A gangland lawyer will be allowed to travel overseas for a family holiday despite allegedly being linked to crime syndicates by the global AN0M sting operation.
Sarah Tricarico, 38, fronted a Melbourne court where she finally broke her silence after being charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Tricarico, who has represented many big names including jailed drug lord Tony Mokbel, was arrested and charged by specialist police on March 13.
The prominent criminal lawyer had appeared at court on behalf of Mokbel the same day she was arrested.
Tricarico, of Maribyrnong in Melbourne’s west, was charged alongside co-accused Youssef Raffoul, 33, from Coburg.
The Melbourne mother was represented by top barrister Dermott Dann KC who told Tuesday’s hearing that his client ‘maintained her innocence’.
Mr Dann also said Tricarico was a ‘practising solicitor’ but she was suspended after being charged and allegedly linked to organised crime gangs.
The top barrister also said his client would be meeting with the Victorian Legal Services Board in a bid to keep practising while she fights to clear her name.
Tricarico was able to secure relaxed bail conditions so she could take a planned overseas holiday with her mum and son.
Neither the prosecution nor police opposed Tricarico’s bid to keep her passport to leave the country. Mr Dann told the court his client would also travel interstate if she was allowed to practise law again.
The court denied a prosecution application for more time in handing over the brief of evidence.
Prosecution lawyers had sought the extra time because the police informant was about to go on leave but Mr Dann opposed it because his client was keen to get back to working as a lawyer.
Victoria Police Criminal Proceeds Squad detectives arrested Tricarico and Raffoul after information was allegedly ‘uncovered’ in the worldwide ‘Operation Ironside’ investigation.
The major police op involved investigators from several countries including the United States, the UK and which worked together and delivered crime syndicates a hammer blow in June 2021.
The FBI, n Federal Police and other authorities teamed up to smash global criminal networks with an elaborate sting involving ‘AN0M’ branded phones and the encrypted messaging app.
The gangs used the tech without realising police could easily intercept and read their communications.
Criminal gangs had been duped into using the FBI designed technology for three years prior the mass arrests which took down drug syndicates, bikie gangs and other major crooks globally.
Across , authorities sensationally carried out the country’s biggest ever organised crime bust, announcing 224 people had been arrested on day one.
In alone, the mammoth bust saw 4,000 officers storm the underworld after gangsters were monitored for a protracted period.
Since then many more alleged criminals have been arrested and charged, including Tricarico and Raffoul, while Operation Ironside investigations remain ongoing.
During the initial stages of the covert operation, detectives allegedly foiled 21 murder plots – saving the lives of a family of five – and shut down gun distribution and mass drug trafficking rings, with Mafia bosses, bikies and reality TV stars among those arrested.
The app gained currency in the underworld after being promoted by criminal figures including Comanchero bikie and suspected drug lord Hakan Ayik.
Ayik, once touted as the FBI’s most wanted man on earth after he fled in 2010, spruiked the app to criminal colleagues after it was first distributed to police informants.
The suspected drug boss was one of dozens of underworld figures who were arrested in by local cops in Istanbul in November 2023.
Ayik, also known as ‘Big Hux’, has yet to be extradited to .
Tricarico had recently been working on crime boss Tony Mokbel’s appeal following the disclosure that his lawyer, Nicola Gobbo, was the police informant Lawyer X.
Mokbel appeared at court on Thursday, represented by Tricarico, while his ongoing bid to be released from jail over the Lawyer X revelation in March 2019.
An appeals court will determine Mokbel’s fate later this year.
Gobbo had acted for many of Melbourne’s crooks, including Mokbel and the now-deceased gangster Carl Williams.
Williams was bludgeoned to death in jail before he even got a chance to see his former lawyer implicated in the scandal.
Mokbel has already enjoyed several legal wins over Gobbo’s role in his affairs.
A 2006 conviction for cocaine importation was quashed in 2020 due to the Lawyer X scandal.
In 2023, his 2012 sentence for drug trafficking was slashed from 30 years’ jail with a minimum term of 22 years to a total of 26 years with a non-parole period of 20 years.
The Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants, handing down its findings in 2021, revealed more than 1,000 crooks could be released or earn retrials because of Gobbo’s unlawful informing to Victoria Police.
Commissioner Margaret McMurdo AO concluded that the convictions or findings of guilt of 1,011 people may have been affected by Victoria Police’s use of Gobbo as a human source.
‘She told police about Mr Mokbel’s properties, finances, contact numbers, associates, and the vehicles and code names he used,’ Commissioner McMurdo said then.
‘She divulged the defence strategies and tactics used by Mr Mokbel’s legal team, both in his criminal trial and his extradition proceedings.’
Tricarico and Raffoul both had their bail extended to front court at a later date.