Bodyguards for billionaires: Inside the secret world

There is a select group of products, such as executive jets, super yachts and Renaissance paintings, that are so expensive that if you need to ask the price you can’t afford it.

In Melbourne, there is a security service that never advertises and if you try to find a staff list you are wasting your time. This group can only be contacted by word of mouth. While they are expensive, their clients are not usually millionaires. They are billionaires.

The staff don’t put their CVs on LinkedIn. There is no need. They are former Special Operations Group police and ex-commando or SAS members.

Graeme Thorne’s body was found six weeks laterCredit: Fairfax Media

The clients are usually the newest of new-money moguls. Young men who have made fortunes through cryptocurrency, online gaming and social media platforms.

The money may be new, but the crime is old – kidnap. Find someone rich, steal a loved one then demand a ransom.

One of the most infamous crimes in Australia was the 1960 abduction and murder of Graeme Thorne in Sydney taken as he walked to his school in Bondi.

His parents had won the £100,000 first prize in the Opera House Lottery. The winners’ names and address were published in the newspapers.

Failed insurance salesman Stephen Bradley demanded £25,000 pounds or the boy would be fed to the sharks. Thorne’s body was found in a scrub-covered block six weeks later and Bradley was convicted of the murder.

In July Australian billionaire crypto casino operator Tim Heath fought off kidnappers who tried to grab him at his Estonia home.

They posed as painters and decorators to gain access and planned to take him to a remote safe house until a ransom was paid.

Elite security is no longer about standing around in tight-fitting skivvies looking tough. It is a science and a difficult one in today’s age of social media.

The first thing our team (we will call them the Thunderbirds) does is to take a deep dive into a client’s media footprint. Can a team of kidnappers plot the movement of a target by what they find on open-source platforms?

Can cyber gangs infiltrate the business and personal internet network?

A perfect example occurred last year at a prestigious UK golf course. A wealthy Chinese businessman was playing at the Brocket Hall course in Hertfordshire when he was dragged into a car by a gang of five armed men who kept him in a cage for 30 hours demanding a ransom of $US15 million.

One man was arrested in London, but the rest had fled to mainland China.

In Sydney, a crypto billionaire returned to China after an associate was abducted and tortured, including having his teeth first loosened with a handgun and then removed with pliers. The asking price for his return was $5 million.

Elite sports figures, particularly UK Premier League soccer players, have been the target of repeat burglaries as their home addresses can be determined by online clues. One player’s father was abducted in South America while he was playing in London.

According to UK specialists Security and Safety Solutions, “social media platforms allow players to share glimpses of their daily lives, enabling criminals to deduce when a player might be away for matches or events.

“The societal pressure to showcase prosperity fuels the cycle, as players may feel obligated to maintain an image of affluence to appease fans, sponsors, and even their peers. This need to meet perceived expectations exacerbates the vulnerability of footballers to burglaries and robberies.”

Top-end security firms electronically monitor properties around the world from one site, 24 hours a day. The Thunderbirds have a counter-surveillance capacity, as kidnap gangs usually follow their targets before striking.

Elite security is not just about making sure nothing goes wrong but fixing it when it does.

Elite security is not just about making sure nothing goes wrong but fixing it when it does.

The Thunderbirds can fly around the world to monitor a kidnapping and liaise with local authorities to pay the ransom and/or rescue the victim. Recently, they flew to France on a mopping-up operation after a hostage had been rescued.

The military anti-terror background of the Thunderbirds is increasingly valuable as some of the kidnap gangs have the same training.

Gangs of former police and soldiers have been found operating in South America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Why are the crooks keen on crypto kings? First is accessibility: the targets are usually younger and have posted a truckload about themselves online. It’s unlikely old-school billionaires like Rupert Murdoch will post images of themselves mooring the super yacht on Instagram.

The Murdoch family tragically know the risks. In December 1969 Muriel McKay, the wife of a News Limited executive, was abducted from her Wimbledon home when she was mistaken for Murdoch’s then wife Anna. Her body was never found.

Weeks after she went missing, police search a farmhouse in Hertfordshire in 1970 for Muriel McKay.Credit: Press Association Photos

Second is the currency: These days cyber funds can be transferred anywhere in the world instantly while money in a bank can take days, be blocked by the financial institutions and leave a vapour trail.

Crypto can be sent to sites known as mixers, where dirty money and clean cash is, you guessed it, mixed.

One security expert says there is a little of “keeping up with the Joneses,” about top-end personal protection, and while there was a growing issue in Europe there were few kidnappings in Australia.

“Those who need personal protection might include celebrities, high-profile politicians, gangsters and the type of business people who make enemies,” he says.

One who employs his own service is a precious metals broker who is said to run a second business as an arms dealer.

Some cases go unreported, such as the Brighton businessman set upon by three Comanchero bikies over what appears to be a legitimate business dispute.

It is another area ripe for exploitation. Taking civil action to recover debts is protracted and costly. Bikies can take over the debts and their recovery process is less subtle and more direct.

For police there is THASM – Threats Against Serving Members – where police may be permitted to carry a firearm off-duty, receive a home security upgrade or, in some cases, be placed under armed guard.

In the judiciary it is not organised crime but Family Court cases that are considered the most dangerous. In the early 1980s four people, including a serving judge, were murdered in what became known as the Family Court attacks.

Family Court judge Richard Gee’s home in Sydney was bombed in 1984.

There has been an uptake in homes that have panic rooms to protect families due to the spate of home invasions.

“There wouldn’t be many homes in St George’s Road (Toorak) that wouldn’t have one,” says one security expert.

He says panic rooms vary from a fortified door on a bedroom to $500,000 purpose-built shelters that are marketed as nuclear and germ-warfare resistant, which have showers, toilets, phones and dried food storage. Security firms run drills, similar to fire drills, for families on how to get to the shelter quickly.

Some are the full James Bond, hidden behind bookcases, under stairs or double as a wine cellar.

Several experts say many Jewish families have increased security due to an increase in anti-semitism related to the Middle East crisis. Melbourne families of celebrities, who now live overseas, are known to have installed panic rooms.

In the underworld there are unreported abductions carried out on a weekly basis.

Four Hells Angels abducted a man from an Ivanhoe pub much to the surprise of fellow drinkers.

He was next seen at the Austin Hospital somewhat worse for wear, naked with a toe so badly damaged surgeons needed to amputate it. He refused to cooperate with police.

In some cases, those seeking a ransom don’t even need to produce a physical threat.

Chinese students have been contacted by gangs claiming to represent police or government agencies, claiming they are under investigation for serious crimes, and then demand a payment – or they will have their visas cancelled and be expelled from Australia.

Kanye West with Bianca Censori.Credit: Getty Images for Marni Srl

Targets were told to stage a kidnap scenario to encourage relatives to pay. They manufactured a crime scene that included broken furniture, tomato sauce used as fake blood and photos of themselves bound and gagged. The known amount extorted in one year was $6 million.

Police have intervened to protect gangsters who have threats on their lives. Purana detectives asked a court to vary bail conditions, including a curfew, for Lewis Moran, because they said if his movements were predictable he would be a sitting duck for a hit team.

The courts agreed, but Lewis didn’t, insisting on drinking at the Brunswick Club at the same time every evening – largely because he was slipped a few free beers by a friendly member of the bar staff. He was shot dead in that bar in 2004.

In 1991, the colourful Leo Censori was put under police protection when they learned a hit team planned to kill him in his garage and steal an estimated $60,000 it is believed he may have collected from gaming machines.

Leo’s daughter Bianca is now the one with the bodyguards as she is married to the controversial hip hop artist Kanye West.

While no expert on the genre (this reporter would be more likely to do a hip if he hopped), it is a matter of record that one of Mr West’s more popular tunes is called – Security.

John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.