Recorded prison calls helped take down a Warrnambool-based drug ring that sold meth and GHB to undercover police operatives. Inmate Leigh James used another prisoner's phone account to call his girlfriend Demi Nash in 2022 and discuss the sale of drugs across the south-west. Out on the street Nash and her associate were selling drugs to undercover police. When she told investigators she supplied the whole town and "they can't catch me" she was the subject of a seven-month-long police operation. James, Nash, Michael Sparrow and Kayla Smith-Brockway appeared in Warrnambool Magistrates Court on Friday, December 1, 2023. They pleaded guilty to charges, including drug trafficking and possessing the proceeds of crime. Investigators discovered dozens of recorded prison calls about the sale of drugs during a three-month period in late 2022. On October 23 that year Nash met with undercover officers in Lava Street and sold them 1.2 grams of the drug ice. She later organised further sales to the officers through Smith-Brockway. About 20 grams of ice and 50ml of GHB were sold to the officers by Smith-Brockway on November 16 and December 1. She also initiated two conversations with the officers, asking if they wanted to buy drugs but a transaction did not occur. Testing of the methamphetamine showed it was above 80 per cent purity. Police said Nash paid Smith-Brockway and her partner Sparrow to travel to Braybrook, west of Melbourne, to pick up quantities of ice and facilitate sales in the Warrnambool area. Nash had contact with the couple 2581 times in 90 days. Bank accounts show $94,193.50 of suspicious bank transactions between Nash, Sparrow and Smith-Brockway during the second-half of 2022. Further raids on Nash's five bank accounts showed there was $155,641 unaccounted for between August 9 and October 23, 2022. Nash runs a beauty business in Warrnambool but not a cent of income had been submitted to the ATO for the financial year, the court heard. Police said Nash used drug money to purchase two cars, including one she bought with $95,000 cash at a Point Cook McDonalds. Investigators later raided three properties in Raglan Parade, Lachlan Street and Morriss Road, seizing quantities of ice, knuckle dusters, a number of digital scales, nine mobile phones, a black taser, ice pipes and syringes, more than $20,000 cash, and a 2011 Holden Commodore station wagon. A fourth raid at a storage unit in Warrnambool's Strong Street uncovered a red Holden Clubsport stolen from a Morriss Road address in July 2022. Nash and James have long criminal histories involving multiple stints in jail. Nash had spent 195 days in pre-sentence detention before being bailed on November 1 to live in residential rehabilitation Odyssey House. But on Friday the court heard she had been "exited" from the program after she was caught using a mobile phone. She was living in a motel and appeared remotely in court via video-link. Magistrate Franz Holzer said he was concerned she didn't attend court in person as her crimes were of "some significance". He adjourned her and James' plea hearings until December 11. Emma Gray, representing Smith-Brockway, said her client's involvement was "limited" and she facilitated the sale of drugs four times in one month in order to fund her own drug habit. She said the woman was now drug-free. Smith-Brockway was convicted and placed on a 15-month correction order which includes treatment programs and 150 hours of unpaid community work. The magistrate said the police operation which started in April 2022 was a major Victoria Police initiative "for good reason". "That is to ensure the community is rid of the scourge that drugs create in our community," Mr Holzer said. "It has so many adverse and unwanted consequences that need to be understood. This sort of behaviour is wholly unacceptable." Sparrow is expected to be sentenced by magistrate John Bentley on December 14.