Angelo Gargasoulas sentenced on drug crimes

The brother of Bourke St killer James Gargasoulas has been sentenced for drug trafficking and drug possession crimes that took place at his Carlton address in 2024.

Angelo Gargasoulas pleaded guilty in the County Court to six charges, including one count of trafficking a drug of dependence, two charges of possessing a drug of dependence, and one of possessing precursor chemicals, after an exchange of drugs in Southbank that was captured on CCTV and a police raid on his Carlton home.

The court heard that on July 10, 2024, at 1.50am Gargasoulas was captured on CCTV entering the Southbank premises of his former partner Simon Simoudis carrying a box covered in Australia Post stickers and wearing a latex glove on his left hand.

A police raid of Simoudis’s place a few hours later revealed the box contained 9.8 kg of the substance 1,4 butanediol – a drug described by the AFP as “linked to sexual assaults and overdoses” – in 21 bottles labelled as aloe vera.

When police raided Gargasoulas’ home six weeks later they found a white bottle labelled as hand sanitiser that contained 323g of “bute”, two ziplock bags of methamphetamine and a cardboard box very similar in appearance to the one he had taken to Southbank but which had in it 19 bottles labelled as aloe moisturiser that were found to contain a precursor chemical.

Gargasoulas told police the substance had been “a dud of a purchase” that he had tried to melt down, thinking it might be GHB, but which had solidified instead of crystallising.

The court heard that Gargasoulos, who was born in Coober Pedy to a Greek father and Tongan mother, had a very turbulent childhood and early life, which included homophobic emotional abuse from his father, time spent staying with his mother, who was alcoholic and who had taken out family violence orders against him, and a period of living on the streets.

He had three prior convictions for drug trafficking and numerous convictions for drug possession and multiple family violence orders issued against him, the court heard, and at the time of his offending had been on a community corrections order with a drug treatment condition.

In recent years he had succeeded in building a relatively stable life, moving into public housing and starting a job as an electrician, Judge Wraight said, but he had left work to look after his mother when she became ill and relapsed into substance use after her death.

A psychological report described Gargasoulas as suffering from a range of psychological disadvantages including depression, stimulant misuse, complex post-traumatic stress and borderline personality disorder, which were factored into his sentencing, along with his eventual guilty plea and the relatively serious nature of the crimes.

But there was no evidence he had been acting purely for profit or as part of a larger syndicate, Judge Wraight concluded, and his offending had been “largely driven by his ongoing serious drug addiction”.

Gargasoulas was sentenced on May 18 to a total of two years and nine months imprisonment with a non-parole period of 21 months.

He had already served 620 days of the sentence. •