Frankston bikie shooting attack on Finks boss sparks new war
A BRAZEN drive-by shooting and firebomb attack on the ambitious boss of a growing bikie force in Victoria has sparked a new war. Here’s why the Hells Angels will be a prime target of police investigations into who was behind the strike.
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A BRAZEN drive-by shooting and firebomb attack on the ambitious boss of a growing bikie force in Victoria has sparked a new war.
Egomaniac enforcer Brent James (BJ) Reker — who flaunts his body and face tattoos in muscleman poses — has been “working underground” to re-establish the Finks outlaw motorcycle gang in Victoria.
Now sources are warning of retribution after tough-talking Reker’s rented Frankston home was sprayed with bullets and his Holden Commodore was firebombed at 5am on Thursday.
GUNSHOTS, FIRE AT FRANKSTON BIKIE BOSS ATTACK
About five bullets peppered the room where Reker’s two-week-old baby slept.
One source revealed Reker was also recently surrounded by 20 bikies from a rival gang in a Frankston hotel, with the dispute spilling onto the footpath.
Days later, several police met Reker outside the hospital, where his son was born, and took him to Frankston Station for questioning amid concerns over escalating gang tensions.
Police launched a series of raids in 2015 that shattered the Finks’ membership in Victoria, after a national “patch-over” had already significantly weakened them. But the gang has emerged once again with Reker now at the helm.
A source close to Reker said he had been “working underground” for the past few years to get the Finks re-established, after moving away from Western Australia where he was sergeant-at-arms of the Rock Machine motorcycle gang.
“He’s a straight shooter who likes good strong people,” the source said. “He hates people being hurt. That’s why he came in to clean up the Finks as he didn’t like what was going on.”
Sources have told the Herald Sun that the Finks now boasts more than 50 members in Victoria, with that number expected to grow significantly.
In 2012, Reker was jailed for three years for attempting to extort $2000 from two teens. A year earlier, Reker was awarded $5000 costs after a prosecution over a street fight with another bikie gang collapsed.
HELLS ANGELS TOP COPS’ LIST
THE Hells Angels will be a prime target of police investigations into who was behind the attack on rival Fink bikie Brent James Reker.
Frankston is considered by the Angels as their turf, with the gang operating out of nearby suburb Seaford and influencing the peninsula’s security operations.
The notorious gang has had its rifts with the Comancheros and Bandidos, two of Melbourne’s stronger bikie gangs, but the Finks have long been an Australian arch-enemy.
Hatred between them would play out in 2006 at a kickboxing event in Queensland, dubbed the “Ballroom Blitz’’.
Central to the violence that unfolded was the defection of Christopher Wayne Hudson from the Finks to the Angels.
Fists flew and chairs were hurled before five men were shot or stabbed. Hudson, who was shot in the brawl, would soon arrive in Melbourne.
Within months he would be known as the CBD killer after bashing an exotic dancer in King St before chasing down his girlfriend and shooting her and two good Samaritans in an ice-fuelled rage, killing lawyer Brendan Keilar.
By 2013, the Finks were fleeing Queensland for Victoria — branded Switzerland for its lax anti-bikie laws. They began to recruit more members and announced themselves with a national run (motorbike convoy) ending at its clubhouse in Port Melbourne.
By the end of the year, the Finks were involved in an unprecedented and bloodless national “patch-over’’ as a result of Queensland’s government declaring the club a criminal organisation.
In a decision to thwart the anti-bikie law, about 95 per cent of its members swore allegiance to the Mongols, an international outlaw motorcycle gang.
The Mongols had attempted to set up in Melbourne as early as 2011, but were booted by a rival club.
With the “patch-over’’, at least nine of 12 Finks chapters across the nation were under the Mongols banner.
A small number of Finks, who had established chapters in Melbourne and Ballarat, remained true to their colours and rejected the “patch-over’’.
After cleaning out their Port Melbourne chapter of any Finks paraphernalia, including the distinctive emblem “Bung” from the cartoon Wizard of Id, they set up in Ringwood and retained the Ballarat clubhouse. But the gang would be on the brink of extinction within two years after the Echo taskforce crippled their operations.
Investigators in 2014 conducted raids and arrested senior members following a robbery at a Ballarat hotel.
The following year, the Finks’ Ringwood clubhouse, in Melbourne’s east, would be the focus of a police sting, bugging it and gaining evidence of a plan to extort a former member of “bad standing’’.
Sergeant-at-arms Jye Carter — who went from being a Fink to a Mongol before defecting back to the Finks, was among 17 members charged with a range of offences, including a conspiracy to kidnap and extort $10,000 from the former member. A court would later hear the club was financially crippled and was struggling to pay legal fees.
They have regrouped as police have laid hundreds of charges and jailed rival bikie gang members.
The Finks have historically refused to co-operate with law enforcement agencies at any level.
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