Inner workings of George Marrogi’s drug smuggling empire revealed
Notorious crime boss George Marrogi was locked up for murder but from his prison cell he was working day and night to manage a huge drug empire.
Police & Courts
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The inner workings of the drug empire George Marrogi ran from his maximum security prison cell have been exposed as he faces life behind bars.
Court documents summarising events leading up to a colossal police bust of his business show Marrogi and his girlfriend, Antonietta Manella, hijacked identities, used code words, surveillance-proof apps and dodgy phone numbers.
Marrogi — the leader of the Notorious Crime Family gang — was in Barwon Prison for murder but he was working day and night to smuggle huge amounts of drugs into Melbourne.
Also going hard were officers from the Australian Federal Police’s operation Fuji, who were watching and waiting to bring undone what had looked like a straightforward importation of 56kg of methamphetamine and 13kg of heroin, concealed among magnets.
Secretly recorded phone conversations show increasing panic and fury from Marrogi, 33, at hold-ups with collecting the cargo and his inability to control what was unfolding.
The key to the communication was a mobile service Mannella, 29, had set up using the identity of an unwitting Taylors Hill man and a landline taken out under the name of a staff member at Marrogi’s legal firm.
That worker denied setting up the service or knowing who had done so but it was added to Marrogi’s approved prison call list and became his crucial link to the outside world.
“Melasecca, Kelly and Zayler, this is Cassidy speaking,” Mannella would say to impersonate the law firm, when answering the mobile phone.
The landline calls were being directed to her mobile as a ruse because legal calls to the prison are protected by client legal privilege and therefore not recorded by authorities.
The pair would then conduct a fake conversation about legal matters in case anyone was listening before getting down to business.
Mannella was clearly well-versed in how to dodge law enforcement.
She had multiple phones, falsely subscribed SIM cards, used encrypted apps like Ciphr, Wickr and Signal and concealed her digital footprint.
But by October 2021, Fuji investigators were monitoring her and Marrogi.
Two months later, something was brewing as the loved-up couple planned a looming drug importation and other shipments with the help of associates they referred to as Brata and Love.
There were frequent mentions of “shula”, their code word for drugs, and concern about costs and the risk of being ripped off.
On January 5 last year, the phone was handed to Marrogi’s younger brother Jesse in which the word “zuze” denotes money.
“Don’t stress, leave that with us, nah we got shula coming anyway Khon (brother) — we’ll get back to normal again,” George assures him.
“We’ll start making counting zuze like proper zuze again, you know.”
Jesse Marrogi has not been charged.
Two days later, Mannella is back on the phone saying everything is good with the shula and that she is waiting for it to land soon.
On January 21, Mannella said she had been talking to Brata about the shipment and “she said they’re smashing it out at their end”.
In the same conversation, Marrogi’s frustration is growing as he says: “Soon is tomorrow or soon is f--king a month’s time. Like, my soon and your soon are completely different.”
There is more coded talk on February 21, this time using the word kittens which is their term for a “live” drug importation.
Marrogi: “The kittens, or normal?”
Mannella: “No, kittens. And they want to do a second one, too.”
Marrogi: “Thank f--king God. Yeah.”
Ten days later, Marrogi is telling Mannella she needs to push harder on Brata.
Mannella responds that she has “been on her back 24/7”, sending an avalanche of messages.
“I’m like ‘enough is enough’,” Mannella said.
“Like ‘it doesn’t take that long to do something. This isn’t my first time. Don’t treat me like it’s my first time’.”
On February 15, Mannella delivers good news: “Brata just confirmed, a million per cent. I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, babe.”
Using fake emails under the name of a real employee of Epping-based metal detecting equipment supplier, Eriez Australia, a courier was organised to pick up the cargo on its arrival into Melbourne Airport on a Qantas flight from Bangkok, Thailand, on February 18.
Documents were also sent from this email for the payment and clearances required for the consignment.
At 12.48 that day, Marrogi asks Mannella whether the “fish” are ready.
“They are there waiting,” Mannella answers.
Later that afternoon, Mannella tried to use a Bendigo Bank account which was in the name of a man called Graeme.
Graeme would later tell police he knew nothing of two accounts set up in his name in May 2020, as the result of identity theft.
His identity documents were found on a USB stick in Marrogi’s cell when police later made their move.
On the same day, a man visited the Westpac Broadmeadows branch and withdrew $1400 from an account in the name of Zacharia Amouche.
Sixteen minutes later, a man wearing a disposable face mask and hoodie pulled over his head deposited $1421 into a Verus Global account at another Westpac in Roxburgh Park.
The next day, Mannella and Marrogi are trying to establish where the consignment was and speculating on who was to blame for its unavailability.
Meanwhile, police examined the cargo which bore the details Eriez Manufacturing, a company whose credentials had been used fraudulently in a “piggyback” operation.
Investigators would ask Qantas staff to tell anyone wanting to collect it that there were complications with picking up freight because of Covid-related workforce shortages.
On February 22, Marrogi became frustrated as to why the cargo hadn’t been collected.
“It’s because they don’t have staff so they said they actually don’t have workers,” Mannella said.
Qantas receives a call from a so-called Eriez worker later the same day to organise collection of the consignment the next morning.
But there are more delays prompting Marrogi to urge his girlfriend to take a hard line.
“Just make sure you’re f...ing firm,” he told Mannella.
“I don’t give a shit if you come up rude or they f--king hate you, we’re not here for these c---s to like us.”
A driver arrives to pick up the shipment at 10.40am but was not allowed to collect it, sparking more frustration from Marrogi.
Marrogi: “Happy dance time?”
Mannella: “He’s there now, just got one slight issue they’re trying to rectify.”
Marrogi: “Hmmm, is it easy?”
Mannella: “Just a confusion. I think they gave ours to someone else.”
Marrogi: “Don’t say that, don’t say that. Come on man, how the f--k do they do that?”
Mannella: “I think it was a mistake on their end.”
Marrogi: “That’s a bit suss man.”
There are more conversations with Marrogi issuing orders down the line, at the same time as AFP forensic officers confirm the illicit nature of the cargo.
As another driver arrives to collect, Mannella sees police parked in front of her house and tells Marrogi she is going to get rid of her laptop.
She can be heard telling someone to “break” the laptop.
Mannella later explains to Marrogi that their truck driver was “past the point where they line up to get loaded” and she had instructed him to get a photo of his position.
That didn’t happen as he had fallen asleep, she explained.
More calls follow as the nerves of Marrogi, a man accustomed to getting his own way, start to fray.
“A week now, it’s a week — like, are youse f--king kidding man,” he barked down the phone.
“Do you know how f--king dangerous that is. Oh my God, overnight we get worried. It’s been a f--king week.”
Meanwhile, the Eriez “worker” has been busy, calling Qantas at least twice to check on progress.
Marrogi tells Mannella he has to go and that he would get “what’s a name, Tony” to call her, a reference to fellow inmate, jailed drug boss Tony Mokbel.
The bad news is delivered to Mokbel soon after that the drugs had been found by law enforcement.
Mannella: “Yeah, all right tell him no good.”
Mokbel: “Nah?”
Mannella: “Nah.”
Mokbel: “OK.”
Mannella: “They got it yeah.”
Mokbel: “OK, leave it with ya.”
Mannella: “Yeah, so that’s that, yeah.”
Mokbel: “Yep.”
On March 2, police released details of the bust to the media, prompting a conversation between the lovers and a web search by Mannella of the words “Herald Sun” and “Melbourne drug bust”.
There is more chatter on March 30 when investigators publicise images of the February 15 Westpac visits by the man in the hoodie.
“Just speak to what’s his name, man,” Marrogi says.
Mannella replies: “Yeah, I will.”
Marrogi: “He’ll know straight away. He’ll know straight away what to say and what not to say, you know.”
Mannella: “Yep.”
Police swooped on Mannella’s Mickleham home and arrested her on April 22.
She fronted the County Court on Tuesday alongside Marrogi where they both pleaded guilty to importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug, and attempting to traffic a drug of dependence.
They are both facing life terms behind bars.
The court heard Mannella had no criminal history, but was blinded by love and stepped up to perform the role of Marrogi’s sister, Meshilin, in the crime syndicate when she died from Covid complications in September 2021.
Her barrister Colin Mandy, SC, said initially Mannella pretended to be Meshilin on the phone when dealing with syndicate members.
He said Mannella was close friends with Meshilin after meeting her as a client when she worked as a financial adviser at a bank.
Meshilin’s sudden death made her four-year relationship with the crime boss closer, he said.
“People do irrational things when they are in love,” Mr Mandy said, adding that Mannella found Marrogi a “charismatic, powerful person”.
“There must be a reason for that expression ‘love is blind’, and she was blinded.”
But “the fog has now lifted,” Mr Mandy said.
In pushing for a merciful sentence, he said Marrogi and Mannella were “poles apart in terms of criminality”.
The court heard he had a shocking criminal history, while Mannella had no priors.
In a somewhat chivalrous move, Marrogi, through his barrister, Peter Morrissey, SC, took full responsibility for the offending and said he was remorseful for dragging Mannella into it.
Mr Morrissey pushed for Marrogi to only have a “very modest” amount of time added to the 32-year sentence he is already serving for the shooting murder of Kadir Ors outside Campbellfield Plaza in September 2016.
Judge Peter Rozen will sentence Marrogi and Mannella next month.
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