Jailed drug kingpin Tony Mokbel is perhaps the most infamous modern-day example of an Australian racing criminal. Mokbel, his brother and convicted drug trafficker Horty Mokbel and others were part of the "Mokbel syndicate", which owned several top racehorses during the 1990s and 2000s. These horses, bought with the proceeds of their expanding drug empire, gave the Mokbels access to top trainers and jockeys. Banned jockey Danny Nikolic was warned by racing stewards against getting too close to the Mokbel syndicate after riding at least five of its horses

Nikolic, who has been banned from riding since making threats to Bailey in 2012, has also been banned by police from Crown Casino. A recent police ban preventing him from walking on to any Victorian racecourse was recently overturned by the Victorian Supreme Court. Two-time Melbourne Cup-winning jockey. Jim Cassidy was another who was deeply involved with Tony Mokbel. In the late 1990s, after returning from a ban for tipping about horses he was riding, Cassidy started passing information about his mounts to the Mokbel syndicate in return for cash. Mokbel was a man who liked to get close to jockeys - and with good reason. His plan was to fix races to launder the drug money he was making. Notorious Melbourne criminal, Carl Williams introduced the young jockey to Tony Mokbel about 1990, when Carl was a chubby nobody selling hot video recorders around Broadmeadows. At that stage, not many detectives knew the chunky Lebanese punter glad-handing a swarm of jockeys.

With Mokbel, "big noting" meant exactly that. He came with rolls of cash - eight grand here, 10 grand there, depending on who was owed what. Sometimes (the jockey said later) Mokbel must have been carrying $100,000 in "slings" for those who helped him back winners. For young jockeys it was an intoxicating lifestyle. He would take them to the Top of the Town (brothel) and pay for everyone. Every trainer and jockey knew of him and by the late 1990s regular racegoers muttered about the "tracksuit gang" hitting the betting ring with bundles of cash big enough to choke a horse, especially a favourite. There was a steeplechase where the leader conveniently drifted out in the closing stage of the race, allowing Mokbel's favourite rider to dart along the inside to land another plunge. The winning rider admits getting $20,000 for his efforts - and pocketed an extra $5000 he told Mokbel he'd had to pay the selfless rider of the beaten horse.

He once told a Queensland jockey-turned-trainer and a Sydney form analyst (on a car trip to a horse stud) that he'd set up a "one goer" in a hurdle race at a Victorian provincial track. He said he'd paid every jockey in the race except a novice riding a rank outsider. The plan unfolded beautifully right up until the shadows of the post, when the outsider bolted past the field to beat Mokbel's heavily backed "certainty". The stewards suspected what was going on, but had no powers to stop it. Their pleas for police help to curb Mokbel’s growing influence on racing in the early 2000s fell on deaf ears. It wasn’t until the gangland killings erupted and the Purana taskforce was assigned to map and destroy Mokbel’s crime empire that the true extent of his corrupting influence in racing began to emerge. Between 2006 and 2009, Purana found information that suggested that Mokbel had paid licensed bookmakers in return for their help laundering his money. Former detective inspector Jim O’Brien, the head of the Purana taskforce between 2005 and 2009, says Mokbel used third parties to punt for him and breaking down the amounts of those bets so that they weren’t subject to Austrac [anti-money laundering agency] reporting by bookmakers.

The Mokbel syndicate used racing to launder drug proceeds through bookmakers. Despite regular big losses, just one win could give Mokbel what he desperately craved; an apparently legitimate profit. While Tony Mokbel is said to maintain a keen interest in racing from inside prison, Horty Mokbel recently made headlines after being exposed as using online gambling agency Betfair to shift millions of dollars in suspect funds. Horty has been banned from race tracks and Crown Casino since 2004.

Racing Victoria last year charged another man associated with the Mokbels, racehorse owner and convicted cocaine supplier Joe Zaiter, for failing to declare his criminal record and making false statements to stewards. Zaiter became associated with the Mokbel syndicate in 2007 after failed punters' club operator Bill Vlahos sold him a stake in the $1.8 million horse Pillar of Hercules. The horse was being auctioned after its ownership links to the Mokbels was exposed

Jailed drug kingpin Tony Mokbel is perhaps the most infamous modern-day example of an Australian racing criminal