SEQ bikies: Their crimes and the gangs who own them
It’s the opposite of an honour roll. We take a look at some of our most notorious bikies, and those who say they’ve gone straight.
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It’s the opposite of an honour roll. We take a look at some of our most notorious bikies, and those who say they’ve gone straight.
WILLIAM SAMRA, COMANCHEROS
The alleged Comanchero bikie walked from court after pleading guilty in March to an affray that stemmed from a violent assault the court heard was sparked by his sister being spat on at a hip Brisbane venue.
Samra, 32, pleaded guilty in Brisbane’s Magistrates Court to one count each of affray and failing to properly dispose of a needle and syringe.
Police prosecutor Subarna Raut said two men were leaving Valley bar Maya Mexican just before 1am on December 20 when they were approached by Samra and another male.
Following a short conversation Samra’s co-defendant “without warning delivers an upper cut … causing the male’s head to snap backwards”.
The co-defendant delivered a flurry of punches to the man who then collapsed unconscious.
“The defendant’s associate leans over the male and delivers a further flurry of punches about his head area while he is unconscious,” Mr Subarna said.
Samra has then grabbed the other man by the collar with his co-defendant punching him to the back of the head, the court heard.
“The male has then collapsed to the ground, the defendant and his associate then commenced kicking and stomping that male,” he said.
In January, Task force Maxima police executed a search warrant at Samra’s Forest Lake home and found three used syringes. Samra told police they were used to draw steroids from a vial, the court heard.
The court heard Samra had no matters of violence on his criminal history.
Magistrate Robbie Davies fined him $250 for affray and six months probation for failing to dispose of needles.
Samra’s co-defendant pleaded guilty to affray in a separate proceeding and was sentenced to six months prison wholly suspended. He was banned from licensed venues in Fortitude Valley,
DAN KILIAN, REBELS
Former Rebels bikie Dan Kilian said he “became the perfect concoction of the human monster” after being recruited to the outlaw motorcycle gang as a teenager.
He is due to be sentenced for the brutal bashing of his then-partner in August, 2019.
He is also charged with strangling and choking her – months after a documentary about his “reform’’ was filmed by police.
The doco was later taken down.
The former under-20s Gold Coast Titans player had debuted as a Year 11 student in 2011 and signed a contract at Newcastle Knights in 2012.
However, the rising league star suffered from anxiety and depression and quit the Knights, moving to Coffs Harbour where he was recruited by a bikie on a night out at the pub.
His former offences included a 2017 court appearance where he walked free after pleading guilty to trafficking more than 10,000 ecstasy pills.
Kilian was busted by police who were bugging a drugs safe house, Brisbane Supreme Court heard.
The court was told cameras hidden by police showed Kilian at dealer Bing Crosby Cosca’s drug “safe house” in the Casino Towers apartment complex on George St, in the Brisbane CBD, where he consumed and was supplied ecstasy pills.
The court was told Kilian had a NSW criminal history, including aggravated assault for headbutting and punching a man outside a Coffs Harbour pub in December 2013.
The victim was knocked unconscious with punches and the headbutt and received an inch-long cut to his face that needed stitches.
Kilian also served 18 months in a NSW prison for supplying ecstasy.
BRONSON ‘LIZARD MAN’’ ELLERY, BANDIDOS
Dubbed the “Lizard Man” for his bizarre facial tatts, Ellery took his own life with a drug overdose after killing his girlfriend.
At the time he was trying to start a Gold Coast chapter of Dutch-based bikie gang Satudarah MC and his heavily tattooed girlfriend, Shelsea Schilling, had taken out a domestic violence order against him.
His final moments were witnessed by friend Michael Ryan Warburton, who arrived at Ellery’s Southport apartment to find the Schilling lying in a pool of blood in 2016.
For an hour Warburton held his best mate who then said, “I promised her I would go with her” and committed suicide in front of him, a court hearing into a drugs charge Warburton faced was told.
BOGDAN CUIC, BANDIDOS
The scary Serb had to be extradited after fleeing the country when police charged him with murder.
But after years of investigations, detectives got their man and personally escorted him home from Serbia in 2016.
In November, 2018 he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, claiming he accidentally shot another man during a botched $17,000 cocaine deal.
Cuic was jailed for nine-and-a-half-years for the killing of Jei “Jack” Lee at Eight Mile Plains in April, 2012. Mr Lee later died in hospital and his grieving family attended the trial.
A court heard Lee had been dining with friends and was leaving a shopping centre restaurant when he was shot in the head in the car park.
His co-accused, Marko Cokara, who went with Cuic to the drug deal, was also sentenced to eight years in prison for manslaughter.
The day after the shooting, Cuic left Australia and was tracked by police through Asia before being nabbed in Serbia.
BRUNO AND NUNO DA SILVA, HELLS ANGELS
Twin brothers and Hells Angels bikies, Bruno and Nuno Da Silva, ran a sophisticated drug trafficking operation from their Brisbane locksmith business in the early 2010s.
At one stage during the police investigation, it was estimated that the brothers had sold more than $2.5 million in methamphetamemes from their award-winning business Millennium Locks Locksmiths.
They communicated with customers using codewords like “work”, “timesheets” and “shifts”, and directed proceeds of their deals back to the Hells Angels.
In December 2015, Bruno was jailed for nine years Nuno for seven years after the both pleaded guilty to trafficking, possession of steroids and possession of proceeds of crime.
Bruno also pleaded guilty to a charge of supplying drugs.
HARLEY BARBARO, MONGOLS
Barbaro emerged as a Mongol after initially being linked by police to violent Sydney crime gang the Villains.
He is a member of the notorious Barbaro underworld family, several members of which have been shot dead in recent years.
The Calabrian clan has a long history of violence and bloodshed, dating back to 1990 when Harley’s grandfather, Pasquale, was executed outside his home in Brisbane. In 2003, a cousin also named Pasquale was shot dead alongside Melbourne ‘Underbelly’ gangster Jason Moran. One of Harley’s brothers, also a Pasquale, was gunned down in Sydney in November 2016.
In 2018, Harley Barbaro became the first bikie charged under Queensland’s then-new consorting laws but was acquitted last year. He launched an unsuccessful bid to challenge the laws in the High Court.
He also won an appeal against a 2019 conviction for failing to give his mobile phone passcode to police, but Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll is now challenging that ruling in the Court of Appeal.
SHANE ROSS, COMANCHEROS
Just before his ambush murder at Tallebudgera last year the Comancheros boss tried to deny he was a drug lord.
But he was that, and much more, including being charged with running a highly organised and sophisticated luxury car scam that allegedly netted $4.5million.
The syndicate, allegedly run out of Campbelltown in south-west Sydney, created fake documents to get loans for luxury vehicles and then on-sold them, police allege.
They allegedly made their millions by seizing 18 vehicles.
Three men have bene charged with the alleged murder of Ross and the suspected murder of his business associate.
SHANE BOWDEN, FINKS/MONGOLS
Possibly Queensland’s most infamous bikie in recent years, Bowden was gunned down in an execution-style murder in the driveway of a Gold Coast unit block on October 12 this year.
Bowden was a member of the Finks terror team and was part of the infamous Royal Pines “ballroom blitz” – considered one of Australia’s worst bikie brawls.
Bowden shot and injured Hells Angel and convicted murderer Christopher Wayne Hudson during the melee.
Before his murder, it is understood Bowden angered members of the Mongols after he made attempts to return to his former roots as part of the Finks club, following his Mongols exile earlier this year.
The Courier-Mail understands Bowden made attempts to “patch-over” from the Mongols back to the Finks after he was released from a five-year-jail stint in June.
Bowden was picked up from Victoria’s Loddon Prison by a limousine and convoy of Mongols, after he served time for a violent home invasion.
However, the hospitality was short lived for Bowden, when he was shot at in the driveway of his then Epping home, just 15 days following his release from jail.
It’s understood the shot at Bowden was a direction from within the Mongols gang, however no one was ever charged for the hit, which struck Bowden’s leg.
CHRISTOPHER HUDSON, FINKS/HELLS ANGELS
Known as the man shot in the Ballroom Blitz, Hudson’s actions leading up to the event have a lot to do with why the Finks and the Hells Angels met that night in 2006.
Looking to gain ground on the Gold Coast, the Hells Angels found an ally and a way “in” when Hudson patched over from the Finks in late 2004.
A year later in 2007 Hudson was on the run from police after a drug-fuelled rampage when he killed lawyer Brendan Keilar and shot Dutch backpacker Paul de Waard.
He handed himself into police after two days on the run with his arm heavily bandaged due to blowtorch burns he endured during punishment from the Hells Angels for his actions.
NICK ‘THE KNIFE’ FORBES, MONGOLS
The man who started the Ballroom Blitz melee, Forbes is another member of the Finks “Terror Team”, and he has spent plenty of time behind bars.
During a kickboxing tournament at the Royal Pines Resort in March 2006, Forbes threw a punch at Christopher Hudson, starting a violent brawl. He was sentenced to 27 months in jail for grievous bodily harm related to his role in the melee, but was released on a suspended sentence after serving 18 months for the incident.
Forbes was soon back behind bars after his part in an incident in January 2009. A violent rampage through Broadbeach Mall led to him being sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for grievous bodily harm and assault over the random attacks on up to six innocent young men.
Again a brawl with the Hells Angels put Forbes in prison in 2011 when he was extradited to South Australia for the incident in May 2011, where security footage captured him swinging punches at Hells Angels members in Hindley Street club the City Nightclub.
Initially acquitted over the charges, Forbes was sentenced to two and a half years prison in a retrial in 2016 after being found guilty of affray.
In May 2019, days after he was released from a South Australian jail, Forbes was extradited back to Queensland to face charges over a money laundering scam and in September the same year he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail, with immediate release.
ADAM WHITE, BANDIDOS
The president of the Bandidos during the Broadbeach brawl, White was one of 18 involved who pleaded guilty in August 2015 to charges including riot, affray, public nuisance and assault and obstruct police.
Initially sentenced to four months imprisonment, wholly suspended, White had his sentence increased to 12 months wholly suspended when police appealed in 2016.
The brawl sparked a crackdown on the Gold Coast on bikie gangs and in the following year police made 3206 arrests and laid 5000 charges.
The LNP Government launched its VLAD laws and twin task forces, Maxima and Takeback, were formed to fight the war on bikies.
JACQUES TEAMO, BANDIDOS
Teamo was the ringleader of the infamous Gold Coast bikie brawl outside when he and a group of about 60 Bandidos bikies stormed a Broadbeach restaurant to hunt down a gang enemy.
In 2012, Teamo was shot by Mongols bikie Mark James Graham at Robina Town Centre.
Less than two years later, Teamo was expelled from the Bandidos, with club members reportedly ordered to “shoot on sight”.
Senior Bandidos were reportedly livid over Teamo’s involvement in the Robina Town Centre shooting and his alleged role in a Broadbeach brawl.
Teamo’s sentence of four months imprisonment, wholly suspended, for rioting was lifted in the 2016 appeal to 13 months, wholly suspended.
In recent times Teamo was sentenced to three months prison after allegedly punching a 29-year-old man in the face and threatening to stab him at the Pacific Fair shopping centre in May, 2018.
He also pleaded guilty to common assault, wilful damage, possessing dangerous drugs and possessing a water pipe used in relation to drugs on November 30, 2018.
BRETT ‘KAOS’ PECHEY, BANDIDOS
Pechey was one of Queensland’s most notorious and recognisable ex-bikies.
He fled the Gold Coast to Western Australia in 2018, where earlier this year he was jailed for a year for a “bizarre” and “menacing” meth-fuelled rant.
Pechey had threatened two police officers who were issuing the 34-year-old with a police order following a domestic violence incident involving his ex-partner.
Things escalated when police discovered a video of Pechey sitting in the driver’s seat of his Chrysler 300C with a firearm by his side.
‘F**king c**t … die today, coppers die today … yeah boy, f**king maggots,’ Pechey said in the clip.
Pechey pleaded guilty in Perth Magistrates Court to threatening to kill, possessing a firearm in circumstances of aggravation, possessing unlawfully obtained property and multiple police order breaches relating to domestic violence offences.
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