Cocaine’s for horses and it’s not for men,
Doctor said it kill you, but he didn’t say when.
– ‘Cocaine Blues’, traditional
Despite importing and manufacturing drugs on a gargantuan scale, Teflon Tony had enjoyed a lot of luck and dodged a lot of attention. But the scheme that eventually brought the heat down on Mokbel was a plan to import just a couple of kilograms of cocaine from Mexico. On any Australian street the cocaine import of about two kilograms pure and three kilograms cut was worth at least $733,000, but by Tony’s measure the profits were puny. ‘I don’t know why I bothered risking it in the end because this is just small beer to me. I usually do bigger deals,’ Mokbel said.
His very simple plan was to make some Mexican connections, buy the gear and smuggle the valuable white powder into Melbourne through the postal system. To bring the plan to fruition Mokbel would not need to sip tequila with deadly hombres in Tijuana, board a Mexico-bound plane or even leave Brunswick. Instead he would assemble a crew of dupes who would do the real work, take the real risks and, if necessary, take the fall and do the time for their benevolent boss.
By the time Mokbel’s Mexican mission was launched his team of amoral amigos included a world champion strongman, a Mokbel sycophant, a Judas and members of Mexico’s deadly organised crime syndicate Arellano-Felix. Despite their differences, when the deal eventually went bad the crew members would be united by a common profound regret for ever falling under Mokbel’s spell. Among the plotters was a man with a wire who had planned all along to betray Mokbel, and another who only later decided he too was willing to sing like a mariachi. By the bitter end Mokbel too may have learnt a very specific lesson. Never work with bodybuilders, wire-wearing informers, angry snitches and brutal Mexican gangsters.
Mokbel had counted his mate the Grifter into the international plot, but he did so not knowing that something had fundamentally changed. Two months after his mate and colleague Mark Moran was gunned down in Melbourne’s then embryonic gangland war, several of the Grifter’s houses were raided by police still probing the Moran drug syndicate. The drug squad dragnet produced more than nine kilograms of ecstasy, two kilograms of cocaine, almost two kilograms of cannabis, a pill press and two guns. The Grifter already had a lengthy list of priors, having racked up hundreds of convictions including drug trafficking and gun offences.
When the Grifter looked across the table at his police captors it’s likely he saw the prospect of a lengthy jail stint. Mark Moran had been just thirty-six when he was shot dead outside his Aberfeldie home in June 2000 by rival Carl Williams. With the killing of his boyhood mate still fresh in his mind, it is also possible that the Grifter realised he needed to find a circuit breaker to dodge an early death. To the police the Grifter was potentially a very handy informant. If they could turn the Grifter into the ‘the Snitch’ he could feed them vital intelligence while his street reputation would rebuff nearly all suspicion. They offered him a juicy cut on his prison sentence. In return police won a chance to get tape recordings that could reduce the rogue Mokbel empire to rubble. A deal was done and lifetime crim the Grifter went from dealing grass to grassing for police.
In poaching the pill-making Grifter, Mokbel was arguably stepping on the toes of the surviving Morans, including family patriarch Lewis, and Mark’s violently deranged half-brother Jason. The Grifter told police that Mokbel planned to discount his drugs to corner the amphetamine and ecstasy market. A bloody falling out in the Mokbel–Moran drug duopoly could have been on the cards, but if offence was taken at Mokbel nicking one of the country’s best pill-pressers, either Mokbel used some of his legendary charm to smooth things over or the Morans chose to bite their tongues. For a little while at least, Lewis Moran and Tony Mokbel would keep working together.
Also in the ranks for the Mexican mission was an eager-to-impress, not too bright vulnerable character of the sort Mokbel seemed to groom so easily. His real name also cannot be used so we will call him ‘the Stooge’. His recollections of the events are inevitably self-serving but they still paint a dark picture of Mokbel as a canny and ruthless user and abuser.
The Stooge had known Mokbel since Tony was a young milk-bar owner but had not seen him in fifteen years. ‘I heard Tony was doing well for himself from property and business deals and that he was driving a Ferrari,’ the Stooge said. He had also heard that Mokbel drove a special Mercedes Benz that had a glovebox always filled with cash bundled in $5000 lots. ‘From what I’d heard I formed the impression that Tony’s business activities were not all legal,’ the Stooge said.
Their paths crossed again among the dumbbells and treadmills of a Brunswick gym in 2000 at a time when the Stooge was depressed and disillusioned. Mokbel offered him a path of hope, glamour and the prospect of making money. ‘Over a short period of time I became deeply impressed by Tony’s empire and trappings,’ the Stooge said. ‘He owned a lot of commercial property, businesses and houses. He ate at the best restaurants. He drove a Ferrari … he bet up to $50[000] to $60,000 on a race. He encouraged me and became my mentor, and as a result I trusted him.’
The Stooge was dazzled by how Mokbel attended a lot of high-profile functions. Mokbel wooed him by involving him in some of his more respectable ventures. ‘Tony offered me the path to financial success and security by inviting me to join him in several property and business deals,’ he said.
Mokbel had confided in the Stooge that he wanted more overseas drug contacts to expand his global network. He already had people in England and Amsterdam but what he really needed was a new contact on the other side of the world. ‘I knew I had to impress Tony in order to get close to him and become worthy of his attention,’ the Stooge said. So when a strongman friend told the Stooge he knew a cocaine exporter in Mexico the Stooge saw an instant opportunity to further bask in the warm glow of Mokbel’s affection.
Edmond ‘Sonny’ Schmidt was a moustachioed man-mountain who had won the coveted Mr Olympia title. Like Lou Ferrigno, who played the Hulk on television, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the world-champion bodybuilder had made it to the highest levels of the competition. Friends and bodybuilding fans described ‘Samoan Sonny’ as a sweet-natured gentle giant. But somewhere along the line the strongman with a heart of gold had made some not so sweet friends. One of them was a Mexican called Gino who was looking to export cocaine.
Sonny told this to the Stooge who in turn boasted to Mokbel of his link to an overseas contact who could supply unlimited quantities of cocaine. ‘I decided to try and put Sonny and Tony together, because I wanted to get into Tony’s good books and stay close to him,’ the Stooge said.
Sonny’s contact, Gino Brunetti, was a senior officer in the vicious Arellano-Felix drug cartel. The family-based gang delivers up to a quarter of the US’s illegal drugs and is a major cause of Mexico’s thousands of drug-related homicides every year. Its victims include wives and children and its members recently dropped three heads on the floor of a disco as a sign of the gang’s dominance.
Soon the 100-kilogram strongman and the eager-to-impress Stooge were on a free flight to Mexico to arrange for Mokbel to be sent a free sample so he could test the quality of the drugs. Mokbel was happy with the result of the dress rehearsal and told the Stooge the quality was excellent. Sonny was redeployed to Mexico with $37,000 in American greenbacks (roughly A$70,000 at the time) plus a $5000 sweetener for himself, to arrange the first full-scale cocaine import. Sonny and the Stooge had arranged the Mexico end of the scheme but Mokbel had his own local contacts to usher the drugs into Australia.
Ron Cassar, a stumpy, balding man with a sheepish disposition and the unfortunate nickname ‘Buddha’, was nothing special to look at. To most people Buddha’s job as second in charge at the United Parcel Service (UPS) in Melbourne would also have seemed particularly unglamorous. But to Mokbel the university dropout and career freight worker was the golden goose – a perfect inside man, who, with a little charm and some appeals to greed and vanity, would do whatever Mokbel wanted.
In Mexico Sonny paid the cartel and arranged for the cocaine to be sent to fictitious people at addresses in Footscray and Carlton. The cocaine was hidden in Mexican handicrafts, candles and decorative ornaments, including a miniature unicorn, before being parcelled up. In early November 2000 the two parcels were sent out of Mexico City using the UPS system and the game was afoot.
The Grifter’s role in the Mexican mission was to buy and on-sell the drugs once they arrived. That way Mokbel had no risk of actual possession. One day, as Mokbel was on the street telling the Grifter of his ambitions to regularly import cocaine, a stumpy, balding man in a maroon Ford pulled up and honked. Mokbel walked over and chatted with Buddha Cassar for a minute then returned to his candid conversation with the Grifter – and his wire.
‘He’s got the keys. He’s the boss and he goes in and gets it for me,’ Mokbel said on tape.
The Grifter did not know the man in the maroon Ford. But unfortunately for Mokbel he had the nous to record the vehicle’s number plate, which he passed on to his police handlers. Once they had an identity for the insider, authorities were able to map and follow the plot much more closely. From that moment there were many more eyes and ears paying close attention to the movement of the Mexican cocaine than just Mokbel and his merry band of amigos.
En route to Australia the cocaine parcels containing three kilograms of white powder travelled first from Mexico to the American UPS hub in Kentucky. It had been impressed on Sonny that he should immediately relay the parcels’ tracking numbers. This would mean Mokbel’s inside man could trace their journey to Melbourne and sneak them out of the warehouse before they were inspected by customs. But there was a delay in getting the packages’ numbers and at a vital time Sonny could not be contacted. Without the numbers the cocaine would be lost in a sea of freight and would end up before customs officers.
In Kentucky, US customs, alerted by the Australian Federal Police, grabbed the parcels just as Mokbel was finally able to pass on the vital numbers to his inside man. US customs drilled one of the artefacts, X-rayed the other parcel and ran tests that showed cocaine was present. Equipped with the numbers, Buddha Cassar tracked the parcels on his work computer and found they were stuck in America.
Police accompanied the drugs on a flight from the US to Sydney where, upon arrival, federal agents removed most of the cocaine. Mokbel ascribed the delays to quarantine holding up the cocaine because some of it was in wood. ‘Fucking idiots, they put it under wood … won’t let you in wood … still in LA,’ Mokbel told a friend. But his criminal instinct was functioning enough to smell a rat and he contemplated walking away from the deal. ‘I reckon it’s off … don’t go near it,’ Mokbel said, but later changed his mind.
The plan was reaching its end in spring and despite the import’s high stakes the season meant one thing to horse-mad Mokbel – the Spring Racing Carnival. The Grifter told him if the drugs came in on a particular day, ‘I’ll just come and see you.’
But Mokbel had other plans: ‘I’ll be at the Oaks, mate. Forget it.’ And it would be a very large carnival indeed for Mokbel. At Derby Day that year undercover police tailing the drug lord were shocked at the brazen way he distributed cocaine samples and how flagrantly TV, modelling and society celebs indulged.
As planned, Mokbel also attended Oaks Day that year and again his police tail followed him. There was a close shave when a female undercover officer dressed up for the races caught Mokbel’s eye. As the drug bigwig made a determined beeline straight for her the cop thought her cover was blown. But Mokbel was oblivious and offered the undercover officer a free cocaine sample. The pusher man’s generosity was calculated – each free snorter was a potential long-term paying customer. And there were more supplies in the post coming from Mexico.
The federal police allowed the parcels, still containing some cocaine that had not been removed, to travel to Melbourne airport. There a UPS driver picked them up and dropped them at the company’s warehouse, where they entered the customs control bay under police surveillance.
Cassar told Mokbel the goods had arrived and on a Sunday night, after the cleaners had left for the day, he crept into work. Buddha disconnected the warehouse’s security cameras then entered the customs area and emptied the parcels of their important contents. Secretly installed police cameras were still rolling and his actions inside were caught on tape. When he stepped out into the dead of night federal police crews swooped, catching Mokbel’s inside man red-handed. With Buddha behind bars the police pounced on Sonny Schmidt, the strongman’s brother Pale, who had a minor role, and then – to keep up appearances – the Grifter. Everyone, that is, except for the mission’s mastermind.
Police had Mokbel cold for the cocaine import, but authorities had learnt imports like kilograms of pure coke were just icing sugar on Fat Tony’s cake. The Mokbels had established a dauntingly huge drug empire. And there were other things Mokbel had said into the Grifter’s microphone that police wanted to watch play out. For the moment Tony would remain free.
Inside man Ron Cassar copped six years’ jail and the Stooge was condemned to always be looking over his shoulder. But for the strongman, for whom a short prison sentence proved the beginning of the end, the punishment was life.
It seemed anyone who went near the cursed cocaine scheme ended up behind bars, including a melancholy Mexican locked up in the US. A telephone intercept on the Stooge’s line recorded his chats with Gino Brunetti. The sting made the AFP the first organisation in the world to have such a senior ranking member of the Mexican syndicate talking openly about narcotic importations on the telephone. The Australian tapes of phone calls between the Stooge and Gino were forwarded by the feds to the US Drug Enforcement Agency. It was Gino’s third strike and soon after the Americans locked him up in a US prison cell for life.
Before he started pumping iron with Mokbel, the Stooge’s criminal forays had been minor. Aside from driving offences, there were two court appearances when he was eighteen. There were four charges over a fracas at a hotel and a property destruction charge which attracted a fine and a bond. There was another fine for an unregistered rabbit-shooting rifle and a cannabis possession charge. ‘He was otherwise of good character with a very strong commitment to work,’ a judge found.
But if being sprung on his first major criminal endeavour was hard luck, it was soured further by the revelation that Mokbel was not a foul-weather friend. The Stooge lamented that he realised much too late what he had got himself into. ‘I just didn’t know how to get off the treadmill,’ he said.
Devonport lad Jarrod Ragg always wanted to be a copper. When the Tasmanian police knocked him back because he was eighteen, he applied to the AFP and became a fed instead. He had gone to the mainland and ended up handling the cocaine prosecution of the nation’s biggest drug criminal. Agent Ragg said the Stooge may not have turned Crown witness had Tony treated him a little nicer when it all fell apart. ‘He was angry with Mokbel because Mokbel had attempted to intimidate him to stay staunch and not say anything,’ Ragg said. ‘His pride was injured. He saw the light. He decided that he was better off helping the cops rather than doing time with the Mokbels. He possibly would have stayed staunch if Mokbel had have kept paying for his legal fees and hadn’t tried to intimidate him. But instead he was highly offended.’
The Stooge said he had loved Mokbel but in the end Mokbel ‘didn’t give a shit about me’ and just brushed him off. ‘I was duped by Tony. He used me in the importation of cocaine to try to shield himself from direct involvement … by blinding me with his vast wealth, power and trappings,’ he said.
But perhaps the most tragic figure in the disastrous episode was Sonny Schmidt. Photographed at court by the press he reverted to his muscleman competition poses, ready for his close-up like a bodybuilding version of Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond. Sonny copped a three-year maximum term and became a born-again Christian who would get around his prison hellhole in a ‘Jesus is the Lord’ T-shirt. Shortly after finding God he found a tumour under his arm. He was diagnosed with cancer in December 2003. Sonny was released from prison early to be nursed by his brother at home, but he died just a month after being diagnosed, aged 50. Sonny was survived by his siblings, whose unique mix of names reflect their German and Islander parentage – Sara, Bismark, Fritz, Fossie and Paletasala.
Medics said cancer killed him. The intake of steroids and other bodybuilding drugs to achieve the perfect glistening beefcake look had not helped. But his family said it was the fall from grace that killed Sonny. ‘That done him in,’ a close relative said. ‘The heartache that came from that … they say stress can destroy you and that’s what happened to Sonny.’