Bullet-holed body of slain motorcycle gang leader Richard Roberts.

Bullet-holed body of slain motorcycle gang leader Richard Roberts. Australia's motorcycle gangs are at war and police in the national capital are out in the streets making sure vengeance is left to another day.

'He was a hard-working man, a heart of gold. He was respected by many people,' Rebels Motorcycle Club national president Alex Vella said at the funeral of the convicted drug dealer.

Killings, fire-bombings and drive-by shootings have led state governments to promise legislation making the Rebels and other gangs illegal. Roberts, whose flag-draped coffin was followed by 300 motorcycles, may be the last to get a big send-off from his mates. 'Your days are up. It's finished,' declared New South Wales state Premier Nathan Rees. 'We'll move whatever laws we need to stop it occurring.' Leaders in other jurisdictions have pledged to follow suit, fearing that a crackdown in one state will see the hoodlums setting up somewhere else.
Ross Coulthart, who has written extensively about gangs, welcomes a change in the public perception of motorcycle gangs. Gone is the notion that members are unreconstructed Anglo-Saxon males who hold down jobs during the week and like drinking and getting into fights at the weekend. The reality now is that some motorcycle clubs are criminal gangs and that the sometimes deadly skirmishing is over control of the drug trade. 'Much of the present bikie wars is a simple battle for dominance between gangs, sparked by the entrance onto the local drug-dealing scene of a self-styled Middle Eastern bikie gang calling itself Notorious,' Coulthart wrote. Australian Crime Commission head John Lawler has spoken of the difficulty of taking on motorcycle gangs. A vow of silence means those dragged in for questioning opt to be charged for obstructing police rather than give evidence. There is terrible retribution for those who break ranks. 'They are quasi-military groups who depend on strong bonds of internal trust and honour, which is what makes them so hard for police to counter,' says Duncan McNab, author of a book on the Bandidos club. In the past, the clubs themselves kept each other in line. But the big money to be had in drug dealing has led to defections and the formation of clubs where the focus is amphetamines, not Harley Davidsons, and where money-laundering is what's important rather than weekends away. Many, perhaps most members of motorcycle gangs, still maintain they are law-abiding citizens who join for the camaraderie, the joy of riding bikes and the fun to be had in patches and leather. Yet many of those who claim to abhor drugs and violence were in Canberra to pay tribute to Roberts, who had just served seven years on drug offences and was up on an assault charge when he was shot dead.

Notorious club president Allan Sarkis was arrested last week and charged with possessing drugs. He denies he's the head of a crime gang and denies dealing in drugs. 'We don't want to be portrayed to the public as we've been,' Sarkis said. 'We want to be acknowledged and respected as a motorcycle club, not as gangsters.'

Criminologists question whether Rees and other state leaders have the stomach to take on motorcycle gangs. They note that anti-gang laws on the books since 1929 are not being used for fear of touching off an all-out war. Monash University's Professor Arthur Veno is the pre-eminent authority on Australia's motorcycle gangs. He see the solution not in a police crackdown but in club leaders meeting together to thrash out their differences.

Peter Zervas, 32, underwent emergency surgery after being shot in the right shoulder, hip, foot and chest as the Hells Angel motorcycle gang member sa

Peter Zervas, 32, underwent emergency surgery after being shot in the right shoulder, hip, foot and chest as the Hells Angel motorcycle gang member sat in his car in the driveway of his Lakemba unit about 11.30pm (AEDT) on Sunday.Hells Angel bikie gunned down outside his home may have been a key witness to the Sydney airport bashing murder of his brother, but a Comancheros lawyer says that doesn't mean the Comancheros shot him.An unidentified man with shoulder-length dark hair was seen running from the scene."It is an extraordinary level of violence (for) someone to be shot in their driveway, in their car," Superintendent Peter Lennon of Campsie police told reporters."He's very lucky to be alive."It is the latest incident in an escalation of bikie violence that has prompted the formation of a 75-strong police taskforce and plans for tough new anti-association laws targeting gang members. Zervas was in a stable condition in Sydney's St George Hospital on Monday, with his parents and senior Hells Angels - including president Derek Wainohu - spending time at his bedside.Supt Lennon said officers had already spoken to the victim, whom they have not publicly named, and they expected that he and his family would cooperate.He would not be drawn on whether the victim had been offered protection prior to the shooting, but in Sydney's Central Local Court on Monday police indicated he "may have been a potential witness" in the affray case against five members of the Comancheros, a rival outlaw motorcycle gang.The Comancheros and Hells Angels clashed violently at Sydney airport on March 22 in front of hundreds of passengers, leaving 29-year-old Anthony Zervas with "blunt force and sharp force injuries" that proved fatal.Peter Zervas was with his brother as he died. His family buried him on Friday in a funeral attended also by Bandidos gang members.

"Every person is going to think logically that the number one suspect (in the shooting) is somebody said to be associated with the Comancheros," the gang's barrister John Korn said.

But he said he was sure every police officer "who has turned his mind to the matter, would also conclude that there are other people, other groups, who would have a significant in the matter as well"."The president of the Comancheros wants peace and somebody takes action to ensure that can't happen - doesn't that seem to you slightly incongruous?" he asked of reporters.Mr Korn was speaking outside Sydney's Central Local Court after a bail application for Christian Menzies was adjourned until Wednesday.
Menzies, 26, of Matraville, on Friday became the fifth Comanchero refused bail on an affray charge following the airport brawl.The shooting is the third attack on the Hells Angels in two months, taking into account the airport brawl and the February 4 bombing of the Hells Angel's Petersham clubhouse.NSW Premier Nathan Rees was meeting on Monday with his cabinet to discuss planned laws allowing police to prohibit bikies associating with each other.Applications would have to be made in the Supreme Court and would not need to be based on known criminal behaviour.

Gold Coast Bikie invasion

Bikie numbers on the Gold Coast could dramatically swell if proposed tough new laws to ban them are passed in NSW.A leading criminologist has warned that passing such laws in the southern state could see a surge of the outlaw gangs move across the border where they were legally allowed to operate.University of Queensland organised crime expert Dr Andreas Schloenhardt also said banning the gangs would magnify the problems as clubs went underground.
He said he strongly believed NSW's push for jail terms of two to five years for bikie gang members caught associating with one another after the gang was banned would not work.A Supreme Court judge would decide the fate of the outlaw clubs and if they should be banned.
The fatal brawl between rival gangs the Hell Angels and the Comancheros in Sydney last Sunday prompted the proposal to change the legislation.

Bikie war has never stopped.

Bikie war has never stopped. Since the Milperra massacre in Sydney a quarter of a century ago, it has seethed in the underworld of our main cities, with only a few dumped corpses and bombings occasionally surfacing in the news pages. This is also not the first time bikies have brawled on our streets. In one celebrated clash a few years back, two bikie gangs slugged it out on the steps of the Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney as police and court officials watched on. bikie culture has changed dramatically from the old romantic notion of bikers as big-hearted, big drinking Harley-Davidson lovers who do the odd charity drive for children's hospitals and enjoy the odd bit of biff. While there are still a few of the old-guard bikers who stay away from crime, he says bikie gangs have morphed into highly sophisticated fronts for organised crime and the violent clashes being waged between them for dominance are likely to get worse.

"It's a new violence," he says.
"In the old days the rule was: 'Never at work, never at home, never in front of women and children.' "Nowadays they don't give a shit. They will do it anywhere."

Much was made this week of how the president of the Comancheros bikie gang, Mick Hawi, had banned all his members from wearing their distinctive gang colours or patches or riding their bikes.
This was spun as a conciliatory gesture to ease public fears.
But in the outlaw motorcycle gang fraternity, another explanation was circulating. Talk was that members of the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang had issued a "shoot to kill" order on any Comancheros. "This is a declaration of war," the gang insider says. "All other gang members have been told to keep their heads down or face the consequences." Much of the present bikie wars is a simple battle for dominance between gangs, sparked partly by the entrance on to the local drug dealing scene of a self-styled Middle Eastern bikie gang calling itself Notorious. One factor fuelling this conflict is racial anger among traditional bikies at the "Leb boys" muscling in on their patch. But, as always, it is mostly about the money. As Sunday Night revealed a few weeks ago (despite government claims the trade was now impossible) bikies are still buying huge quantities of over-the-counter cough medicines containing pseudoephedrine and turning them into hugely lucrative speed or ice.

A former methamphetamine cook, Stevan Utah, now on the run from the Bandidos, told how $1000 of cough medicine could earn up to $250,000 "deal for deal" on the street.

Now Notorious wants a piece of the action that bikie gangs have been quietly controlling for years because the money to be made is huge.
"I've been in houses where every room is full of money wrapped up in bundles," the gang insider tells Sunday Night. "They couldn't move it. They need laundromats for the money." The view among the traditional bikie gang fraternity is that Notorious is not a genuine motorcycle gang at all but a criminal gang that is using the brand value of being a bikie gang to add cachet and fear to their efforts to muscle in on to the Sydney drug scene. They have even created their own patch and its publication in one Sydney newspaper served only to enhance the desired feared reputation. What Notorious has learned is what bikie gangs in Australia have known for years: police are reluctant to confront bikies.
"The cops are scared of them," the gang insider says. "They have lost control. Gang members are caught with guns, drugs or shooting people, and they get a bit of community service. It's a pussyfoot approach. Anybody else would get the book thrown at them but these guys get away with it." This week, one self-styled gang expert proclaimed that police and politicians should bring gang leaders together to broker a peace before a feud escalates. The same academic also naively suggested in the pages of another Sydney newspaper that outlaw motorcycle gangs "perform an invaluable social service by keeping some ofthe most disturbed and unstable members of society in check through rigid internal structures".

Gang insiders laugh at such claims. They say that to dignify the gangs' inflated sense of their own importance by brokering some implicit peace deal through them is precisely what is wrong with present policing approaches. Whatever any gang leader ever told the police, he would do anything to stay dominant. And even if gangs are banned by the proposed new laws, the killings will continue on behind the scenes as they have done for decades. The only way to nip the gangs in the bud is to harass their control of the drugs trade with the sort of anti-racketeering laws used in the US that target the money that drives the crime. One of the reasons Notorious's entrance on to the bikie scene is so threatening is because, as the money rolls in, they are wooing Middle Eastern gang members from other gangs, such as the Hell's Angels, Comancheros and Bandidos.

This is a direct threat to the institutional control of the main gangs because most "full-patched" gang members know too much about the gang's dealer network and protection rackets to be allowed to leave. To be inside the gang is all too often to be privy to a major criminal enterprise. "Nobody can walk away," the gang insider says. "You can retire or step back but never walk away. If they go to another club, they give all the club secrets away, all the areas they deal. Many of the shootings in recent weeks are a case of: 'You steal our f--ing drugs and this is what happens."'

Anzac Day is traditionally a big day on the bikie calendar and this year it is likely to be a flashpoint for further violence. The speculation is that the Hell's Angels will not brook anything less than complete capitulation by the Comancheros as a sub-club of the Angels. Anything else would be bad for business.

Tony Sobey local president of the Gypsy Jokers is a keeper of secrets

Tony Sobey.The former bikie gang leader bought the lemon-coloured split-level in 2002 for $383,000 and settled in with wife Tracey and the kids. The family has now moved out after the property sold last month for $880,000. Skye is a preserve of quiet privilege in the Adelaide foothills, which would have suited Sobey down to the ground. He has come a long way since he was local president of the Gypsy Jokers, one of the country's most notorious outlaw motorcycle outfits, and a target of the crackdown in South Australia that gained national traction this week after the rampage by bikies through Sydney Airport left 29-year-old Hells Angels associate Anthony Zervas dead. Sobey is a keeper of secrets. His leathers to riches story is a case study in how bikies, far from being marginalised by anti-social gang behaviour, have prospered. If South Australian Police Commissioner Mal Hyde gets his way, Sobey and others prominent in bikie circles may have some explaining to do. Mr Hyde says the state police are seeking additional powers to make bikies and ex-bikies account for "unexplained wealth". "Everyone knows the person who doesn't work and has a two-storey mansion in the street, and everyone wonders what in the world this guy does for an income," Mr Hyde told The Weekend Australian. "So one of the things we are looking at is ... unexplained wealth. What that means, basically, is if a criminal has more wealth then their income would allow, they have to explain where it came from ... if you can't show you legitimately acquired it, then you lose it." The idea, Mr Hyde said, was to disrupt the business of being a bikie. Nationally, there are about 4000 bikie gang members. Their illegal dealings are said to run to drugs -- especially amphetamines -- stolen cars, prostitution and extortion. The proceeds have been laundered through legitimately-established front companies. "There is no single answer here in terms of what you do to deal with them," Mr Hyde said. "What you have to do is really think about them being in business ... and how you actually deal with disabling or disrupting that business."

Determining exactly what Sobey, 53, does for a living is certainly a challenge. One former neighbour in Skye was surprised he drove a top-of-the-range Mercedes when he had "no obvious form of employment".

Company records show Sobey is the director of a number of companies, some of which are now in the throes of being liquidated. The name of one of them, Simple Loan Pty Ltd, gives away a line of business he has been into. Sobey told the Federal Court in 2006 he was collecting commissions on $7 million in funds from other investors he had directed into a seemingly high-yield scheme run by Adelaide businessman Giuseppe Mercorella, which was in fact a giant pyramid scam. The initially juicy returns were coming from new investors, not investment income. By the time Mercorella's house of cards came tumbling down in 2005 Sobey said he had also pumped in $2million of his own cash. All up, an estimated $94 million in investors' funds went down with the fraudster, who was jailed for five years. There is no indication in corporate or court records of impropriety concerning Simple Loan, and The Weekend Australian does not suggest this was the case. But asked in the Federal Court, as part of an examination by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission into the Mercorella debacle, to detail where he had obtained the $2 million he sank into the investment scheme, Sobey said in February 2006 he could not recall details of his numerous business dealings. Pressed on the point, he said he earned money from share trading, gambling on horses and the commission he had received on putting other investors into the Mercorella scheme. The 4 per cent per month Mercorella returned, before the fund went bust, was "average" compared to what he could have earned lending money, Sobey said. Another area of known interest for bikies is the nightclub scene, and Sobey was into that, too. In March 2006, the Licensing Court of South Australia found he had part of deal involving "deliberate flouting" of licensing laws for a Adelaide nightclub called Heaven. District Court judge Paul Rice described how Sobey and another former Gypsy Joker, convicted Melbourne cocaine dealer Paul Pavlovski, effectively took control of the nightclub from licensee John Richard Pike through a corporate play. Pike had started associating with Sobey in November 2002, about six months after the latter had moved up to Skye. In 2004, Pike restructured his company, Adelaide City Entertainment Pty Ltd. Sobey's company, Sobey Pty Ltd, was issued 10 per cent of the holding shares. Pike later complained that the deal was "forced upon him" by Pavlovski, landlord of the hotel in which the club operated. He and Sobey often turned up at the hotel together, Pike told the Licensing Court. For two years, Pavlovski skimmed $5000 a week in cash from the club, money he had "no right to take", the court found. While Sobey had set his wife up as sole director and shareholder of Sobey Pty Ltd, there was no doubt who had control. "Mrs Sobey was, in reality, no more than a front for Mr Sobey and the Gypsy Jokers," the judge found. Judge Rice said it was open to infer that Pike, in knowing "Sobey was involved with the Gypsy Jokers Club ... was allowing and permitting an element of organised crime to infiltrate the ownership and management" of the nightclub. Pike was declared unfit to hold a liquor licence, and the nightclub folded. It has since reopened with a new name and under new management. In a sense, the Licensing Court proceedings marked a turning point for Sobey, who was well acquainted with the courts in Adelaide. In 2002, he had been charged with possessing a controlled substance, but the case was dropped by the prosecution within months. Two years later, he was charged with intentionally making a false statement and importing prohibited goods. After the false statement count was withdrawn, he pleaded guilty to the importation charge, and was fined $2000. In 2005, he was charged with a minor assault charge, but this prosecution was discontinued in 2007. By then, Sobey had other problems. He was fighting legal battles on a number of fronts. Having claimed security of $17.4 million over what was left of Mercorella's assets, Sobey was hit with a bill from the Taxation Office of $1,519,607.87 for unpaid income tax and interest, mainly on the commission and interest he had earned from the pyramid scheme ahead of its implosion. Sobey decided to wheel in the heavy legal artillery, and engaged top-drawer Melbourne barrister, Peter Hayes QC, to prosecute his claim to the Mercorella assets. The two men evidently hit it off personally. Hayes flew to Adelaide on May 10, 2007, for a hearing in the Federal Court; that night, he had dinner at Skye with Sobey, Tracey and their six children. Next morning, after Hayes failed to meet him as arranged, Sobey found the lawyer unconscious in his hotel room. Hayes had overdosed on a cocktail of illegal drugs allegedly provided by one of a number of prostitutes who were in his room; nearly two years on, the South Australian coroner is still weighing whether to order an inquest into his death, according to the state's Courts Administration Authority. Sobey, meanwhile, has dropped his claim over the Mercorella assets in what has been described as a "favourable" settlement with the scheme's liquidators. He remains in dispute with the tax office, which issued a bankruptcy notice in the Federal Court against him in 2007. The bankruptcy notice has since been set aside by consent and Sobey is now challenging the assessment of his income.

200 arrests frozen more than $10 million in bikie gang assets

200 arrests frozen more than $10 million in bikie gang assets since being formed in late 2007 when the Coffin Cheaters’ Bayswater clubhouse was firebombed by the powerful Sydney-based Comancheros.
“Having read the review, I will be putting together a proposal to the Police Commissioner for Jupiter to be a fixture in the fight against outlaw motorcycle gangs in WA,” Assistant Commissioner Wayne Gregson said. “But I won’t elaborate further because I don’t want to compromise the operational integrity of what we’re doing right now.” Mr Gregson yesterday praised the success of Jupiter but after this week’s bloodshed in NSW and Canberra warned the “bikie scourge” was as potent as ever. “These groups continue to trade in illicit markets and will adapt and change,” he said. “Our focus is to dismantle and disrupt them or stop them from further establishing themselves in WA.” The most notable shift in the WA bikie landscape came last year when members of the South Australian Finks crossed the border to set up shop under an arrangement with ousted Coffin Cheater Troy Mercanti. It was met with a quick response. Shots were fired as part of an ambush while Mercanti and three Finks rode near the Lakes Roadhouse in Wooroloo. One of the four men was hit in the shoulder but the shooter has never been found. Despite Mercanti’s jailing in December for a nightclub assault, the ties between him and the gang appear close. Finks members and associates share a house in Olney Court, Balga, which was bought in July last year by Mercanti’s wife Tammy for $335,000.
A month earlier, a company was registered by Mrs Mercanti and a relative of senior Finks bikie Francesco Condo. Its name — Mercondo Investments — is testament to the union.

The Finks are under threat in South Australia after the State Government took its first steps under tough new legislation to outlaw the gang

. “It is important that we use the most effective law enforcement and legislative powers we can to tackle the gangs head on,” Mr Gregson said. “But in regards to what’s happening in South Australia, these are matters for our Parliament to debate.” Crime confiscation laws in WA have so far provided the best weapon against the bikie networks — seizing assets from drug dealers and tying them up in protracted court cases. “Operation Jupiter has given us an improved picture of the level and structure of criminality within these groups — their businesses and shelf companies,” Mr Gregson said. “We’ll continue to build on that.”

Gerald (Skinny) Ward was found guilty of directing the commission of a criminal offence for the benefit of a criminal organization.

Senior member of the Hells Angels get nine years in prison for ordering associates to deal cocaine.Gerald (Skinny) Ward was found guilty of directing the commission of a criminal offence for the benefit of a criminal organization.The 61-year-old founding member of the Niagara Hells Angels chapter had pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking and possessing the proceeds of crime.Court heard Ward directed five other members and associates of the Hells Angels to deliver four kilograms of high-grade cocaine to a former member of the Oshawa chapter of the gang who became a police agent.Justice John McMahon says Ward was clearly behind the drug transactions.
McMahon said 14 years is an appropriate sentence for Ward, but credited Ward with five years already served in prison since his arrest in September 2006.