How prison guard snuck in items for long-serving inmate
He was supposed to keep prisoners in line — but instead a guard took cash to sneak in banned items for a long-serving inmate near Geelong.
A long-serving prisoner in a Geelong jail paid a guard to sneak in banned items.
Son Pham was put inside Marngoneet Correctional Centre by the County Court of Victoria on July 23, 2010, after he was convicted of attempting to possess a commercial quantity of methamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy.
His 19-year sentence is more than halfway served – but the 58-year-old risked his release by bribing a prison guard to sneak in items on at least four occasions, the County Court heard on Tuesday.
The guard, Adam McGovern, was sentenced to a two-year community corrections order in December, and Pham will face the music when he is sentenced this week.
Pham arranged for the guard to be paid $2000 to bring in 50 gram pouches of tobacco and other sums for USB sticks, court documents show.
He also promised he would arrange to get McGovern a warehouse job if he helped him out.
The sly deals took place from January to June 2018, and Corrections Victoria were tipped off that a guard may have been bringing in contraband for a prisoner in February of that year — but didn’t know at first who it was.
An investigation led to McGovern’s arrest in June when police found more than $8000 cash in his home.
The guard told police he would be visited by Pham’s associate Gia Dinh, 43, who will also be sentenced for his role this week.
Judge Mark Dean said Dinh’s role in the scheme was “naive” and the guard himself “was lucky not to receive a term of imprisonment”.
Dinh would throw bum bags containing cash and contraband over the guard’s back fence, court documents state, and the guard would sneak it into the prison in his boots.
He would take the items out of his boots and hide them in a storage box in the prison, indicating to one of Pham’s associates “with a wink or nod” before the associate took them to Pham, police say.
Judge Dean indicated he planned to sentence Dinh to a community corrections order and to extend Pham’s prison sentence.