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This designation has come after the setting of fires, staging of hunger strikes, assaulting of guards, launching of “shit bomb” attacks using his own faeces, smuggling of contraband, and running of a vast criminal enterprise from behind bars.
At the heart of the case is a claim that the system has been punishing Marrogi unfairly, ignoring his rights and using security protocols like strip searches, self-harm prevention cells, and restrictions on movement and access to suitable open air as weapons in a revenge plot that extends to the highest levels of Corrections Victoria.
That’s Marrogi’s version, anyway.
The thorn in the side of Corrections
During the hearings last week, George Marrogi was referred to as one of the most complex and most challenging prisoners inside the system. Marrogi has been in one prison or another for all but 12 months of his adult life.
For the vast majority of that time, he has been housed in special “separation” units – where he is isolated for at least 22 hours a day – because of what prison, police and underworld sources and court records document is a well-earned reputation as one of the most high-risk and dangerous inmates in Victoria.
Since early 2023, Marrogi has been in a state of war with Corrections Victoria.
This was as a result of Corrections Victoria’s official response to one of the most audacious violations of prison security ever witnessed in an Australian correctional facility.
In 2020-21, Marrogi ran a $160 million drug-trafficking network from inside Victoria’s most secure prison.
The criminal operation was used to fund a new gang, the Notorious Crime Family.
In February 2023, Marrogi was sentenced to 22 years’ jail for his part in the scheme, which raised his term of imprisonment to nearly 50 years.
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“Mr Marrogi is of the view that given his recent offending involving the trafficking of drugs through the use of an unauthorised phone line, he has humiliated the prison system,” according to a report from Marrogi’s prison psychologist.
“Mr Marrogi is convinced that the prison has become personal. Specifically, he takes the view that they have become invested in unravelling him from as early as 2023 as a form of revenge.”
One of the incidents Marrogi cites as evidence of an ongoing campaign to torment him is a scuffle with guards during which an earring that belonged to his dead sister was ripped out of his ear and could not be found.
Meshilin, a key player in the syndicate, died of COVID-19 in 2021, spurring the downfall of the Notorious Crime Family. Her premature death remained a source of agony for Marrogi years later, when gangland rivals tried to steal and desecrate her body in 2023.
Prison authorities denied the earring had been deliberately removed and told the court the piece of jewellery was eventually found in a pocket and returned.
George Marrogi and his sister Meshilin.
The court heard the conflict ultimately led to an incident in April 2024 when Marrogi was placed naked and shackled in an observation cell, which was bathed in constant light and under 30-minute surveillance checks by guards. He was left with only a canvas fire-retardant blanket on his first night. He was released after two days.
“Mr Marrogi says that prison officers left him there naked in order to punish him. You can’t deny that was their motivation, can you?” Marrogi’s barrister, human rights lawyer Sarala Fitzgerald, asked the official who was running the unit at the time, during cross-examination.
“I refute that,” senior prison operations official Nicholas Selisky testified. “The last thing you want to be doing when he was so agitated is cause further drama, because people want to go to work safe and come home safe, and they weren’t at that time.”
Just before, Marrogi had been notified that his family was temporarily banned from visiting. He set a fire inside his prison cell in response.
In an affidavit, Seliski said he had “never dealt with a prisoner who posed a greater risk to staff than [Marrogi] did over this period.”
Fitzgerald put to Seliski that “there’s an understandable level of frustration, and that as a result of that frustration, your staff torments Mr Marrogi in small ways.”
“No, I refute that,” he said.
Marrogi in his own words – and a psychologist’s
Marrogi was looking fitter and more relaxed last week than he had since the implosion of the Notorious Crime Family in 2022, at times smiling as he watched proceedings via video link from the Acacia Unit in Barwon Prison.
Fitzgerald told the court that it had been about six months since Marrogi was involved in a violent incident in the prison. His conditions, as a result, have eased – if only slightly.
“I’ve got human contact again. I haven’t had human contact for a long time with another prisoner. Yes, I feel good. I feel happier,” Marrogi testified.
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“I’d prefer to be in mainstream with everyone else, where I can mix with people all the time and go outside and exercise and that.”
Corrections Victoria Assistant Commissioner Jennifer Hosking testified that Marrogi’s recent behaviour had been “more settled” and “there are better interactions with staff”.
But questions remain about why and how much it can ultimately matter, given who Marrogi is.
Marrogi is known to be a master manipulator – a characterisation backed up by allies, enemies, and his prison mental health specialist.
The psychologist, who has minutely documented Marrogi’s complaints, fears, and conspiracy theories about the system, noted this influential component of his personality in an affidavit that was read out in court.
“[Marrogi] has demonstrated a capacity to manipulate his surroundings spectacularly.
“However, if the current impasse cannot be resolved, I have grave concerns that Mr Marrogi’s current presentation will deteriorate further, the consequence of which could significantly increase the safety risk to staff over the short, medium and long term.”
Enemy No.1
Marrogi’s penchant for making powerful enemies is one of the major reasons he’s spent nine years in separation.
To say he is hated within and outside jail is an understatement. He has fallen out with members of multiple bikie clubs and factions in the Middle Eastern organised crime world.
Sixty-nine kilograms of drugs seized by police from the Notorious Crime Family.
These include Kazem “Kaz” Hamad – now the most powerful underworld figure in Melbourne – whose best mate, Kadir Ors, Marrogi was convicted of killing in 2016.
Hamad is suspected by police and underworld sources to be at the origin of a $2 million murder contract on Marrogi.
Hosking, of Corrections Victoria, testified there were still concerns about Marrogi’s safety and his history of criminality inside the prison to consider.
“It may not just be the contract – it may be that associates of the victim of his murder want retribution,” she said.
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“It is counterintuitive to say we reduce restrictions when he has found ways to undermine the security features that we have.”
The complexities involved in calculating risk and safety in a place as volatile as prison can be seen just by looking at whom Marrogi is currently allowed to associate with.
One person is Rodney Phillips, whose closest mate was Sam Liszczak. Liszczak – now dead – famously “shit bombed” Marrogi, using a tomato sauce bottle to spray faeces and urine into Marrogi’s signature bushy facial hair – leading to the prison nickname “Shitbeard”.
The other “friendly” inmate, who wasn’t named in court, is likely to be an underworld killer.
Prison sources say the man was offered $1 million to take out Marrogi. He refused.
“He was told: ‘Hang the c--t and you’ll get a million dollars for your family.’ He was like: ‘Nah, mate, he’s my mate,’” a prison source unauthorised to speak publicly said.
Two steps forward, three steps back?
Justice Harris is yet to make a decision in the case. The hearings will continue in October.
But there are questions about whether Marrogi really has changed.
On Friday, the Herald Sun reported that a contraband mobile phone had been found in his cell at the same time he was attending the hearings last week.
Corrections Victoria declined to comment on the circumstances of an individual prisoner but said a “a number of contraband items” had been found at the prison.
Marrogi’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.
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