Lawyer X: Nicola Gobbo tells court of years spent in hiding as she sues for compensation

The former gangland barrister at the centre of one of Victoria’s biggest legal scandals lives in constant fear her whereabouts will be exposed, a court has been told.

This week, details about Nicola Maree Gobbo’s secretive life were aired in Victoria’s Supreme Court as she sues the State of Victoria for damages.

The 51-year-old is seeking compensation, alleging she was “induced” into becoming a police informant during a bloody gangland war in the mid 2000s and was owed a duty of care.

She alleges Victoria Police acted negligently when it enrolled her, and claims her health and career have suffered after she was outed as informer 3838 or Lawyer X following a High Court ruling in late 2018.

The State of Victoria is defending the lawsuit, arguing she provided information voluntarily and with full appreciation of the risks.

Her barrister Tim Tobin SC said his client underwent “some surgery” and hinted she looked very different to her last public appearance on the ABC’s 730 program in 2019.

Since then, Ms Gobbo has lived in more than a dozen locations across Australia and overseas and changed her name three times.

Lawyer X rushed out of country ahead of reveal

When news broke in 2019 that the former high-profile barrister had been informing on some of Melbourne’s most notorious underworld figures, Ms Gobbo was no longer in the country.

She told the court she’d been taken overseas by police officers, describing the nervous wait for a High Court ruling that revealed her identity as being “stuck in a holding pattern”.

“We were living in a hotel room and basically doing tourist kind of things,” she said.

“There was no kind of certainty or plan as to what Victoria Police intended.”

Ms Gobbo said Victoria Police were footing the bill for accommodation and medical bills, and she was instructed to move several times.

She told the court she “parted ways” with police in mid-2019 after they could not provide answers on what the future held, such as whether her children could go back to school.

The former lawyer said she obtained a home in a gated community and enrolled her children in a local school, finding a semblance of “normality” until visa issues meant she had to leave.

They returned back to Australia at the end of the year, Ms Gobbo saying she was greeted at the airport with; “hello Lawyer X”.

Nicola Gobbo under ‘24/7’ surveillance on return

After returning to Victoria, Ms Gobbo told the Supreme Court child protection officials had wanted to remove her children from her custody due to extreme welfare concerns.

But she said she was able to keep them after striking a deal that placed her “in the custody of Victoria Police”, obliged to follow any lawful direction given.

Ms Gobbo described the following two years as imprisonment, saying she was under surveillance “24/7” and was often refused requests to leave the house.

“I couldn’t leave the premises or even step out the front of the property without getting told to get back inside,” she said.

“We didn’t have a choice. It was very clear, you either do this because we’re telling you or we will breach you and remove those children.”

Up to six officers monitored their every movement, Ms Gobbo said, deciding where the family lived, where they could go and who they could communicate with.

She said she was cut off from accessing anything electronic linked to her previous life, with an email address and phone provided she believed were monitored by police.

Ms Gobbo told the court she gave evidence remotely to the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants in early 2020.

She said she was driven to a secure location in a police convoy and gave evidence with police in the room.

The court was told Ms Gobbo was aware “certain people” wanted her dead from the late 2000s, on one occasion receiving a series of text messages.

“You’re a f–-ing dog I’m going to kill you,” one message read.

She described being whisked away in the middle of the night in March 2021 after police raised concerns about a man in a “bomber jacket” walking past the house.

Ms Gobbo said her partner told officers he was a local, but police claimed they foiled a “Hodson-style gangland hit” — a reference to the murder of informant Terrence Hodson and his wife in 2004.

“What it turned out to be was a neighbour who lived in the vicinity,” she said.

She told the court after this the family was relocated to a “mice-infested farm house” where they stayed until they left the country in late 2021.

Here she said a goat “got quite attached”, but had to be rehomed because it became very threatening toward her youngest child.

“I just regard 2020 and 2021 as a period of imprisonment,” she said.

Victoria Police promised relocation: Ms Gobbo

Ms Gobbo said she had been promised in 2020 she and her family would be relocated to a “safe country”.

“There’s no problem you’ll be done, be gone, within three months,” she quoted Officer Circuit, a pseudonym, as saying.

More than 12 months later, the court was told, the country’s immigration authorities officially refused to allow her family to settle.

Ms Gobbo said she began questioning Victoria Police as to where else she could be relocated, but was told they were out of options.

She said she was refused permission to ask the AFP or other state and territory police for options.

The family were eventually approved to leave on their own terms and were escorted to an Australian airport and flew internationally in the second half of 2021, the court was told.

They attempted to resettle in multiple countries but ran into “frustrating” legal hurdles they could not resolve on their own, forcing them to come home.

She told the court she continues to live in Australia and remains in fear of being exposed.

“I’m broken”: Gobbo describes toll of Lawyer X scandal

Ms Gobbo told the court the past six years in hiding have had significant impacts on her mental and physical health, alongside her family’s.

She said she had been unable to move past the events of two decades ago and faced significant barriers in accessing medical help.

Ms Gobbo said she had been unable to access anything from her past life, including a share and property portfolio.

“It’s probably prematurely aged me Mr Tobin,” she told her lawyer Tim Tobin SC.

“I spend a lot of time ruminating over all of this and I’ve spent hundreds of hours driving lawyers insane trying to come up with solutions or resolutions to no avail.

“I’m tired and broken.”

Ms Gobbo said her children and partner had been the driving force behind her continuing to press on, reflecting “if it wasn’t for them … I don’t think I’d see a point in living”.

She said her children were doing much better now after stability returned to their lives.

Ms Gobbo will continue to giving evidence when the judge-only trial resumes on Monday.