Who's who of Melbourne's underworld scramble to overturn convictions as the 'Lawyer X' super-snitch scandal threatens to explode - here's who could walk free next

It was an unusually warm September when police first knocked on the door of up-and-coming criminal lawyer Nicola Gobbo. 

Detectives had no real interest in Gobbo that day in 1993. 

They had come with a warrant to search the property she shared with her de facto partner, Brian Wilson. 

Tony Mokbel is hoping to be released from jail. He was represented by Lawyer X, Nicola Gobbo  

Melbourne gangland identity Faruk Orman walked free after having his murder conviction overturned because of the Lawyer X scandal

The plain clothed officers weren't surprised to find drugs there. 

They couldn't have imagined Gobbo herself would later plead up to possession and use of cannabis and amphetamines. 

Gobbo was the niece of former Victorian Governor and Supreme Court Judge Sir James Gobbo. 

She had come from legal royalty - her cousin is a QC and her sister, Catherine, a commercial lawyer. 

Her arrest would change the course of Australian legal history 27 years later and place the title 'Lawyer X' firmly in history books. 

Gobbo worked both sides of the law informing on her criminal clients through the 1990s all the way until 2009.  

It had begun soon after her arrest in 1993 when she was still just a young law student.

Gobbo told police that drugs were hidden in a vent in her laundry. 

She also told police her partner had been selling the dope. 

It was an act of betrayal that police learnt quickly could be exploited. 

Imagine, the power police could wield having a rat employed to keep other vermin out of jail. 

History will say it was too good to be true and now the crooks are literally walking free. 

Over the next two years, Gobbo maintained contact with Victoria Police, actively seeking out and cultivating opportunities to meet with police officers and give them information. 

In 1995, Victoria Police officers registered her as a human source, evidently because of information she had provided against her de facto. 

Nicola Gobbo worked as an informer for Victoria Police. Her involvement in snitching on her own clients has now seen one convicted killer walk free

Calabrian mob boss Pasquale ‘Pat’ Barbaro has lodged an appeal over his conviction because of Nicola Gobbo. Rob Karam is eight years into his 37-year prison sentence for several drug crimes, including his role in the Calabrian mafia's attempt to smuggle in 15 million ecstasy pills

Between 1997 and 1999, Gobbo dobbed her employer into police about alleged fraudulent activity.

A royal commission into her snitching found Gobbo was an enthusiastic dobber, who by the turn of the millennium had been registered as an informer for the second time by Victoria Police. 

Melbourne had been in the grips of a full blown gangland war at the time. 

While it made for good television 20 years later, back then it was terrifyingly in the face of ordinary Melburnians. 

Mark Moran was executed in the relative privacy of the front yard of his Aberfeldie home, but his brother Jason and dad Lewis were not so lucky. 

Jason got blasted from near point blank range while attending a kids Auskick clinic in Essendon three years later. 

His dad was drinking at The Brunswick Club Hotel with his mate when two blokes in balaclavas opened fire on them.

By the end of 2010, gangsters like Carl Williams and Tony Mokbel had become household names. 

And 36 people had been murdered.

Victoria Police’s Purana Taskforce was established to combat the violence arising from the gangland wars. 

Purana pursued a strategy of persuading people suspected of criminal activity to ‘roll’ on crooks higher up the chain in exchange for reduced sentences.

'Gobbo proved a valuable resource to achieve that end,' Commissioner Margaret McMurdo AO would find. 

Gobbo would convince her clients to clinically rat on their mates all the while keeping secret that she was in cahoots with the cops. 

Zlate Cvetanovski poses for a photograph with his lawyers outside the Supreme Court of Appeal in Melbourne in October upon his release

Commissioner Margaret McMurdo AO has slammed Victoria Police over its use of Nicola Gobbo an an informant 

By 2006, Carl Williams had put two and two together from his Barwon Prison jail cell.

He complained to anyone that would listen about her continual visits to prisoners she wasn't acting for.

In one letter to a friend, Williams said he was convinced Gobbo was getting others to 'roll'.

He would die in jail at the hands of one-time friend Matthew Johnson before ever learning he was right. 

Gobbo's interest in police went further than snitching on her clients. 

She was also bedding them. 

Victorian police officer Tim Argall admitted he had an 'episode of physical intimacy' with Gobbo two years after he signed her up as a police source.

Gobbo had gone under the code name Informer 3838 when she supposedly had relationships with a series of cops. 

Former drug detective Paul Dale claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Gobbo. 

A bugged conversation captured Gobbo telling her handlers she'd had an on-again, off-again sexual relationship with former assistant commissioner Jeff Pope. 

The tryst, Gobbo said, happened when Mr Pope was her handler in 1999, during her brief second stint as a human source. 

Mr Pope denies ever having a sexual relationship with the lawyer. 

Gobbo had claimed it was the behaviour of drug lord Tony Mokbel that drove her to snitch on her clients. 

He, like many others, is among a who's who of Melbourne criminals now clogging up Victoria's justice system for a shot at freedom. 

Just weeks ago Mokbel had a 12 year conviction quashed due to Gobbo's meddling.  

Faruk Orman is already back on the streets after having his murder conviction quashed due to Gobbo's informing. 

Nicola Gobbo could yet face criminal charges over her notorious stint as 'Lawyer X'

Underworld identity Mick Gatto, Ray Towell (friend of Lewis Moran) and Nicola Gobbo at the Flemington funeral of lawyer and ALP member Stephen Drazetic in 2008

Nicola Gobbo helped bust an attempted import of drugs in tomato tins in 2007. Those involved now hope to go free 

He had been jailed for the 2002 murder of underworld figure Victor Peirce. 

He was 25 years old when he heard the guilty verdict and spent most of his jail time in solitary confinement. 

Gobbo had been acting for Orman while working his mate against him. 

Such was her treachery she revealed Orman's defence tactics to police and kept the true nature of her involvement with Orman's mate and Victoria Police hidden from him.

Peirce, a father of four, was shot through the open window of his car with a handgun in 2002 outside a Port Melbourne supermarket. 

Orman was convicted on the basis he drove hitman Andrew 'Benji' Veniamin to Port Melbourne for the hit. 

Few mourned his death and fewer might believe Orman actually wasn't the driver that day. 

He may have been the first to go free, but he won't be the last. 

Zlate Cvetanovski spent close to a decade behind bars before his release in October. 

Like Orman, Gobbo had been working him and another snitch to ensure the alleged drug dealer got stitched up.  

Convicted drug dealers Pasquale Barbaro and Rob Karam could be the next to walk. 

Killer Carl Williams roamed the streets a free man in 2003. He would be killed years later in jail not knowing that he was dead right about his thoughts on Nicola Gobbo

A letter Carl Williams wrote from jail fearing that his lawyer, Nicola Gobbo, was a rat

Nicola Gobbo and killer Carl Williams. Williams died in jail, but not before calling out his former lawyer as a rat 

Gobbo's informing on the ‘Tomato Tins’ drug syndicate saw 32 people convicted for their part in it.

Salvatore Agresta, who was among them, was freed on bail in December by Victoria's Court of Appeal.  

Mokbel, who famously fled to Greece after being charged with drug offences, may yet walk from jail a free man too. 

The ramifications of Gobbo's actions with Victoria Police will clog both criminal and civil justice systems for years to come. 

Victoria Police has spent at least $64 million in managing and attempting to cover up the scandal - not including the $2.88 million it paid Gobbo in a secret compensation settlement in 2010. 

Commissioner McMurdo was scathing in her assessment of Gobbo and Victoria Police and has called on an independent body to look at pressing charges. 

'It was also inexcusable. Her breach of her obligations as a lawyer has undermined the administration of justice, compromised criminal convictions, damaged the standing of Victoria Police and the legal profession, and shaken public trust and confidence in Victoria’s criminal justice system,' she said.