There have been at least five ­attempts on his life over the years and all four Ibrahim boys have been shot at, with only John escaping being hit. His brother Fadi survived five to the body, Sam one in the leg and Michael a bullet to the shoulder. John’s eastern suburbs mansion has been shot up a few times and even more bullets fired at the family home in Merrylands.

Now taking aim at the Ibrahim clan a joint task force of federal and NSW police has been working for a year to bring down some members of the family and its alleged crime activities.

And just like the bikies and crime families who have tried to kill John Ibrahim over the past three decades, they have hit everyone but him. On Tuesday false rumours swept Sydney that the federal police, who had taken control of the operation here and overseas, would be walking John out of his home in handcuffs.

Teams of police went through his George St home at Dover Heights, presumably looking for something incriminating so they could arrest the self-proclaimed King of the Cross.

The cameramen waited and waited but the only thing coming out of John’s home were policemen with what appeared to be bags of documents. Inside, John was compliant and as co-operative as ever. He has never been one to antagonise police and has always been polite, even friendly, when questioned.

By nightfall the cops were packing up and leaving without John in handcuffs. The legend of Teflon John just got a little bit bigger.

“Eight hours tearing up his house and they walk away with a couple of garbage bags and no charges,” says a senior Sydney lawyer. “Bit embarrassing really.”

“He has been very clever with his money, buying property and nearly always in someone else’s name,” says one law enforcer.

The John Ibrahim of recent years has been a carefully crafted public image of a successful businessman who has got out of the seedy nightclub life and into property investment.

Law enforcement officers who have been watching John Ibrahim for the past three decades say he has amassed a net worth of anywhere from $30 million to $50 million.

He wrote a book telling everyone how clever he was. It’s a book now being scrutinised by a lot of police to see if he has slipped up anywhere to give them an angle to get him.

It is purely coincidental that just two weeks after John’s book was launched his two brothers Fadi and Michael were arrested in Dubai for their alleged involvement in a massive shipment of MDMA to Australia.

The raids hit everyone around John. It seems if you know John Ibrahim someone was knocking on your door with an arrest or search warrant. No one was immune. His son Daniel, his brothers, his cousin, his real estate agent and his girlfriend Sarah Budge (albeit for an unrelated gun charge) have all been arrested or charged.

The homes of his sister, his in-laws and his associates have all been searched, as well as his own. Earlier this month sister Jazz Dior was sentenced to an 18 months corrections order on an unrelated firearms charge. Operation Get The Ibrahims has been a long time coming. There have been as many police task forces working on the notorious family as there have been attempts on their lives.

But it was the would-be assassin’s bullet meant for the youngest Ibrahim brother, Michael, in January 2015 that sparked what has turned out to be the mother of all investigations into the family, culminating in this week’s arrests in Sydney and across the world, The Saturday Telegraph can reveal.

Michael Ibrahim, 39, despite having no apparent means of income, was living in a luxury apartment on Macquarie St overlooking the Royal Botanic Gardens and had been enjoying the Sydney party scene.

While family, friends and associates, including big brother John, flocked to his bedside at St Vincent’s Hospital as he recovered, Michael refused to co-operate with police. His shooting remains unsolved.

A senior police source says there have been times when 70 per cent of each of the police squads, including homicide and drugs, have been actively investigating Middle Eastern crime groups, including members of the Ibrahim family.

In late 2014 and early 2015 the Middle Eastern Organised Crime squad (MEOC) had its hands full investigating the shooting of Michael and a spate of other shootings in southwest Sydney. While the MEOC detectives hit the streets trying to keep a lid on the hotheads shooting each other, the NSW Organised Crime Squad (OCS) started to look into what was behind the shootings.

The detectives worked together with the NSW Crime Commission, which has extraordinary powers of coercion — like throwing you in jail if you don’t answer the simplest of questions.

Their targets quickly became the three Ibrahim brothers — John, Fadi and Michael.

They didn’t need to worry about Sam; he was already in jail for gun dealing.

Fadi had survived an assassination attempt in 2009 when he was left in a coma after being shot five times outside his Castle Cove home, which must be one of the city’s greatest real estate deals — records show he paid $105,000 for it in 2006 and sold it last year for $4.31 million.

Driving a yellow Lamborghini, Fadi could challenge King of the Cross John for his flashiness and conspicuous consumption.

John, 46, traded in his black Bentley for a top-of-the-range black Range Rover Sport and frequents the world’s party havens such as Bali, Ibiza and the Greek islands.

Fadi’s shooting also remains unsolved.

Even after this week John Ibrahim, the celebrity big brother, appears to be untouchable — from both gangsters and cops. His clifftop mansion in Dover Heights has been the target of at least five drive-by shootings.

One night at his trophy Kings Cross nightclub, the Piano Room, he fled down the back stairs as a hit squad of Comanchero bikies swarmed the club looking for him. The former nightclub baron-turned-property mogul has been charged with everything from murder to intimidating a witness and beat them all, earning him the moniker “Teflon John” because nothing sticks.

Despite sharing office space, the Crime Commission and the Organised Crime Squad have had a strained relationship over the years, with many NSW police officers believing the commission has protected criminals in return for crooks forfeiting millions of dollars to the state coffers or giving information on other crooks to allow them to stay free or get reduced charges.

Then about a year ago the Australian Federal Police launched their own investigation targeting businessmen from the top end of town in Sydney who they believe were laundering money for drug cartels.

During a regular meeting of intelligence sharing between the Feds and NSW cops, they claim they discovered their investigations had a common theme — one Michael Ibrahim.

He has always been said to be the wildcard of the family of four brothers and two sisters whose parents settled in Merrylands from Lebanon, and he may prove to be the one who brings down the House of Ibrahim.

Michael has been brutal in his assessment of his brothers. During a conspiracy to murder trial, which he beat in the NSW District Court, phone taps were played where Michael ripped into his brothers. Sam, he said was “on drugs and playing the pokies”; John “loves the eastern suburbs lifestyle, the money and the power”; and Fadi “only cares about himself”.

It was about 10 days ago that Michael and Fadi flew to Dubai where they reportedly met up with known crooks Mustapha Dib and Steven Elmir, allegedly, to celebrate the shipment of ecstasy, which would land in Sydney and make them millions.

While the brothers were partying in the Middle-East, John had a short holiday in Bali and was back in Sydney only a few days when his brothers were arrested.

In the past few years, Dubai has emerged as somewhat of a Costa del Sol for Australian crime figures. These include former Comanchero bikie chief Mark Buddle, who is currently on the run, and notorious drug dealer and wanted man Hakan Ayik.

Major-General Khalil Ebrahim of Dubai police revealed this week that they had been working with Australian police for at least two years on a list of people to be investigated for their alleged involvement with organised crime gangs.

The two Ibrahims were on the list. Behind the scenes, the NSW Joint Organised Crime Group had began Operation Veyda led by the Australian Federal Police who had taken over the lead of the investigation.

Their targets — John, Michael and Fadi, plus a number of their friends and associates, including cousins and trusted business sidekicks — all came under the microscope.

Among them were the Ibrahim’s cousins: former Nomads bikie boss Sleiman Tajjour, 37, and Bondi cafe owner Fares Derbas, 30.

Then there were Mustapha Dib, 34, who walked free from Goulburn jail last year after an appeal court overturned his conviction for murdering the de facto wife of a man who had turned witness against him and acquitted him, and Steven Elmir, whose brother-in-law Safwan Charbaji was shot dead during a violent gunfight outside a Sydney car repair business last year.

Another man was Ahmad “Rock” Ahmad, whose family had been involved in a gangland war with the Elmirs and whose brother Wally Ahmad was shot dead in a high-profile murder at an outdoor cafe at Bankstown Central last year.

Ahmad was said to be walking around with a grin on his face over the past few weeks, believing he was about to come into a lot of money. Those in the know — and they were very few, as police kept a tight lid on the upcoming arrests — couldn’t wait to see the smile wiped of his face.

That happened early Tuesday morning wen he was arrested during dawn raids across Sydney.

On the other side of town, dragged into the arrests, was former Double Bay real estate agent Ryan Watsford, 37.

The police had been watching and listening as the alleged syndicate members met dozens of times across Sydney, from the InterContinental at Double Bay to a Strathfield 7-Eleven where they talked about smuggling drugs and tobacco into the country in shopping containers.

They allegedly caught the men chatting on their encrypted BlackBerry phones using code names that they naively thought might trip up the police if they were ever caught.

Michael Ibrahim was known as “Sheriton”, “The Man” or “Entertainer88”. Dib was “The Enemy” or “The Street”. Ahmad was “Narcos1” or “Rock”. Derbas was called “Paranoid”, Watsford was “Barbiedoll” and Elmir “Staypaid” or “Mr Worldwide”.

Last November, the police were at Sydney’s Sheraton on the Park when the icing was put on the alleged plot that would set each of them up for life with a massive amount of ecstasy, cocaine and methylamphetamine.

The drugs, with a street value of up to almost $1 billion, was to come to Sydney from the Netherlands.

Michael Ibrahim, alleged to be the mastermind of the syndicate, met at the hotel with Watsford, Derbas and another man. It was after that meeting that things hotted up, police allege.

Some of the deals were done, while others were in the works.

It has been alleged that Michael oversaw deals including four meetings at his mother’s house in Price St, Merrylands, where he handed over $800,000 in cash for 190,000 packets of illegal cigarettes.

The big prize was yet to come.

Unknown to the men, police in the Netherlands last month seized 1.8 tonnes of ecstasy, 136kg of cocaine and 15kg of crystal methamphetamine with a street value of $810 million which was headed for Australia in a shipping container.

Meanwhile Michael, Fadi, Elmir, Dib and bikie Hakan Arif, known as “Little Hux”, had met up in Dubai.

The arrival of the container in Sydney last week without the drugs was the catalyst for this week’s co-ordinated arrests in Dubai, the Netherlands and Sydney — raids at what was called an international “zero hour”.

All around the world police moved in at the same time so no one could tip anyone else off.

The arrests went of without a hitch except for one important detail.

John Ibrahim is still sitting in his eastern suburbs mansion, perhaps a bit nervously — but still free.