A financial trader who bragged he was involved in a scheme that was bigger than the Wolf of Wall Street has been sentenced for laundering millions of dollars for a heroin trafficker known only as “DinkDonk”.
Former Berndale Securities boss Stavro D’Amore was jailed for three years and six months at the County Court of Victoria on Wednesday on two charges for laundering $2.5 million for the Sydney-based mystery drug importer he met on an encrypted app.
While D’Amore sobbed last month when he was sentenced to nearly four years’ jail, with a minimum term of 23 months, over separate embezzlement charges, he was stoic when he learnt he would spend a further nine months in prison.
The court heard D’Amore agreed to help DinkDonk exchange $75 million in cash into bitcoin in 2021 by laundering $1.5 million to $2 million a week, despite not knowing why his new acquaintance was so cashed-up.
D’Amore, who pleaded guilty on the eve of an expected six-week trial, agreed to never meet DinkDonk.
Instead, D’Amore arranged for either himself or an associate to pick up the cash in black sports bags that were delivered to locations, including a Sydney car park and a petrol station in Melbourne’s south-east.
The court heard D’Amore was careful to ensure the locations for the “dead drops” – an arranged meeting to exchange goods without the two people ever meeting each other – had multiple exits and were heavily surveilled in case anything went wrong.
On two occasions, D’Amore attended the dead drop personally, with four security guards in tow.
After picking up the bags, D’Amore then moved the money into the bank accounts of a company he had set up in the name of his then girlfriend, model and beautician Natalie Turnour, and then into cryptocurrency exchanges.
Turnour was initially charged by Australian Federal Police before the case against her was dropped. D’Amore now has a new partner.
Prosecutors accepted that D’Amore did not know the big bags of cash were the proceeds of a drug haul, but the court heard he also refused to hand over the pin of a “covert” phone to police when requested.
D’Amore provided false documents to the cryptocurrency exchanges that stated the money had been made from abalone fishing.
Judge Anthony Lewis said there were many signs that indicated D’Amore was aware the money was the proceeds of crime, especially given the former Berndale boss’s financial trading history.
“You have significant experience in the financial services industry, and you must therefore be taken to have an understanding of how commercial transactions are ordinarily undertaken,” Lewis said.
“Overall, in my view, your offending is objectively very serious. Your ongoing and obviously trusted involvement in the offence, involving such a large sum of money and a high degree of recklessness, necessarily involves a high level of moral culpability on your part.”
D’Amore’s lawyer Alexander Patton had told the court his client had begun abusing cocaine and alcohol, and had developed a gambling problem after his marriage ended and his business collapsed amid an investigation by the corporate watchdog.
Berndale’s collapse wiped out nearly $9 million in client funds.
An examination by liquidators into the group in 2020 probed their ties to colourful Melbourne figures including Carlton Crew member Angelo Venditti.
They also revealed Berndale, which was formerly known as Forex TG, had links to other international trading schemes that stood accused of misusing investor money.
This included Aviv Talmor, who was D’Amore’s business partner at Forex TG and later Berndale, and is now serving a five-year sentence in Israel over his involvement in a dodgy trading scheme.
It was during this examination that D’Amore was asked about visiting Talmor’s office in Tel Aviv, where he described what he was involved in as bigger than the Wolf of Wall Street.
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Sarah Danckert is a senior reporter who specialises in investigations and corporate wrongdoing. She is a two-time Walkley Award winner, and has won six Quill Awards and two Kennedy Awards.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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