Mafia’s Web: How Colin McLaren took down the mafia as a dodgy art dealer in a police sting

As an undercover cop, Colin McLaren infiltrated the mafia in Australia and bought millions of dollars of drugs. This is how he smashed them. LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

An undercover cop who bought more than one million dollars of cocaine and cannabis with taxpayers’ money has revealed the terror of tricking the mafia.

Colin McLaren infiltrated the Griffith mafia posing as a dodgy art dealer in a sting that smashed their operations.

“You’re always wondering whether your cover story is going to be exposed or whether someone will walk in the door of that club you’re in or the nightclub or wherever you’re doing business and recognise you,” he told The Mafia’s Web podcast.

“I was buying drugs, quite a lot. Pure cocaine in rock form from the mafia.

“At one stage they offered me a truckload of cannabis worth, I can’t remember how many million. We just did not have enough money to buy at all,” Mr McLaren said.

Former undercover police officer Colin McLaren infiltrated the Griffith mafia posing as a dodgy art dealer. Picture: Tony Gough

“We were constantly buying drugs, just to buy evidence to show who these people really were. In the end we had to stop buying drugs only because we ran out of money.”

The money spent on drugs was photographed and photocopied and later used as evidence in trials.

Mr McLaren spent two years undercover with the Griffith mafia from 1993 under the alias Cole Goodwin, with his work resulting in almost a dozen senior mafia figures serving jail sentences.

Victoria Police spent millions on the sting, which led him into New South Wales and to drug runs in Queensland.

Listen to Episode 3 of Mafia’s Web: The Undercover cop here:

Mr McLaren, who now lives in a secret location in the northern hemisphere, based his character of Goodwin on the real-life Donnie Brasco.

That was the cover name used by FBI Detective Joe Pistone, who spent six years inside the mafia in America led to more than 100 convictions by posing as a dodgy jewellery thief.

His story was mythologised on the big screen in the movie Donnie Brasco, starring Johnny Depp and Al Pacino in 1997.

Mr McLaren based his alias of Cole Goodwin on the cover name used by FBI Detective Joe Pistone in the movie Donnie Brasco starring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp.

Mr McLaren when he worked as an undercover officer. Picture: Supplied

Mr McLaren had learned about art during his travels through Europe as a teenager, which he put to use undercover.

“My great passion was Australian art. So what I did was study a little bit harder,” he said.

“And then once I got myself up to speed, and confident enough to go into the mafia as an art dealer I went and saw a girlfriend of a mate of mine and she was doing a PhD in Australian art and I said ‘fire every question you can at me’.

“She sort of knew that there was something going on but didn’t know what and she spent a lot of time doing Q & A with me and I passed her exam.

“She said you know you know a lot of our Australian art. I said ‘that’ll do me, thank you’ and went off and got a sports car and we put a budget together.”

Mr McLaren warned that the mafia was still entrenched in Australian society.

He said he was concerned that politicians and as a result law enforcement had taken their eye off the ball.

“The mafia really needs a full time commitment, not just a little now part time go at them every time a bomb goes off,” he said.

The 9/11 Terror attacks forced police to switch their attention to terrorism, which was further entrenched following the Lindt Cafe Siege in Sydney and the Bourke Street terror attack in Melbourne.

“The mafia has only grown and grown and grown,” he said.

Originally published as Mafia’s Web: How Colin McLaren took down the mafia as a dodgy art dealer in a police sting