Kyle Sandilands watches as beautician waxes off eyebrows
It’s the unwritten rule when it comes to dealing with John Ibrahim — don’t touch his money. Ryan Watsford and Jaron Chester learned the hard way. And along for the ride were radio host Kyle Sandilands and a Sydney beautician. LISTEN TO THE CALLS
- John Ibrahim: ‘I owe the tax man millions’
- Inside secret tunnel under John Ibrahim’s mansion
- Volatile relationship between John and Daniel
For three decades, Sydney has regarded the House of Ibrahim with fear and fascination.
Now, for the first time, we take you inside the private world of this complicated family thanks to an enormous cache of surveillance material tendered to a NSW court.
There are more than 880 phone calls and texts that were covertly recorded by police over more than a year, revealing the truth about feuds, grudges and family lore, including the secret tunnel under patriarch John Ibrahim’s Eastern Suburbs mansion.
There are hundreds of police photos taken inside Ibrahim homes during police raids, and an even larger collection of surveillance photos taken by police tailing family members and associates through the city’s streets.
The material sheds new light on the family’s networks, reaching beyond brothers John, Fadi, Michael and Sam to the far reaches of entertainment, night-life, property and crime.
On their private calls, the brothers and their associates detail their rivalries and power struggles, as well as moments of “us against the world” camaraderie and black humour.
It was the talk of The Sunday Telegraph’s coverage of the Ibrahim arrests last year: that police found two sets of eyebrows, still on the wax strip that ripped them out, while searching John Ibrahim’s Dover Heights mansion.
But secret recordings tendered to court have now revealed John Ibrahim ordered the waxing as a punishment for two of his hangers-on who stole money and that his mate Kyle Sandilands showed up to the beauty salon for a laugh.
A young beautician struggles to keep her composure and a steady hand as she closes in on Ryan Watsford’s eyebrows with a pair of hot wax strips.
Standing behind her is John Ibrahim. He’s paid for the punishment that’s about to be meted out and is gleefully taking photos, according to calls tendered to court.
The calls reveal Ibrahim’s buddy, radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands, is also at the Potts Point beauty salon.
The woman whose working day was unfolding normally until she was tasked with removing Watsford’s eyebrows is Bridgette Lee.
She’s the one time girlfriend of Ibrahim’s son, Daniel, and is also the sister-in-law of retired NRL star Braith Anasta.
LISTEN TO THE IBRAHIMS TALK ABOUT THE WAXING
READ THE TRANSCRIPT: WARNING GRAPHIC LANGUAGE
Hours after the waxing on August 2, 2017, police intercepted a call where Ms Lee told Daniel how Watsford was wrong in thinking his eyebrows would grow back given she had ripped them out at the roots.
“He’s looking at me like a f**king deer in the headlights,” Ms Lee said. “ … I’m trying to take the conversation so seriously, like, to help him but I just couldn’t.”
For now, Watsford has to rely on is Ms Lee’s penmanship as she drew “cartoon” eyebrows on his forehead using henna and a “sharpened pencil” in an attempt to “mimic hair strokes”.
“I can’t keep a straight face and he’s, like, ‘It looks OK, doesn’t it?” Ms Lee said. “I’m, like, are you trying to get me to reassure you that it’s OK? …’Cause it’s not OK. I’m, like, it’s so bad.”
Watsford wasn’t happy with the result of his makeover.
“They’re big black slugs on his head,” Ms Lee said. “He almost cries. He’s, like what the f**k is that?,” Ms Lee said.
Earlier in the call, Ms Lee said: “You know when you’re laughing so hard you’re almost about to wee yourself.
“ … And he’s looking at me so sad and he’s like ‘Bridgette, please stop laughing’. And I’m, like, ‘I just can’t take you seriously. Look at your f**king head’,” Ms Lee said.
This is what happens when you cross the Ibrahim family.
It’s a step away from the traditional Kings Cross style punishments like a kneecapping, but perhaps just as bad for a vain underworld figure of the modern age like Watsford.
It came after Watsford and fellow Ibrahim family underling Jaron “Oompa” Chester got caught taking more than $60,000 from Michael Ibrahim in May 2017.
The theft of the money was the first offence. But the pair committed further misdemeanours over the next three months.
It is not clear if the waxing was prompted by the theft of the money, the other misdemeanours or a combination of all of it.
Eventually, John snapped and demanded they show up to a salon so he could scalp their eyebrows. He had a plan to frame them and keep them as trophies, according to courts tendered to court.
After the waxing, the pair were so deeply humiliated that Michael called Chester and told him and Watsford not to pay their debts.
Chester was so frightened, a private security operator told police that Chester asked him to have five armed men guard his house 24 hours a day.
Watsford went first and presented himself to the Bayswater Rd beautician on August 2, 2017.
Chester handed himself in the next day and Ms Lee also waxed his eyebrows.
John planned to frame both sets of eyebrows and keep them as trophies inside his Eastern Suburbs home.
Police found both sets of follicles, still on the wax strips that ripped them off their former owners’ foreheads, in Ibrahim’s lounge room when they raided his Dover Heights mansion on August 8, 2017.
Ibrahim declined to comment when The Sunday Telegraph revealed the existence of the eyebrows in August 2018. But now the full story can be revealed.
Chester had a tougher time than Watsford. He was petrified leading up to the waxing and had a full blown panic attack as it was about to happen.
“(Chester) was hyperventilating and he’s, like, ‘Have you got any valium’,” Ms Lee told Daniel in one of the calls.
“I’m, like, ‘How’s your anxiety?’ and he’s, like, ‘My anxiety’s so bad’,” Ms Lee said. “And he’s sweating. I go … you needto chill the f**k out, like relax yourself, he’s pacing back and forwards.”
Still sporting his drawn on eyebrows, Watsford returned to make sure Chester suffered the same fate and was “acting all tough”, Ms Lee said.
“Yeah. You’re all tough now ‘cause I’ve just put your brows back on and you look like a dickhead,” Ms Lee said.
So why did Watsford and Chester take the money?
According to a call intercepted by police on May 23, 2017, Chester used the money to covered a debt his parents owed in unpaid rent on their Bellevue Hill home so they could stave off eviction.
It is unclear what Watsford used his portion on.
But Michael may have referenced it when he spoke to Chester that day.
“What I can’t deal with is prostitutes and getting on it,” Michael said.
Michael was furious.
On May 21, 2017, Chester called a friend and said “I’m scared, Mick turned this afternoon”.
That day, Chester received a text from Daniel Ibrahim that said: “I’m coming to pick up yours and your mum’s car tomorrow. Have them ready.”
Michael called John on May 22, 2017, and said he couldn’t get to sleep until 5am because he was “burning with anger”.
Watsford took a call from Ibrahim family confidant, Mim Salvato, who warned that Michael was “going nuts” and that he had tried to calm him down three times at John’s house.
“He would have wiped both of youse,” Salvato said. “Like if there was a weapon or one of youse had fought back, who f**king knows what could have happened.”
Later, Salvato said: “And even John said, ‘Yeah mate, if I wasn’t here … you wouldn’t have been able to stop him … he would have grabbed something and stabbed all of youse’.”
Salvato warned Watsford not to go to Dover Cafe, where he often said he met Moses Obeid.
According to Salvato, John said once Michael “gets going” he doesn’t stop until there’s “no one left standing”.
Later, Watsford and Chester spoke to each other and compared notes on how much danger they were in from Michael.
“He was sending me messages all night,” Chester said. “(Michael said) ‘You’re just a Jew, a filthy Jew. They all told me not to trust a Jew’.”
Watsford said: “I copped the same thing until 3.30 (am).”
“He said be at my house in the morning, I’m gunna shave your head,” Watsford said.
Chester replied: “He said that to me too.”
Chester turned up to Michael’s house and had his head shaved the next day on May 23, 2017.
That day, Michael called John’s long time financial controller, Margaret Staltaro, and told her he deliberately shaved Chester’s hair unevenly to make him look “as dumb” as possible before remarking that he looked like “Friar Tuck”.
Watsford was holding out.
While Michael was searching the Eastern Suburbs for him, Watsford was desperately trying to have John intervene to stop his younger brother.
After seeing the photo of the haircut, Fadi joked to Michael in a May 24 call that Chester and Watsford could start a boy band called “The Friar Tucks”.
On May 26, Michael called Watsford and told him to “get it over and done with”.
After Michael was threatening to shear him like a sheep in public, Watsford agreed to have his head shaved at John’s house on May 27, 2017.
Three days earlier, Watsford called Ms Staltaro and told her how he was beaten up and came home with a bleeding nose. He did not disclose who inflicted the beating, while she asked “What was he upper cutting?”
“Oh, my ribs are killing me,” Watsford said. “Oh, you’ve got no idea, thank god his brother was there.”
He later complained to John: “I’m sick, I’m depressed and I’m embarrassed.”
“I have no confidence, nothing,” Watsford said. “No hair, nothing.”
But if he and Chester thought it was over, they were wrong. After a period of quiet, John and Michael’s anger was reignited.
In a call to Ms Staltaro on August 1, 2017, which was tendered to the court, Chester put the blame on Salvato and Fadi Ibrahim who he said had been “geeing up” John and Michael over a range of issues.
One included that Chester had rorted a profit from Michael when he was tasked with booking his flight to Dubai.
“(They were saying) you’re Mick and you let him get away with it?,” Chester told Ms Staltaro.
Chester said it triggered John to explode at Watsford.
“Basically, he lost it at him today and his eyebrows are going tomorrow,” Chester told Ms Staltaro.
“(John) said he’s got to do them because Mick’s told him to and that Mick’s going to do mine when he gets back (from Dubai),” Chester said.
Ms Staltaro was sceptical.
“I reckon they are all talk,” she said. “The only way that John is involved is if there’s a dollar in it. Let me tell you.”
Ms Staltaro also said it’s “not John’s style”.
“Mick’s got a sick sense of humour. He’s been in jail for a long time,” she said. “He’s not as sensitive as we probably are. John is. Especially about appearance, John is.”
Chester said John “swore on his daughter’s life he has to do it.”
Margaret joked that John swore on his daughter’s life over a trivial issue involving “Bali tickets”.
“He swears on his daughter’s’ life that easy,” she said.
Ms Staltaro was scathing of John in an August 2, 2017, call with Chester who reported that Watsford’s eyebrows had been waxed.
“He’s a f**king idiot. He’s a f**k wit … You’ve just turned me off … F**king disgusting,” she said.
“I can’t believe he brought Kyle with him. He’s a f**king idiot. I don’t even find it funny … I don’t think Kyle would find something like that funny,” she said later in the call tendered to court.
Chester corrected her: “He was laughing.”
They then started discussing about Salvato.
“Mim is a f**kwit,” Chester said. “ (Mim) said ‘There’s one thing I don’t do: touch other people’s money and other people’s girls’.”
Ms Staltaro went one better in bagging Salvato.
“Oh f**k off you f**king loser … Because I used to say to him there’s two things you don’t do to John: touch his money and touch his girls,” she said.
“That’s why he’s saying that. F**king get your own f**king lines.”
In a recording tendered to the court, Michael and Daniel were laughing in a call as they both watched the footage of the waxing.
“He looks like a cancer patient, Oompa…,” Michael said.
Daniel said: “He’s a f**king cancer … looks like he’s about to die. Cancer would probably be good for him. He’d lose some weight.”
With Watsford and Chester now without eyebrows, the saga appeared to be over.
On August 2, 2017, Chester told Ms Staltaro that John had given him the assurance: “Boys, I promise you it’s over after this. Just get it done.”
And it appeared that once Michael had seen the results, he was also satisfied.
On August 4, 2017, in another recording tendered to the court, Chester told Ms Staltaro he received a pardon from Michael who said he couldn’t believe John had been so ruthless.
“Mick said to me ‘Forget about the money, I saw what happened to you and I’m disgusted at the bloke’,” Chester said. “Mick said …‘I’m shocked at what John did … you and Ryan don’t pay me anything; you don’t owe me a cent’.”
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