A gambling high roller and suspected underworld criminal infamous for wagering more than $90 million at Australian casinos has been gunned down in a Sydney street while awaiting trial in Melbourne.
Peter Tan Hoang, 36, was shot dead on Dunmore Street at Croydon Park in Sydney in the early hours of Sunday.
Shot dead: Peter Hoang outside court in Melbourne in April.Credit: Ken Irwin
Paramedics tried to save him after he was found on the footpath outside a house but he died at the scene.
Mr Hoang, an orphaned Vietnamese refugee turned professional gambler, was a suspected underworld gambling figure.
He was regarded as a "dead-set gambler" who was known to frequent not only Australia's major casinos but also illegal gaming houses.
He also went by the name Peter Minh Nguyen, police said.
He was arrested at Melbourne's Crown Casino carrying $1.5 million in cash in 2012 - alleged to have been the proceeds of crime - and was due to stand trial in Melbourne in August next year.
He had pleaded not guilty to one charge of possessing the proceeds of crime, which attracted a maximum of three years in jail.
At his committal hearing, Jennifer Nguyen, an executive host at Crown's exclusive Mahogany Room, said Mr Hoang was one of the casino's "high-valued customers" and one of its "best patrons" from Sydney.
The court also heard Mr Hoang regularly left the casino with large sums of cash, including one occasion where he left with $1 million in cash after a $13 million gambling session.
On another occasion he left with $2.3 million in cash.
At a hearing in April, the Melbourne Magistrates Court heard that Mr Hoang lost nearly $8 million at Crown Casino in 12 years, and had claimed more than $50,000 in government benefits between 2001 and 2007.
He told police his only jobs had been waiting on tables and working as a salesman for Telstra.
At the hearing, prosecutor Andrew Buckland told the court Mr Hoang had not lodged a tax return during the 12-year period and "apart from the gambling referred to, he has no other legitimate source of income".
His barrister David Grace, QC, said his client's finances were explained by his professional gambling, telling the court Mr Hoang had a gambling turnover of $90 million in the five years before his arrest.
"This man is a gambler and that's what he does and how he survived," Mr Grace said.
He said Mr Hoang had won more than $2.5 million at Adelaide's Sky City casino earlier in the year, and had won more than $600,000 through two Tattslotto draws in 2013.
Magistrate Susie Cameron refused to return Mr Hoang's passport and rejected his request to travel to Vietnam to visit his foster parents, declaring him a flight risk.
Ms Cameron accepted there was a likelihood Mr Hoang, who had travelled to Vietnam at least 12 times since 2000, would not return for his contested committal hearing in June if he was permitted to leave the country.
He had no family ties in Australia.
Mr Hoang was seen leaving a McDonald's outlet shortly before he was shot. He was "well known to the police for organised crime-related activities", a detective close to the case said.
Police were keen to speak to anyone who saw Mr Hoang at the McDonald's on the corner of Georges River Road and Dunmore Street just before 1.30am.
He was seen driving there in a black Nissan Skyline.
Police were also trying to track down the driver of a small, silver hatchback with a rear spoiler that was seen about the same time as his death.
Mr Hoang's solicitor David Laschko told Fairfax Media on Wednesday that the prosecution had not alleged "any specific evidence" of his client being involved in "any related crime or links to organised crime".
- with Steve Butcher, Emma Partridge