‘Callous stupidity’: Melbourne’s most notorious botched underworld executions

Think hitmen and you might imagine ice-cool, highly organised criminals. But in Melbourne, the killing game is often far from that, riddled by tragic cases of mistaken identities and botched missions.

Think hitmen and you might imagine ice-cool, highly organised criminals.

In the real world — or Melbourne, at least — those in the contract killing game are often a long way from that.

Those who take the murder jobs are much more likely to be amateurs than the fatally efficient black-clad assassins from the movies.

They are frequently young people or low-level soldiers motivated by the desire to be promoted in some organised crime group.

They might actually be deeply anxious about the task at hand, pumped-up on drugs or feeling the effects of both.

Planning can be substandard, as the city’s long list of wrong-victim underworld homicides demonstrates.

And there are many instances where, even with a target at point-black range, the job has not been completed, thankfully for the victims.

Here are a few of these cases.

Muhamed Yucel

Muhamed Yucel was a young bloke whose only crime was visiting a mate for a video gaming session.

By the end of the night he was dead, the victim of a witless shooter unable to count a few street numbers and get the right property.

Mr Yucel was just 22 when he fell victim to a combination of the worst kind of luck and incompetence.

The intended target is believed to have been a violent, bikie-linked figure who was living near the Keysborough home.

Muhamed's father Bekir and mother Fatma mourn his death after he was shot dead in a case of mistaken identity. Picture: David Crosling

But the hit team — which had done its preparation with guns, stolen cars and cloned plates — was faced with the task of matching rear-exit with addresses at the front and failed.

As he lifted a roller-door at the back of the property, Mr Yucel was hit with a hail of bullets, suffering fatal injuries.

The suspected gunman was Comanchero Hasan Topal, now in the Middle-east after leaving Australia five years ago.

Zabi Ezedyar

There was little resemblance between Zabi Ezedyar and Mohammed Keshtiar.

But that wasn’t going to stop the twitchy triggerman who opened fire as Mr Ezedyar arrived to visit a Narre Warren home connected to career criminal Keshtiar.

Whoever used the gun did not even have a proper look.

Police were later to say he shot from a car, killing a man who bore no great resemblance to Keshtiar.

Zabi Ezedyar was gunned down in a botched underworld hit in Narre Warren.

No one would have argued with the assessment of the then-homicide squad boss, detective Insp. Tim Day.

“Callous stupidity,” was his description.

Again, Hasan Topal remains a person of interest.

As it happens, Keshtiar was to suffer the same fate as Mr Ezedyar, shot dead as he walked along a South Yarra street last year.

Rocco Curra

The ambush of Mongol bikie Rocco Curra was heavily planned, brutal and, ultimately, a failure.

Those who wanted him dead arranged for a young woman with Finks OMCG connections to contact Curra in the period beforehand.

Flirty messages from a fake Instagram account were enough to put Curra in position in a quiet Bulleen street after dark on a cold August, 2019 night.

As he waited, a white car sped into the street and stopped before two men climbed out.

They blasted bullets through the windscreen, hitting the helpless victim four times in the head and chest.

Two men would later be acquitted of the attempted murder of Curra.

One of them had been shot in the leg weeks earlier outside a hotel at Fountain Gate, in the outer south-eastern suburbs.

Paul Virgona

The Rocco Curra shooting may have led to one of most badly bungled of all of the botched Melbourne hits.

Investigators would later ponder whether members of the Mongols decided they would get square and Paul Virgona was the man who paid the price.

The problem was that Virgona was a law-abiding fruiterer and family man who, by sheer tragic chance, lived in the same street as a Finks member.

It is likely the bikie was the man Mongols Josh Rider and Aaron Ong were waiting for when Virgona left for work early one morning in late 2019.

Rider and Ong, believing Virgona was their target, followed him to EastLink where their Mercedes-Benz pulled alongside his van.

It was never made clear who pulled the trigger but Virgona was left riddled with bullets in a crime that looked like the handiwork of some Central American drug cartel.

Brother of Paul Virgona, Mark Virgona, mourns his death outside court. Picture: NewsWire

The blundering of Rider and Ong did not end with killing the wrong man.

They drove the Merc to a construction site and torched it but a security camera alerted the builder to the fire and he called police.

Officers soon after pursued the killers in their second getaway vehicle, a Volkswagen Amarok, forcing them to abandon it.

They got away for the short term but forensic evidence left behind gave them up and both are now serving long prison terms.

Toby Mitchell

Toby Mitchell almost died after bullets were pumped into him at Brunswick, but he still outlived the men suspected of shooting him.

The November, 2011 ambush outside Doherty’s gym caught Mitchell completely off-guard and should have been the end of him.

The street-smart bikie was exposed while talking to a mate and at the mercy of shooters who could not finish him off.

Toby Mitchell almost died after bullets were pumped into him at Brunswick. Picture: NewsWire

Mitchell somehow survived and later returned to rude health, quitting the Bandidos and taking on office-bearer positions with the Mongols, before a 2022 split in the gang.

It was later revealed that underworld wildmen Gavin Preston and Nabil Maghnie were Mitchell’s likely attackers that day.

Both would find themselves at the wrong end of a gun years later.

Maghnie died in January, 2020, after some standover work in Epping ended with him being fatally wounded by a gunman who is yet to be caught.

Preston was jailed for the murder of Mitchell’s mate Adam Khoury and, months after being freed for that, was shot dead at a Keilor cafe, ironically while dining with Nabil’s son Abbas.

Sam Abdulrahim

The former Mongol bikie who goes by the ring name “The Punisher” has twice started down death from failed hit teams in the past two years.

The first came in 2022 when a gunman opened fire on a helpless Abdulrahim as he waited in traffic to leave his cousin’s funeral at Fawkner Cemetery.

Trapped in his Mercedes-Benz G-wagon, eight shots were fired at Abdulrahim but that wasn’t enough to complete the job.

Sam Abdulrahim, ‘The Punisher’, has stared down death twice. Picture: David Geraghty

The victim managed to drive to a nearby police station for help and, within days, was posting images of his bullet wounds onto social media.

He not only survived but was back in the ring within months.

Those who tried to kill Abdulrahim were of such calibre that they crashed their getaway vehicle into a fire hydrant during a manicked getaway and one of them hid in a fast food outlet’s dumpster.

After realising that idea stank, he scurried back out but not before CCTV caught his face.

“He’s gonna go from the bin to the bin,” one observer later remarked.

There was an encore earlier this year when someone set fire to Abdulrahim’s parents’ car to lure him into leaving his Thomastown home.

Gunmen were waiting when he did but, despite unloading 17 shots in his direction, none found their mark.

Robert Ale

Shooters must have known that Comanchero bikie Robert Ale had a date at his tattoo parlour before they peppered him with bullets.

Ale, a formidable organised crime figure, could not have been more exposed or vulnerable as he laid on the tattoo bed getting fresh ink on that day in the summer of 2022.

Would-be hitmen stormed the Nitro Ink studio in Hampton Park where Ale was hit with nine shots.

At least one of those was to the head.

Several bullets fired from the high-powered weapons obliterated the building and entered a shop behind the parlour, narrowly missing an office worker.

And while several rumours swirled in the days after the near-fatal shooting, those who fired the shots are yet to be caught.

Ale is doing a long term for drug trafficking.

Nabil Maghnie

Maghnie was considered one of the most dangerous crime figures in the city before he was killed during a third assassination attempt in early 2020.

But the two previous hits on his life failed to kill the man with a long list of enemies.

One night in 2016, he pulled up to a meeting at an unknown location before he was shot in his car a number of times.

Alleged underworld figure Nabil Maghnie was killed during a third assassination attempt. Picture: Ian Currie

Maghnie, who had links to the Comancheros, suffered gunshot wounds to his face and chest from someone who clearly knew exactly where he would be.

It really should have been the end of the man who called himself the “Mad Leb”, but Maghnie – who travelled nowhere without a gun – wasn’t about to be taken down without a fight.

He quickly regrouped, grabbed his pistol and fired a volley of shots in return.

That repelled his foe and Maghnie then managed to drive himself to hospital for treatment.

After being patched up, Maghnie refused to assist detectives, in line with Middle-eastern organised crime gunshot victim policy.

After surviving the attempted hit and another years earlier in which he was wounded in the groin, Maghnie would be shot in dead at Epping in 2020 when some standover work unexpectedly went wrong.

Ikenasio Tuivasa

The death of Ikenasio “Sio” Tuivasa was more in the personal dispute than contract hit category.

But, according to the police version, Mr Tuivasa was another to join Melbourne’s long list of wrong-victim homicide cases.

The police theory is that the gunman who sprayed up to five bullets at the All Star Lounge pool hall in Ravenhall, on Melbourne’s western fringe, was targeting someone standing near Tuivasa when shots rang out in the early hours of February 27, 2021.

Shooting victim Ikenasio “Sio” Tuivasa. Picture: Supplied.

A court would later be told the intended victim had been on bad terms with a suspect who opened fire from a utility.

That man was injured but it was the 33-year-old Mr Tuivasa who would lose his life.

The driver of the ute, Nikola Latuhoi, was earlier this year jailed for his involvement in father-of-five Mr Tuivasa’s death.

But Latuhoi was too frightened to say who had pulled the trigger and will do his time alone.

The shooter remains at large.

Originally published as ‘Callous stupidity’: Melbourne’s most notorious botched underworld executions