Bassam Hamzy: Brothers 4 Life gang founder amazed police with intelligent criminal mind

A TALENT for numbers coupled with a ruthless nature made bikie boss Bassam Hamzy a formidable challenge, writes Yoni Bashan.

Brother 4 Life leader Bassam Hamzy. Picture: Supplied

IT was Bassam Hamzy’s brain, rather than his crimes, that shocked detectives most.

The founder of the Brothers 4 Life street gang had a remarkable gift with numbers. A criminal expelled from several high schools, he could calculate complex drug transactions, several at a time, sums that accounted for wholesale weights, purity levels, street values and interest owed.

He did it all in his head; nothing was written on paper.

“He was quite brilliant in how he did things,” said Detective Inspector Angelo Memmolo, co-ordinator of Strike Force Skelton, the landmark investigation into Hamzy, his crime family including father and brothers, and the drug network he ran from his prison cell in 2008.

Detective Insector Angelo Memmolo arrives at the inquest. Picture: John Grainger

“You listen to the phone calls, listen to the numbers he was crunching; how he kept track of all that criminality and where the money was going and who was dealing with what — even while we were listening we thought this can’t be possible.”

With his powerful mind, Hamzy set himself apart from most criminal masterminds. In jail he became a spiritual leader, an archetypal villain with uncanny abilities to tame and influence people inside as well as out of jail.

A psychologist giving evidence in court once warned of his “veneer of charm”, his need to “outwit others”.

The Skelton investigation confirmed as much. It ended with 23 people convicted of 143 crimes, all of which had been directed by Hamzy, the puppet-master, using a smuggled mobile phone.

Armed with the device, he caused mayhem for police. Over six weeks he averaged 460 calls a day, cutting deals to move cannabis, ice, ecstasy and cocaine to customers across Sydney and Melbourne.

On the side, he deployed violence on those who crossed him, shooting up houses, ordering kidnappings. Detectives listening live to these calls found it impossible to keep up with his activity.

Calls piled on top of each other as each conversation was transcribed, translated and deciphered of code — a time-consuming process.

A seized Brothers 4 Life hoodie. Picture: Supplied

Hamzy worked faster than the officers could handle, leaving them scrambling.

“Keeping on top of what they were doing and where it was happening; it was almost impossible, just the sheer volume of calls,” Detective Sergeant Ian Wright, one of several core detectives who worked the Skelton case, said.

Sheer luck kicked off the investigation. In April 2008, Det-Insp Memmolo received a call from the Australian Crime Commission (ACC), which had been running an unrelated case into the Finks Outlaw Motorcycle Gang in South Australia, monitoring 50 of its members over cannabis trafficking between Adelaide and Sydney.

Dozens of phones were being tapped, and Hamzy’s voice, distinct and recognisable, had emerged on one of their intercepts, recognised by an ACC operative.

At a meeting with ACC officials, Det-Insp Memmolo grabbed the intelligence with both hands.

“It was like a honey pot,” he said, presenting a rare opportunity.

Well-known organised crime figures from across the country were calling Hamzy and talking candidly to him, gossiping and arranging crimes, assured no one was listening.

These were big names in the underworld, guys who had evaded police for years: Ahmed “Glebe” Diab, Monzer El-Husseini, Rodney “Goldie” Atkinson, a member of the Ahmad family.

With the permission of Corrective Services Commissioner Ron Woodham, the MEOCS detectives were able to let Hamzy keep the phone for the sake of their investigation.

An associate of the Brothers 4 Life gang, Ahmed Diab. Picture: Supplied

For the next six weeks, they listened and mapped his enterprise. It was a family affair, a syndicate that took in his father (the moneyman), his brothers (the gofers), and various associates (hitmen, middlemen, credit card thieves and a delivery driver).

As the CEO of this enterprise, Hamzy controlled everyone and everything — the quintessential micromanager who would scowl and scream if anyone made a decision without his permission.

“He’d give it to them, screaming at them over the phone,” Det-Insp Memmolo said.

But despite these lucrative deals, Hamzy’s profit margins were small. You need money to make money and Hamzy was constantly reinvesting in larger amounts of drugs, building up to a bigger payday.

Most of his deals were conducted on tick — customers took the drugs on loan and sold them to pay him back. When these dues weren’t met, trouble followed.

As he continued, Hamzy swore revenge, assuring his father that jail wouldn’t settle his bloodlust.

Imran Allouche, a Melbourne dealer, pleaded with Hamzy for more time after his downline buyer, an Australian man, refused to pay him $45,000 owed.

Hamzy sent gunmen to Melbourne to shoot up the Australian’s property but Allouche, an ally of Hamzy, urged caution, insisting things would get “out of hand” with gunplay. Hamzy wouldn’t hear it.

“We were born for things to get out of hand, bro,” he said to Allouche. “We are Arabs. We are Muslims. We love war.”

Art: Sunday Telegraph

A figurehead of Hamzy’s drug network was his delivery driver, the owner of a refrigerated trucking business who had fallen on hard times financially. He was a cleanskin, a nobody who’d turned to Hamzy for a cash injection to keep the company afloat.

A worker knew Hamzy and put the two men in touch. With this leverage, Hamzy used the company as his personal drug couriering service. But he saw other potential as a business partner.

One idea he toyed with was borrowing money against the business to fund a lease on a warehouse in Auburn or Bankstown, a headquarters for a new street gang he was planning to set up, one that would be modelled on the mafia families of the United States.

In his mind, Hamzy envisioned his crew driving around in a fleet of black Chrysler vehicles. Chapters would be led by captains and lieutenants. His father, Khaled, was tasked with finding the warehouse and the pair thrashed out these plans whenever he visited his son in prison.

“I don’t kill people today. What I do to them, I get a knife, puncture their ears, put acid in their eye.”

These conversations, captured on a listening device, paint a disturbing picture of Hamzy’s mind as he railed against his ­father, complaining bitterly of people who had been cheating them out of drug profits.

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“People are laughing at us, Dad,” he said in Arabic. “If this is not affecting your honour, I don’t know what’s going to affect your honour. I can’t work like this.”

As he continued, Hamzy swore revenge, assuring his father that jail wouldn’t settle his bloodlust.

“I am a man that doesn’t care. No one plays me up … don’t think that the time frame will drop my blood or something, Dad. Because in jail, every day you can think of it, every day … it won’t decrease. It increases,” he said.

“I don’t kill people today. What I do to them, I get a knife, puncture their ears, put acid in their eye, cut their tongue, I put a knife in their back, so never they can walk again.

“So they can’t hear, they can’t see, they can’t talk and they can’t move. It means they will be depending on someone all their lives … and every day they will be thinking that I have done this to them.”