The criminal barrister known as ‘Lawyer X’, who brought down dozens of Australia’s most notorious gangsters as a secret police informant, can finally be named as high-flying lawyer Nicola Gobbo.
The niece of former Governor of Victoria Sir James Gobbo, the blonde-haired lawyer has admitted to destroying criminal organisations from the inside after becoming fed up with police’s inability to catch crooks.
The decision of Gobbo, also known as Informer 3838, to turn rogue saw some of Victoria’s biggest villains wind up in jail and has brought on a royal commission into how police deal with informers.
Revealed: Criminal lawyer Nicola Gobbo has gone into hiding after being outed as the notorious Informer 3838 who allegedly snitched on her clients to police
Carlton Crew boss Mick Gatto (left) was once a client of lawyer Nicola Gobbo (right). Gatto shot dead Carl Williams’ hitman Andrew ‘Benji’ Veniamin in self defence at the height of the gangland war
Gobbo’s snitching could also see dozens of bikies and mobsters released from prison.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced the royal commission after a damning High Court judgement found the police force’s conduct in using Gobbo for information was reprehensible, as well as describing her behaviour as appalling.
Her name can finally be revealed after the Victorian Supreme Court of Appeal last week rejected a Victoria Police bid to keep it and her image a secret.
The lawyer, who acted for gangsters including dead crime boss Carl Williams and drug lord Tony Mokbel, said she began working for police in mid-2003 when she met about six times with a Detective Sergeant of the Purana Taskforce, which was investigating Melbourne gangland crime.
She went onto work undercover for police until 2009.
It was later revealed police actually registered Gobbo as an informer while she was still a law student at the University of Melbourne in 1995.
It is unknown if her recruitment was connected to drug charges she faced as a university student two years earlier.
Gobbo continues to deny she has done anything wrong.
‘I maintain … that anything told to me or said in my presence about crimes being planned or committed cannot ever fall under the protection of legal professional privilege by a client,’ she told police in 2015.
‘Most significantly, I did not approach the police because I had committed (nor have I since) any crime for which I required some kind of “get out of jail free card”, as is most often the reason people choose to assist police.’
Last December, Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said police were concerned with the protection of Gobbo and her family, whom police feared would be murdered if word got out she was an informer.
‘Nothing is more important to Victoria Police than the protection of human life – that is and always will be the absolute number one priority. And so I make no apologies for taking the legal actions that Victoria Police has taken in this matter,’ he said at the time.
Carl Williams was right when he wrote from jail that his lawyer had turned rogue. He was murdered in jail the day information was splashed across a newspaper calling him a snitch
He said police still feared the lawyer could be a target if exposed.
But Gobbo has never truly been very much concerned for her safety.
Up until two weeks ago she was still posting photos of her children on Instagram and happily mingled among the cafe dwellers just a short ride from where she used to practice law in Melbourne’s CBD.
Sources suggest Gobbo only recently made the decision to skip town upon learning of the looming date where her identity could no longer be protected.
Even then she managed to push out the inevitable by convincing authorities she needed to make one last visit to her mother’s grave before packing up her two children and getting out of town.
The outing of Gobbo as Informer 3838 comes as a surprise to absolutely no-one within the legal community, media or government.
Her name has been associated with snitching on clients ever since she admitted to wearing a wire in an effort to snare former cop Paul Dale.
Nicola Gobbo was asked to wear a wire to get incriminating evidence against former drug squad detective Paul Dale. She was also asked to give evidence against him which exposed she was a rogue lawyer
Nicola Gobbo was frequently seen enjoying a coffee while supposedly living in fear of being revealed as a rogue lawyer who had turned on the crooks she represented
Gobbo covertly taped a conversation with the former drug squad detective in 2008 and later signed a statement after repeated police urging.
She went onto sue Victoria Police after the case went sour and her career was left in tatters.
‘Having had the courage and strength to agree to become a witness for Victoria Police, I was required to give up my home, my security, my sense of life as I knew it,’ she told The Age in 2010. ‘I remain in fear for my life.’
Dale had been arrested and charged with the murder of another police snitch – Terence Hodson.
Gobbo received almost $2.9 million and an agreement from then deputy commissioner Simon Overland that she would not be forced to be a witness in any future prosecution.
Dale was charged with the Hodson murders after Carl Williams told police he acted as the middle-man between Dale and hitman Rodney Collins, who was allegedly paid $150,000 to kill Hodson after he became a police informer.
The case collapsed after Williams was bashed to death in prison by prison gang leader Matthew Johnson.
It just happened to coincide with the publishing of a front page newspaper report detailing Williams had become a snitch.
Gobbo’s secret world came undone when she was asked by former police chief Simon Overland to act as a witness against Dale.
The move infuriated Gobbo.
‘I didn’t appreciate that at the time I made the decision to become a witness for Victoria Police, I had been put in a situation in which every assurance given to me was a lie and more importantly, that the investigators who took my statement were not made aware of the very real problems with respect to my safety and status,’ she later wrote.
When Dale was made to go before the Australian Crime Commission about his links to Williams, Gobbo was not made to give evidence and he walked.
Prisoner of War leader Matthew Johnson murdered Carl Williams in jail on the day he appeared on the front page of a newspaper being outed as a police snitch
In a letter to Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Steve Fontana in 2015, Gobbo revealed a ‘Top 10’ of crooks she helped to bring down.
The list contained a swag of colourful Melbourne identities, including major drug traffickers Pasquale Barbaro, Rob Karam, John Higgs, Tony Mokbel and his brother Milad.
Drug Lord Tony Mokbel, who is recovering in jail from stab wounds, believes he has a chance of getting out of jail because of Gobbo’s snitching against him while employed as his lawyer
Pasquale Barbaro is among a who’s who of criminals lining up to get out of jail because of the information they claim Gobbo handed over to police while acting as their lawyer
Barbaro was pinged in the infamous $440 million ‘Tomato Tins’ drug sting in 2007 which saw 32 Mafia figures jailed.
‘There were a total of 386 people arrested and charged that I am specifically aware of based upon information I provided to Victoria Police, but there are probably more because as you would know, I did not always know the value or use of some of the intelligence that I was providing,’ Gobbo wrote.
Daily Mail Australia revealed exclusively last November that Carl Williams himself suspected Gobbo was a rat.
He penned his concerns about his once trusted lawyer in a jail house letter before he was bashed to death.
Gobbo’s outing as Informer 3838 should come as a relief for criminal lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson, who has been wrongly suspected of being the informer for years within the general community.
Carl Williams’ jailhouse letter where he stated his concerns about ‘Nicola’ and his suspicions that she had turned trusted allies against him
Melbourne lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson was often wrongly believed in the general community to be Informer 3838. She had actually tried to out Nicola Gobbo years earlier
In reality, Garde-Wilson herself has been one of Gobbo’s biggest detractors.
‘I knew she was playing both sides back in 2006 – it just took a while for it to come out,’ she told Daily Mail Australia in December.
Ms Garde-Wilson said Gobbo’s clients were oblivious to the fact they were talking to a police stooge.
‘It took other people a lot longer to realise,’ Ms Garde-Wilson said.
The royal commission into the Gobbo scandal has already revealed another six legal informants, including a court clerk, have been identified as police informers.
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