One of Australia's most notorious criminals was in a maximum-security prison after being jailed for murder when he organised for gunmen to open fire on a Melbourne house over a $45,000 drug debt, a court has heard.

Extraordinary evidence from intercepted phone calls has been given in the County Court about the involvement of Bassam Hamzy – founder of vicious Sydney street gang Brothers 4 Life – in the drive-by shooting of a house in Meadow Heights.

Bassam Hamzy.

Hamzy was jailed for life in 2002 for the shooting murder of Kris Toumazis at a Sydney nightclub in 1998 and was also convicted for conspiring to murder a witness due to give evidence against him.

He was serving his sentence at the Lithgow maximum-security prison in New South Wales when it was discovered in 2008 that he had been using an illegal mobile phone to make more than 400 calls a day to run a $250,000-a-week drug ring, arrange kidnappings and co-ordinate the Brothers 4 Life gang. Hamzy has since been moved to Goulburn's Supermax jail.