Reza Tape and Ali Raffati front court over kidnapping

A Melbourne man was forced into a rental van by his former business partner and another person and ordered to pay $50k for badmouthing people.

Two people arrested in Melbourne after kidnapping a man and ordering him to pay $50,000 have been sentenced to prison terms.

A Melbourne man accused of bad mouthing people was bundled into the back of a rental van by his former business partner and another person who demanded $50,000 at knifepoint.

Reza Tape and Ali Raffati appeared for sentencing in the County Court on Monday after earlier pleading guilty to charges of kidnapping, blackmail and threatening to kill.

Tape was sentenced to two years’ and six months’ imprisonment, with a minimum non-parole of one year while Raffati copped 319 days already served time by way of pre-sentence detention. He’ll be on a community corrections order for two years.

Court documents show that on June 1, 2022 Raffati bearhugged Mr Bastamizadeh from behind in a driveway at Mernda, produced a folding knife and said: “You are bad mouthing people, come with me.”

Melbourne man Rahmatullah Bastamizadeh was kidnappened his former business partner and another man and ordered to hand over $50,000.

A short time later, Reza approached them with a large stick and Mr Bastamizadeh recognised him as his former business partner.

Reza and Raffati then forced Mr Bastamizadeh into the back of a rental van and drove him around for between 30 and 40 minutes.

Mr Bastamizadeh was then driven to his apartment in Preston where Tape told him that he had promised a man from Sydney $50,000 and if the victim paid him the money then nothing bad would happen to him. Raffati stood over Mr Bastamizadeh with a knife.

He told Raffiti he couldn’t pay that much but could ask a friend to lend him a fraction of the amount. He was then driven to Coburg where he eventually handed over $12,000.

Mr Bastamizadeh went to police the next day after speaking to his friends.

He told police “I was so scared for my life throughout this whole process, and I did not know what they were talking about the whole time”.

“I could not believe they did this in daylight to me in places where they knew CCTV was. I was very scared they might do something serious to me out of fear.”

A third offender and the driver of the rental van, Mehdi Hefzabad, was sentenced to 28 days in jail in May after pleading guilty to charges of false imprisonment and driving while disqualified.