The secret signals start as soon as the magistrate leaves the bench.
It begins with a prisoner holding up a hastily scratched out message on a piece of paper so it can be seen on the video link: “[Name redacted] is in same area as you.”
In a prison video room across the city, a thumbs-up is raised in response, with the hand of his associate moving to make a sweeping gesture from his shoulder.
The courtroom is oblivious to what is occurring on the screens, the lawyers in a little huddle discussing the case during the break and the police informant facing away.
The message, whatever it is, has been received. The note now destroyed, the sender makes a sign with two interlocked fingers held up to his face.
It’s the opening gambit in what will be a multi-day conversation conducted only through hand signals, gestures and mouthed words between two members of the same street crew locked in prisons 25 kilometres apart.
Both have beamed in on video links for a joint hearing on a spate of violent crimes connected in part to the state’s “tobacco war”.
The duo is part of a four-man crew accused of staging the kidnapping of a tobacco shop owner, a home invasion to steal a stockpile of firearms, and making threats to kill. They even allegedly planted GPS trackers on their target’s cars before launching their missions.
The accused on the screens likely haven’t seen each other in person since both were arrested in August 2025.
What is being said is a complete mystery to justice authorities. Police and prison sources, who cannot be identified publicly, say they simply can’t translate this bespoke sign language.
Each time the court goes out of session, over multiple days, the conversations continue. Some last nearly three minutes.
This is not Auslan, the Australian Sign Language used by the deaf community, according to an expert who reviewed some of the signs documented by The Age.
Corrections Victoria also does not offer Auslan courses in prison.
This is a customised, one-off language.
“The sign language becomes part of the crew, so they’re all on the same page. They generally do that sort of shit if they think they’ve been bugged or, you know, watched or listened to,” said a former organised crime figure and inmate in some of the state’s most high security prisons.
“It just looks sophisticated because you haven’t seen it before. Everyone’s got their signs on what this sign means and what that sign means among each crew.”
“One might put three fingers up instead of two fingers and a thumb for the same thing. And people think, ‘What the f---’s that?’ But no one knows but me and you, basically.”
Occasionally, there is a gesture that seems recognisable – a hand making a gun, like a child would; a stabbing motion; a sign to make a phone call.
At one point, there is clearly an order from one crew member to another to stop talking about a particular subject involving signs of guns: a finger pointed at the livestream and then a zip-your-lips motion.
But otherwise, the meaning is a mystery.
Eventually, the conversation becomes so animated that those in the courtroom notice, with a lawyer turning on the audio to warn their client.
“Everybody can see your link. Everyone in the court can see it. Anybody online can see it,” the lawyer says.
The signing stops, but only temporarily. The entire “conversation” is also conducted under the sight lines of prison CCTV systems inside the video conference rooms.
Meanwhile, across the legal district, two teenagers accused of committing a home invasion, kidnapping and torture connected to Melbourne’s so-called bar wars hold a sign language discussion of their own via video links into the Childrens’ Court. It, too, is indecipherable.
The underworld and prison system are rife with these bespoke sign language systems, a way for criminals to communicate in code under the noses of authorities and blanket CCTV coverage, underworld and police sources say.
It happens on court video links, between inmates in different yards, during prison visits and on the street, anywhere tightly-knit crews need to be vigilant about surveillance but need to communicate.
Organised crime investigators say it’s almost impossible to get a handle on what’s being said when there is no common dictionary of signs to refer to.
And it’s been going on for a long time among the top echelons of Melbourne’s organised crime world.
In 2017, prison authorities recorded a visit between then-jailed gangland figure Kazem “Kaz” Hamad and his brother Maytham Hamad after a murder that implicated several members of their crew. None were convicted of the crime.
Authorities could never make sense of the covert conversations, which were also even a mystery to one criminal associate who tagged along on the prison visits, but wasn’t a true insider.
“In every single visit when they talk, it’s not like plain normal English, it’s more like, you know, gestures, you know, they use code. Like every person has got a different type of name,” the associate would later testify in court proceedings, after becoming a prosecution witness.
“They throw signs to each other and they’ve understood it between each other, they pick it up. I didn’t know what they were talking about half the time and I just kind of played along.”
Other professional criminals have used signs and code words to conceal the content of discussions in the outside world when worried about police surveillance from audio and video bugs.
Calabrian Mafia-linked figure Rocco Arico used to hold “walk and talks” when he wanted to discuss business – a stroll in the streets outside the range of any law enforcement recording device.
Even here, Arico was cautious about saying certain words. Gestures were used, instead, like pointing to your nose to signify cocaine, an eye for ice, or using a car key to denote a kilogram of a drug.
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