When the Australian Border Force set up its secret informer unit, it worried obsessively over the risk of dealing with snitches of “ill repute”, otherwise known as sources that could compromise and embarrass the agency.
It turned out they were looking in the wrong direction. When the danger came, it was from within.
The ABF had hatched a secret plan to become one of the nation’s premier intelligence agencies, deploying specialist covert operatives to recruit informers in the nation’s ports and logistics industry to gain inside access to the organised criminal syndicates breaching Australia’s borders.
It took just three years from its conception for it all to come crashing down, becoming the biggest scandal to rock the agency in its decade-long history.
The operative handpicked to run its most sensitive operations proved to be compromised, a man the National Anti-Corruption Commission alleges used his unique position fighting the illicit tobacco trade to attempt to orchestrate his own tobacco smuggling operation.
The scandal paralysed the ABF, leaving the agency and the country at a critical disadvantage during the “tobacco war” that would see the profits and power from illicit cigarettes flowing to organise crime gangs become a national security threat.
This is how it happened, a story based on interviews with three sources with direct knowledge of the force’s intelligence capabilities, not named to protect their employment, and leaked internal documents.
Capability-less
It was 2016 and the Australian Border Force was less than a year old after being created under an ambitious plan by then minister for immigration and border protection Peter Dutton.
The new super agency’s sweeping remit was guarding the country’s sea and air borders, stopping drugs, guns and other contraband, not to mention screening more than 20 million arrivals each year and turning back potential refugees and illegal fishers.
“Today is a significant day in the history of Australia’s border protection ... This heralds the beginning of a new chapter in Australia’s border protection history. The ABF will be a world-class organisation dedicated to keeping Australia as safe, secure and economically competitive as possible,” Dutton had announced on July 1, 2015.
“The ABF will be an agency focused on protecting our borders with the ability to gather intelligence and swiftly deal with existing and emerging threats across the complete border continuum.”
But, behind the scenes, remarkably little had evolved in the investigative and intelligence capabilities of this new super-department.
The ABF was a kind of Frankenstein monster, sewn together from several different components of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service and the Department of Immigration — yet still missing critical appendages.
It was empowered to investigate, prevent and punish crime – and its officers were allowed to carry firearms – but it lacked almost any of the critical tools needed to battle organised crime.
The ABF could legally conduct covert physical surveillance but had very little resources or skill to run those kinds of operations.
What was worse, it had no legal authority to set up telephone intercepts, plant audio bugs or GPS trackers, or run undercover officers and snitches.
It was almost entirely dependent on partner agencies such as the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, Australian Federal Police and state police to perform critical intelligence and covert operations.
“ABF had a real identity crisis. It was nonsense from the get-go – the kinds of things the ABF just couldn’t do. They just didn’t have powers or skills or wherewithal to deal with organised crime,” said a former senior ABF officer, who cannot be identified speaking about operational matters.
The huge gaps in capability were both embarrassing for a supposedly “world-class organisation” and a massive practical hindrance to the ABF’s work.
The ABF has long struggled with a low “detection rate” for identifying sea cargo containers containing illicit contraband in the millions that flow into Australian ports each year. It was as low as 10 per cent in 2017.
This was what led to a landmark meeting in June 2016 at Customs House in Canberra attended by the top brass and operators at ABF, known as the Strategic Command Group.
It approved the creation of a human source unit – recruiting informers or snitches, in other words – as the way to supercharge its capabilities.
The notion of developing a human source capability had been considered as far back as 2014 and, in this new push, the ABF claimed it could access intel no other law enforcement agency had.
The plan was to use officers from both the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and ABF, given their experience and contacts dealing with people at the border.
This meant targeting untapped potential sources inside the infrastructure used by organised crime to move people and contraband, including customs brokers, migration agents, logistics and port workers, and security personnel.
The ABF believed other agencies had failed to investigate these areas because they lacked expertise and had other priorities.
The plan would achieve this through the agency’s own Special Operations Unit (SOU).
“(Human sources) will provide insight that cannot be gained by telecommunications interception or analysis of border detections at a fraction of the resource cost,” the Strategic Command Group wrote.
“It was a total disaster”ABF source
Laying the groundwork for its new specialist unit saw the ABF consult more than two dozen Australian and international law enforcement partners, including Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in the UK, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Coordination meetings and threat assessment analyses were also drawn up with fellow border authorities inside the top-secret intelligence network known as Five Eyes, which includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand.
The vision, when it was presented to government, was bold, promising great returns. And this could be just the beginning.
The ABF was hoping to use this as a launching pad to develop a full-blown covert division, including running undercover agents and “controlled operations” where laws could be broken to advance investigations.
But it certainly didn’t go that way.
“It was a total disaster,” said a source with knowledge of the unit’s operation.
Going pear-shaped
The ABF’s human source unit had been operating for less than two years before the wheels started coming off – although it took ABF another year to realise.
Recruiting and running human sources is an extremely risky proposition, easily open to corruption, misuse and unintended consequences.
“Your handlers are close to criminality. Money is changing hands. You’re at the cutting edge of mind games, there’s access to all kinds of opportunities and lures,” a former law enforcement source said.
“Unless you have trained handlers with proper controls in place, you’re going to run into corruption problems.”
But the ABF felt it had a solid grip on the situation, promising the model it created would hold to “exceptional standards” of integrity and risk management and that, as a result, the potential exposure for the agency was rated “LOW”.
“(Human source management) is a specialised operational tradecraft that is apt to high levels of risk, misinterpretation and abuse. The ABF will implement proportionate education, supervision and governance for the proper use and conduct of this capability,” the ABF plan said.
Ironically, the ABF was primarily concerned about the risks posed to the organisation by sources of “ill repute” – potentially criminally linked informers with damaging ulterior motives or possible double agents.
What they didn’t seem to count on was the rot coming from the inside.
“I think it goes back to the fact that we probably pushed too hard in trying to build all the capabilities, rather than monitoring what was actually going on,” a source familiar with the unit’s operation said.
There were some notable early successes for the Special Operations Unit, including recruiting human sources that helped lead to the seizure of 4.7 tonnes of drugs and 260 million illicit cigarettes as part of Operation Jardena in November 2021.
But the first sign of serious trouble inside the unit had come in April 2020 – and despite its much vaunted internal controls – it was actually an anonymous tip that raised warning flags of potential corruption.
The tip claimed a senior ABF operator called “George” was working with criminal entities. Two other ABF officers inside the unit were also alleged to be engaged in suspect conduct.
An investigation was launched by the then Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (later the National Anti-Corruption Commission) in May 2020.
The suspect ABF officer was identified as George Andreopoulos, a former NSW police officer and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission source handler who had been brought into the unit as a top-level “special operations controller” in March 2017.
Andreopoulos oversaw the team of “handlers” that ran highest value and highest risk informants in the ABF’s network. The then 38-year-old also had wide-ranging access to the most current and sensitive intelligence gathered in ABF operations and investigations.
The NACC investigation focused on what happened to a critical intelligence report from April 2018 detailing how “trusted insiders” were compromising the supply chain and border controls to import illicit tobacco.
Known as Operation Rattletrap, it was a classified “protected” document that “contains information with a high business impact and would be expected to cause damage to the national interest, organisations or individuals if compromised”.
It was basically a “how to” guide for effectively penetrating Australia’s borders.
The NACC investigation found that Andreopoulos transferred the Rattletrap report, in May 2019, from an internal ABF system to a USB and, later, uploaded the document into his private iCloud account and downloaded it onto his iPhone.
It was alleged information from that report was passed to a long-time associate of Andreopoulos who was setting up a tobacco business – one which was considering deploying the smuggling methods detailed in Rattletrap.
Andreopoulos has always denied he ever shared the report or any intelligence with any third party, according to his testimony before the NACC.
Matters became even muddier after Andreopoulos learned intelligence reports were being filed about his associate’s activities.
The NACC found this sparked “urgent” meetings between him and an associate.
One of Andreopoulos’ associates implicated in the scandal testified to the NACC that Andreopoulos had detailed a plan to import illicit tobacco and provided him with information about the investigation.
“George once said … to me ’cause I asked him about it and, you know, the words he used was that he would ‘look out’ like, you know, if there was any issues with [the tobacco importing business]″, the man told NACC.
“(The witness) gave evidence that Mr Andreopoulos and (an associate) had approached him to set up ‘clean’ profiles for entities that could import ‘whatever, plastic chairs or something else, that after a few times could be swapped with something’,” the NACC report said.
“When asked what Mr Andreopoulos intended to swap out for the product being imported, it was (the witness’s) evidence that ‘it would be either cigarettes, or worse’.”
While the NACC uncovered no evidence of any financial rewards, it found that Andreopoulos’ explanations for this activity were not believable and his behaviour amounted to corrupt conduct.
“It suffices to be comfortably satisfied that the sinister explanation be the most probable explanation of the circumstances, in the sense that it more probably explains them than all the innocent explanations combined,” the NACC found.
“The disclosure of sensitive information to [his associate] as described above involved a use of information to which Mr Andreopoulos had access only because of his office as an ABF employee, and thus abuse of his office.”
“It follows that Mr Andreopoulos engaged in an abuse of office, by improperly disclosing sensitive information to which he had access only because of his official position, to an associate, and thereby engaged in corrupt conduct.”
The NACC also found Andreopoulos and two former colleagues in the unit had breached their employment conditions by attempting to start private security businesses in violation of ABF policies to combat conflicts of interest.
The findings of Operation Young were not publicly released until May 2026.
They came nearly five years after the Special Operations Unit was closed by the ABF, shuttered before news about the scandal could leak publicly.
The demise of its grand plan was marked by only a single passing reference in the Home Affairs annual report, placed in Footnote #92 on page 363: “In August 2021, The ABF discontinued special operations capability including human source management.”
The agency had created 50 fake identities for its operatives to assume that year during covert operations, all of which were abruptly cancelled and destroyed.
However, the shutdown probably couldn’t have come at a worse time on the border. Internal intelligence assessments, and warnings circulating from fellow agencies like the ACIC, had predicted that rapidly rising taxes on tobacco were set to drive a massive penetration of organised criminal activity into the illicit market.
The Five Eyes border control group warned in 2018 of an increase in the illegal importation of tobacco, the expansion of e-commerce and the use of professional facilitators to avoid the payment of taxes and duties.
This became a justification for running the Special Operations Unit. And more warnings followed.
In early 2023, the “tobacco war” started and exiled gangland boss Kazem “Kaz” Hamad would form a nationwide tobacco cartel worth billions of dollars and spark more than 200 firebombings, numerous murders and even a terror attack.
All of these profits – and its associated violence – were built on a tidal wave of cigarettes flowing directly through the border.
It became one of the most highly evolved organised crime syndicates the country had ever seen, concealing its activities behind impenetrable encryption technology that has stymied traditional investigative methods.
“(The ABF) had decided, no, we don’t need this intel capability. It’s not worth the risk. We couldn’t keep our house in order – we decided we’ll just give that away and pull away,” a source said.
“The tobacco war was running hot and they don’t have any human sources (in the criminal network) because they can’t.”
It was the exact thing the SOU had been designed to combat.
The ABF declined to comment on whether they ever plan to restart an in-house specialist intel or operations unit. The agency did not respond to a question about why they shut the unit down rather than attempt to reform it.
“The Australian Border Force maintains a range of intelligence and investigative capabilities to identify, assess and disrupt border-related threats. These capabilities continue to evolve in response to changing criminal methodologies, emerging risks, legislative frameworks and operational priorities,” a spokesperson said.
“ABF operates an intelligence-informed model and works closely with domestic and international law enforcement, regulatory and intelligence partners to detect, investigate and disrupt illicit activity.”
Operation Printwall
It was a victory lap the ABF considered so sweet, it took it multiple times.
Operation Printwall was a nationwide crackdown on illicit tobacco smuggling that seized more than a “kilotonne” – 1 million kilograms – of blackmarket product from December 2025 to March 2026.
It was trumpeted over two weeks in media releases, press conferences and an appearance before the Senate Inquiry into the Tobacco Crisis in Australia.
“We stood up Operation Printwall, which was an amplified effort across all streams – offshore, at the border and post border – to bring everything in line to see what we could do in terms of tackling the problem,” Assistant Commissioner Tony Smith told the inquiry in early May.
The operation launched just days after the senate inquiry was formally announced and ended just before the ABF appeared at the hearing.
Yet, all was not as it seemed.
Printwall was still the old way of doing things, but on a massive scale.
The operation caused huge disruptions to the cargo system, shutting down entire sections of the national seaport logistics network as sea cargo shipping containers were brought in en masse for searches.
The “detection rate” is unknown.
The viewpoint from industry about the scale of the dragnet was far from positive, according to Sal Milici of industry group Freight and Trade Alliance.
“I would say that what happened in December and January with Printwall was a scenario that we don’t want to repeat, and that’s where substantial numbers of shipments of legitimate cargo were held for really extended periods of time,” Milici told the senate inquiry.
“Whether that was caused by a resourcing issue or not, that’s not for me to say. But the outcomes or the impacts on industry were significant.”
The reality is that Printwall – and ABF’s long-term operations – are heavily dependent on intelligence fed by other law enforcement agencies, including hundreds of “referrals from international partner agencies”.
In July, ABF Commander Greg Dowse again announced record seizures.
“The intelligence picture shows ongoing enforcement pressure is producing measurable effects. We are seeing organised crime groups modify their smuggling methods in response, while rising illicit tobacco prices indicate reduced supply and increasing pressure across the illegal market.”
The ABF declined to provide its pricing data used to substantiate the claim.
Purchases, conducted by this masthead, show the cost of an illicit packet of Manchester was about $18 in July 2025, dropped to $13 in November after Hamad established his nationwide cartel, and rose to more than $21 in early 2026.
A massive price spike was recorded in March, at about the time Operation Printwall had reached its “kilotonne” seizure mark.
What had also happened was the closure in late February of the Strait of Hormuz, as part of the US and Israeli war on Iran.
Cutting off the key shipping route immediately halted the supply of cigarettes flowing from factories churning out Australia’s most popular cigarette, Manchester United Kingdom, in the United Arab Emirates.
Within weeks, the crime syndicates found an alternative route by trucking product overland out of Dubai to ports that bypassed the strait.
It added just $15,000 to the cost of transporting a shipping container – worth $8-10 million on the Australian black market, underworld sources said.
At the time this story went to press, Manchester cigarettes were down to $16 a packet.