Former wife of Carl Williams involved in blackmail attempt: court
The wife of a former gangland boss Carl Williams made a dramatic outburst before a ‘terrifying’ blackmail.
The wife of slain underworld figure Carl Williams has been sentenced for her role in orchestrating a “terrifying and traumatic” blackmail in Collingwood in 2019.
Roberta Williams, 53, was convinced to be a part of TV series documenting the lives of “mob wives” by filmmaker Ryan Naumenko in 2019, the County Court heard on Friday morning.
But when Mr Naumenko failed to pay, Williams and an associate in the project, Daniel de Silva, hatched a plot to lure the filmmaker to a Collingwood editing studio in order to extract money from him.
Williams, who received a community corrections order after pleading guilty to blackmail and recklessly causing injury, told the men who beat Mr Naumenko to “kill the C****, he has no money,” the court heard.
The court heard it was Mr Naumenko who first reached out to Williams, via Instagram, to make the show in May 2019.
Mr Naumenko claimed he had worked with Channel 9 and Viceland, and had “a lot of money” he could lend to Williams and her partner.
By June 2019, the court heard, Williams told Mr Naumenko that she wanted to pull out of the series, but he convinced her to persist with the project on the grounds he had already received $50,000 in funding.
The court heard Mr Naumenko had never received more than $10,000 for the project, which he received from a producer in June that year.
After filming at a rented apartment in the suburb of Hampton in July, Williams and de Silva agreed they were being scammed, and hatched a plot to extract money from Mr Naumenko, the court heard.
Williams enlisted James Harrison, Jake Sexton and Hassam Al Zwaimy to carry out the ordeal at Cloakroom Media in Collingwood, which is run by de Silva.
At 8:30pm on July 9, Mr Naumenko was repeatedly punched and kicked by Harrison, Sexton and Al Zwaimy.
After calling his father and his sister, Mr Naumenko made two transfers of $1000 into the bank account of Cloakroom Media, before he was driven home at 11:30pm.
Judge Fiona Todd told Ms Williams “you ought to have walked away” when she had the sense the project was floundering.
Yet she “continued in this forlorn project” Ms Todd said.
Williams, who has five children, was told the purpose of the blackmail was for Mr Naumenko “to be put in fear and kept in fear”.
She said Williams had endured a tough life in which she “learned to fight” and said that her second long-term partner, who was murdered gangland boss Carl Williams, was one of the first people in her life to have treated her kindly.
Jake Sexton and Hassam al Zwaimy were also sentenced to CCO’s for the charges of intentionally causing injury.
All five involved in the plot have pleaded guilty.