Montather Al Mousawi, 23, pleaded guilty in Shepparton Magistrates’ Court to three charges of trafficking cocaine, being a prohibited person possessing a firearm, possessing cannabis, dealing with property suspected of being the proceeds of crime, failing to comply with a direction of police to provide access to phone storage and breaching a community corrections order.
Prosecutor Molly Wooderson told the court Al Mousawi was contacted by an undercover police officer who wanted to buy drugs three times in June and July.
The prosecutor said Al Mousawi was a member of a drug trafficking syndicate that was associated with the Mongols Outlaw Motorcycle Gang.
On June 10, Al Mousawi met the undercover officer, to whom he sold 28.3g of cocaine for $7500.
He and two co-accused again met the same undercover officer at Seymour on June 21, where he sold the officer a further 83.3g of cocaine for $21,900.
The court heard Al Mousawi also offered the undercover police officer a sawn-off double-barrel shotgun on this occasion, which was sold to the officer for $4500.
Al Mousawi and three co-accused met the undercover police officer a third time in Seymour where they sold the officer 112.1g of cocaine for $29,200.
Ms Wooderson said police seized about $2000, eight green cannabis buds and a mobile phone when they searched Al Mousawi’s house on July 18, but he would not give the officers the passcode to the phone.
Al Mousawi’s solicitor Theo Magazis said his client became involved in the offending after meeting the undercover police officer in police cells after he was arrested in May on another matter and the officer made contact with Al Mousawi on social media.
Mr Magazis also spoke of Al Mousawi’s “difficult and unstable” upbringing, where he was born in Iran after his parents had fled Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.
The family moved from Iran to Indonesia, New Zealand and eventually Australia, arriving in Shepparton in 2009.
While saying Al Mousawi came from a “good strong family”, Mr Magazis argued Al Mousawi was influenced by his “negative peers”.
Magistrate David Faram sentenced Al Mousawi to eight months in prison, with the 127 days of pre-sentence detention counting as time already served.
He also ordered that the two-year community corrections order Al Mousawi was on at the time of the offending be re-instated, with additional conditions that he undergo drug abuse and dependency treatment and counselling.
The order also includes 160 hours’ community work, with 50 hours of treatment and programs able to be offset against these hours.
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