Raphael Joseph: Murdered gangster carved criminal career from ranks of violent street gang
AT the time of his presumed murder, gangster Raphael Joseph had access to millions of dollars in cash and had links to crime gangs all over the world including Sydney bikie gangs.
NSW
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SYDNEY gangster Raphael Joseph rose from being a founding member of a violent western suburbs street gang called DLAST HR where he was a young thug with a gun to becoming a major player on the international drug scene.
At the time of his presumed murder, Joseph had access to millions of dollars in cash and had links to crime gangs all over the world including Sydney bikie gangs.
DLAST HR was born out of a number of gangs, including the Assyrian Kings, responsible for the brutal murder of young policeman David Carty outside Fairlfield Hotel in 1997. After the murder many gang members were arrested or fled Australia.
A few years later Joseph, also known as Rafi Tooma or “Huss” or “Hussany”, and some other equally violent associates formed DLAST HR to fill the void left by those involved in the death of Carty. The group was gun crazy, drug dealing and blood thirsty.
Within a couple of years “Huss’’ was a wanted man himself when he was named as the number one suspect in the shooting murder outside a stripclub at the Sefton Playhouse in 2002.
He then went on the run fleeing to America where no doubt he cultivated his drug connections. While he was in America, DLAST HR was believed to be responsible for the senseless slaying of two young men at the Rocks.
The men Naser Ghaderi, 24 and Keyvan Ghajaloo, 25 were gunned down while they stood outside their cars in Hickson Road.
A black BMW drove past and sprayed at least 10 bullets in to the men, who were not gang members. The motive for the shooting apparently arising from an argument at a party weeks before. No one has been charged.
Joseph’s life on the run came to an end when he was arrested in San Diego in 2006.
He fought extradition and appealed to then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008 saying he would be “tortured or killed” by rival Sydney gang members and that a $100,000 contract had been placed on his life by an Australian crime family and members of a gang called the Sydney’s Bronx Boys wanted him dead.
He was deported back to Australia where he picked up his life of crime moving into the drug trade in a major way but was never pursued over the Sefton Playhouse murder.
He quickly established lines of major drug supplies into Sydney using connections from overseas.
He also knew murdered Hells Angel Wayne Schneider.
Schneider, whose body was found naked in a shallow grave in Thailand in 2015, was a friend of Joseph’s, with the pair rising through the ranks of organised crime in Sydney to become major players in international drug syndicates.
He was last seen having dinner at the Star Casino with a Comanchero bikie before he was lured to a meeting later that night in Auburn by text.