How simple life turned sour for Sydney ANOM fugitive Hakan Ayik

He could have led a simple life as a businessman or personal trainer, but that was never enough for Joseph Hakan Ayik, who is now being hunted by police.

Joseph Hakan Ayik could have led a simple life in Sydney‘s southwest as a businessman and personal trainer, but that was never enough – he always wanted more.

Born in 1977, after leaving James Cook High School in the suburb of Kogarah where he grew up, Ayik made links with the Comanchero bikie gang.

It was here he found his way into drug trafficking before eventually becoming one of the biggest players in Australia.

But when your star begins to rise in the underworld, it brings with it problems.

Former Sydneysider Hakan Ayik has been living in Turkey. Police say he is now a marked man.

One of them is the unwanted attention of police but more recently, the biggest issue facing Ayik has been his role in introducing the flawed AN0M encrypted messaging app to some of the world‘s biggest crooks.

As they discovered the hard way in early June with hundreds of simultaneous arrests around the world, police claim they wrongly thought the app was allowing them to have untraceable conversations about drugs, murders and kidnappings.

Having long been sought by police, Ayik now found himself being hunted by one-time criminal allies who wanted revenge and so left his wife and children behind and went into hiding.

But it isn‘t the first time Ayik has had to flee.

In August 2010 he escaped Australia and went to Turkey, where he is a dual citizen, after NSW Police issued a warrant for his arrest.

Hakan Ayik at a pharmaceutical factory in India where he alleged to have purchased drug precursors.

But three months later he was arrested at the border of Greece and Cyprus, before reportedly managing to bribe local officials to let him go.

A month later in December 2010 he was arrested in Cyprus after police found eight mobile phones and equipment to make narcotics and steroids in his hotel room.

Just when it looked like his run could be up, local authorities granted him bail and in a flash he was gone.

For two years Ayik evaded police, but in October 2012 they closed in on him in Spain.

But local officers accidentally arrested his friend which alerted Ayik to their investigations and allowed him to flee.

Ayik eventually settled in Bestik in Istanbul, the Turkish capital, and surrounded himself with fellow criminals – some of them also born in Australia.

But his world came crashing down in June when international authorities simultaneously carried out arrests around the globe after cracking the AN0M app he had been an administrator of.

Hakan Ayik enjoyed a partyboy lifestyle.

Ayik believed the app – which had been created by the FBI – was the most secure way for he and other criminals to communicate.

There was no way, he thought, that authorities could trace or read their messages.

Police allege it led criminals to brazenly discuss crimes – even their role in murders – unaware police around the world were watching on.

Having been involved in the importation of billions of dollars worth of drug importations around the world, Ayik is understood to now have a price on his head for his role in bringing down so many fellow criminals.