The serious jury misconduct during a six-month trial into an alleged $10 million tax fraud was revealed in full in an appeal judgement on Friday.
Construction boss George Alex and four others were found guilty in 2024 but are now set to face a retrial due to the jury irregularities.
While juror misconduct is often discovered through other jurors reporting it to the trial judge, some of the misconduct was only discovered when federal police raided the foreman's house for an unrelated investigation.
"No case like this has ever occurred before," NSW's top criminal court ruled on Friday.
"Despite the length of the trial, the findings of the Sheriff's report and the trial judge's careful directions, we have concluded that a miscarriage of justice occurred and that a new trial must be ordered.
"In reaching this conclusion we emphasise ... that no criticism whatever is intended of the trial judge."
The court found the jury foreman conducted numerous illegal internet searches on the accused men and shared information with fellow jurors for months.
That included highly prejudicial material in media articles about the men.
"A juror appraised of this information would very likely be more inclined to find the crown case established beyond reasonable doubt," the court said.
The foreman had also been seen drinking after court with other jurors.
He went on to make a slew of accusations about fellow jurors, including that up to six of them were approached and pressured by someone to return not guilty verdicts.
Two other jurors said an approach to obtain a favourable verdict had been discussed by the jury but that it was a "joke".
The Crown accepted on appeal there was no evidence to support anyone having been offered a bribe - however the allegations triggered an investigation in which the Sheriff questioned jurors as suspects in a criminal investigation.
The tampering allegations made from inside the jury were "unprecedented", the appeal judges wrote.
Another juror was revealed to have gone to school with one of the defence solicitors, the court found.
The same juror had been exchanging messages about the proposed supply of prohibited drugs from the foreman, though those messages were not the subject of the appeal.
The trial judge eventually dismissed that juror and the foreman.
The trial continued and the remaining jurors reached 10 verdicts of guilty against the five accused.
But the appeal court found the trial judge's decision to persist with the trial even after the revelations about the dismissed jurors was wrong.
A member of the public might have doubted whether the jury could carry out its duties fairly according to law if it knew all of the details of the foreman's misconduct.
"There was a fundamental error or irregularity in the trial, necessarily meaning that there was a substantial miscarriage of justice," the judges said.
Alex and the four other men were granted appeal bail in the second half of 2025 and will reappear for arraignment on September 4.
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