stanley. Picture: AAP

In 2015, Doc Matthews was named as suspected of being the “Stephen Dank” of the Australian equine scene, a reference to the sports scientist behind the Essendon Football Club supplements injection saga.

This was after Matthews was accused of supplying supplements he insisted were legal but which were later the subject of doping inquiries, notably over alleged use of cobalt on racehorses.

All this has a ripple effect in the horse game. Such as the fact that another controversial figure, one-time Caulfield Cup winning jock Brent Stanley, has been tiptoed out the gate of a plush training property at Sutton Grange, south of Bendigo.

Stanley is the latest of a line of trainers who have not found happiness, peace and prosperity at the showpiece Sutton Grange place, which has a vineyard, as well as a splendid homestead, training tracks, yards and stabling.

He was banned from training for nine months in 2016 over pocketing a huge secret commission from the sale of a horse to Hong Kong buyers.

The word is that Stanley’s cheerful promise to bring in a bunch of young horses owned by Sean Buckley actually got him pushed towards the gate.

Why? Because canny landlords are ultra-wary of an owner banned from racing in Victoria doing business with a trainer who has just finished a ban of his own.

Heard something? Let us know [e-mail]

HOLD MY NOSE BEER

The cocaine-loving yummy mummies of Melbourne’s leafy inner-east have some competition in the debauchery stakes.

After last week’s item on the antics of the Range Rover set, Deadline was told of a shindig a while back involving mothers with kids at a Catholic primary school in the northern suburbs.

Ladies didn’t need to “bring a plate”.

But some brought little baggies instead, and started “doing lines” off the back fence — surely not something the nuns taught them.

One result of this was an enthusiastic show of affection between two of the visitors. Something to toss into confession that week.

KING HIT

Veteran TV hound Martin King has gathered plenty of stories since the days when he worked for the late, great Truth scandal sheet.

Such as what happened the day he went to interview Carlton Crew identity Mick Gatto, who said he’d have to get into the ring first.

“If you want the story, fight me for it,” was the message.

King took a fake blood capsule from the Nine props department for a bit of extra theatre for A Current Affair watchers.

A case of “Be careful what you wish for”.

Mick Gatto in the ring with A Current Affair reporter Martin King in 2008.

When super heavyweight Gatto punched the jockey-sized King, he bit his tongue so hard there was no need for fake blood.

As King told Don Scott and Sam Newman on their podcast the other day, after that he didn’t really feel up to accepting Mick’s post-spar offer of cognac, Cuban cigars and salami.

Not only were his teeth loose and tongue cut but it turns out his ribs were broken.

SMALL WORLD

Brendan Schievella is the son of Mike “Lucky” Schievella, who was murdered in 1990 with his partner at their St Andrews property.

Cold case murder victim Michael Schievella

The case is under new scrutiny with a $1 million reward announced this week.

It seems that Brendan is the actual lucky one in the family … sort of.

He was once abducted from an Ivanhoe bar, bashed, dangled from a car park walkway, then taken to the Hells Angel Nomads chapter clubhouse in Lipton Drive, Thomastown — where, among other atrocities, his toe was amputated.

But, unlike his dad, he lived to (not) tell the tale.

Lipton Drive is again stirring police interest, this time over the disappearance of Adelaide Angels associate Kerry Giakoumis in June last year.

Unlike Schievella, Giakoumis walked in voluntarily.

Unlike Schievella, police believe, he didn’t make it out alive.

COPPER NAILS BRASS THIEVES

The thieves pinched the big brass bells from Cowes town square in July then took them, allegedly, to a Dandenong scrap metal dealer.

They must have spun a good story about their provenance because the dealer didn’t holler for the law or melt down the bells.

Instead, they were sold on to an unknown customer in China.

The bells were sitting in a container on the dock of the bay ready to sail away the other day when the cops caught up with them in the nick of time.

Which means the citizens of Cowes get their $55,000 bells back, and some brazen thieves are going to get their mettle tested behind iron bars.