“F--- the f---. He took a taxi and left, ” one of the smugglers lamented as Australian Federal Police officers listened in on wiretaps. “I don’t have his number.” Police would later reveal this was just one container among more than a dozen in what was then the largest tobacco smuggling operation in Australian history, worth $67 million. To mitigate the risk, the Middle Eastern criminal empire behind the massive haul had partnered with a series of smaller syndicates, which would do the actual smuggling. The big guys would then buy and distribute the cigarettes. The network was dismantled by law enforcement in late 2013, but details of the operation are only now coming to light following a trial in the County Court. With this container, the scheme was brought undone by the bungling of a few rank amateurs. In the Hollywood version, their caper would play more as Fargo than Ocean's Eleven.

The rendezvous The Melbourne plan required the container to be dropped off at an isolated service station on the Hume Highway, near Kalkallo, where the contraband cigarettes would be inspected, the smugglers paid, and the goods whisked away by the buyers. Instead, frustrated henchmen milled around a truck they couldn’t start and a container they couldn’t open, bickering about what to do and throwing blame in a series of increasingly desperate (tapped) phone calls to the ringleaders. “What he did is he parked the truck right to the end, very close to the fence, meaning we can’t put anything behind it to unload it,” one of the smugglers, Sarkis Anjoul, told his boss. Anjoul’s bona fides as tobacco trafficker were not ideal. He ran the BBQ Wrap outlet and Sir Sharks fish-and-chip shop in the Northland shopping centre food court. The second business was underwritten by his uncle, Nabil Grege, who was also the mastermind of the illicit importation.

As for Grege, his foray into crime is difficult to fathom. An immigrant success story, the Lebanese-born businessman had made legitimate fortunes twice over – first in food importation and later in property development – and had accumulated all the expected trappings: a penthouse apartment, luxury cars and respect in the community. At 60, inexplicably, he turned his hand to smuggling. Nabil Grege, right, and co-accused, Michael Buric, left, outside the County Court. Credit:Chris Vedelago Grege, a court would eventually hear, was a “control freak” whose “domineering” and “abusive” micro-management style had made him a great entrepreneur in legitimate businesses, but did not translate to the underworld.

As his big score was planned and then unravelled in the north-suburban parking lot, Grege would make and receive dozens of phone calls, insisting on being involved in every facet of the operation. Each call was intercepted by police. “Damn it. What a shit job,” Grege yelled down the phone at Anjoul as the group milled around the inaccessible container. “F---, I told you to be there earlier. Not one of you have brains. You are all idiots. Give me a moment, let me find out what I can do.” For nearly three hours, they floundered at the service station car park until, eventually, it was decided the only realistic option was to wait for the driver to return and then move the entire rig to a new spot. “We have agreed that the goods won’t enter this mumble jumble. Brother of a slut, donkey, sons of bitches, worthless people,” Grege ranted.

Rolling in a convoy through Melbourne’s north suburbs, the shipping container was finally delivered to a secure warehouse controlled by the buyers. The reveal But in all the hours spent fretting over the container, apparently no one had noticed that the container was blue. It was supposed to be brown. Likewise, no one had checked the ID markings painted on the side. AFP surveillance officers had already figured out what was about to happen. A team of police had watched from the start. They had seen the brown “target” container loaded onto a semi-trailer at the shipping yard earlier that day, and had been watching it for hours.

As they monitored the stationary container, though, an alert came in from a second AFP surveillance team. The rendezvous at the service station seemed to be under way, 60 kilometres across the city. How could the smugglers be checking their booty when the container with a million dollars in cigarettes had not moved an inch? Not one of you have brains. You are all idiots. Give me a moment, let me find out what I can do. Nabil Grege “They brought us the wrong one, meaning the wrong container ... It has metal shelves inside it,” Anjoul exclaimed in Arabic to his boss when the group finally opened the latch. Grege: “Motherf---ers ... What are you talking about man?

Anjoul: “Can you ask ... what was the colour, since its colour should be blue.” Grege called a relative who had a photograph of the container. Grege: “[He] is telling me it is a completely different colour ... It should be light brown.” Anjoul: “This one is blue.” A fortnight later, a second container, this one holding nearly 10 million cigarettes, would be seized at the docks.

When Grege went on trial in the County Court this year, prosecutor Patrick Doyle would describe these events, in a somewhat understated fashion, as a plan that “went badly wrong”. The Age can now reveal that the scheme had been doomed well before the bungled pick-up. Brother of a slut, donkey, sons of bitches, worthless people. Tobacco smuggler Nabil Grege The food court plot Even if everything had gone right on that day in late May 2013, the smugglers and the buyers would never have picked up their cigarettes.

The AFP had been on to the scheme more than three weeks before the container arrived in Melbourne – time to set up up telephone intercepts and covert surveillance of Grege’s smuggling crew and the Melbourne-based buyers’ syndicate. One of the things that compromised Grege’s master plan was his crew’s tendency to leave a trail of evidence the AFP was able to, quite literally, pick up. Grege took meetings in the food court of Northland shopping mall, where a proportion of their fellow diners were AFP surveillance officers with recording equipment. On one occasion, Anjoul brought with him a piece of paper on which was written the falsified information used on customs documents. After the meeting, he simply ripped it up and threw it in the bin. Recovered and taped back together by AFP officers, it would become a key exhibit in the trial. Other compromising documents would be recovered during AFP raids months after the failed importation.

Even more damning, the investigation amassed thousands of telephone intercepts from a crew that seemed to believe speaking in Arabic and using half-baked code words, such as “fridge” for cigarettes and “computer” for container, would conceal their activities. In a major stroke of luck for the investigation, Grege’s son James was also randomly stopped by Australian customs officials in April 2013 as he returned from a trip to Dubai. Suspicious about the the trip, custom agents downloaded the contents of his mobile phone, which was later found to hold an image of the container and an invoice for hundreds of boxes of cigarettes. (James was found not guilty by a jury amid claims authorities had intentionally misrepresented evidence about his involvement in the conspiracy). The way the jury should interpret all that evidence was intensively challenged by Grege and his lawyer.

“It is possible if you twist and turn the words and contents of any document you will ultimately come up with some theory of why it fits together,” defence barrister Con Heliotis told the jury, claiming his client had been used as an unwitting dupe. On the stand, Grege himself also vehemently denied any involvement. Evidence that the prosecution alleged was about cigarettes, Grege claimed was about plans to import Lebanese biscuits, Chinese-made Viagra, fridges, batteries or Toshiba airconditioners. “Mr Doyle, ask me about the wafer biscuit, please,” Grege begged the prosecutor at one point. “Why do you want to put in your head that this is about cigarettes? Why not it’s about wafer biscuits? ... You are biggest liar I’ve seen in my life.”