Murray Stewart Riley (5 October 1925 – 2020) was an Australian Olympic rowing athlete, who, after leaving a career as a police officer, gained notoriety as a criminal.

He was implicated in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal and associated with leading figures in the American Mafia, including Jimmy Fratianno of the Los Angeles crime family and corrupt Teamsters official Michael Rudy Tham.

[2][3] Riley participated in the double scull (rowing) events at the Empire Games with Merv Wood, who later became NSW police commissioner, in 1950 and 1954, winning gold for Australia.

[7] By the early 1950s, Riley was associating with members of criminal networks, including poker machine distributor Ray Smith and Sydney gangster Lennie McPherson.

[7] Riley was awarded the Queen's Commendation for Brave Conduct[9] and rose to the rank of Detective Sergeant,[10] but he was subject to disciplinary charges when he took "a communication to a person in gaol".

[13] In 1962, Riley entered the poker machine and club industry as a manager for Ray Smith, later moving to work for, and then partnering with, Wally Dean.

[15] In 1966, NSW policeman John Wesley Egan initiated the "corset gang", the first organised heroin trafficking operation from South-East Asia into Australia and the United States.

[16] It is suggested that Riley and Henry Brian (Harry) Ikin were among the former or serving police officers who participated in the operation, often using fraudulently obtained passports.

[21] Riley and Michael Moylan began to have frequent meetings with the American mobster, James Fratianno and subsequently carried out at least thirty successful importations from America into Australia.

Their enterprise used female croupiers employed at Sydney's illegal casino, the "Double Bay Bridge Club", to courier drugs concealed in their corsets.

[24] In Sydney, Riley formed separate business relationships with Fratianno's former associate George Countis and Harry Sayvanus Wainwright, a fugitive American lawyer, both of whom had settled in Australia in the late 1960s.

[26] Riley's Hong Kong partner was John Doyle, who had connections with senior Triad members linked to the drug markets in Manila, Singapore and Thailand.

[29] Harry Wainwright maintained a $30,000 float with Nugan Hand with instructions that Murray Riley and fellow drug smuggler, Ken Derley, had use of his money.

[30] Hand transferred a total of $295,000 to Hong Kong for the benefit of Riley, who used subordinates to smuggle heroin consignments, much of it destined for the Australian market.

Riley had earlier planned to smuggle 4.5 tonnes of top grade cannabis from Thailand to Australia aboard the fishing vessel Choryo Maru.

[36] Soon after his release, Riley began collaborating with gunman Arthur Stanley (Neddy) Smith and pilot Peter David Johnstone to fly about 50 kilograms of heroin from Papua New Guinea for distribution in Australia.

In October 1990, Riley and Jonathan Nicholas Gould were arrested in Britain and charged with conspiring to defraud British Aerospace PLC of £40,000,000 by way of computer fraud.