Bikies Vic: Finks’ Sione Hokafonu, Poiva Sita cleared of Mongols Rocco Curra attempted murder
Police investigated whether an attempted bikie hit was linked to the death of fruiterer Paul Virgona.
Police & Courts
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Police investigated whether the horrific freeway murder of fruiterer Paul Virgona was revenge for the attempted hit on Mongol bikie Rocco Curra.
It comes as Finks Sione Hokafonu and Poiva Sita were on Tuesday acquitted of the attempted murder of Curra, who was shot in the head and chest while he sat in a car outside a home in Bulleen in Melbourne’s northeast.
One theory is that Mr Virgona died because of a succession of violent tit-for-tat attacks which began with a State-of-Origin pub fight four months earlier and grew into full-tilt gang warfare.
The innocent businessman was not involved in any of it but had the misfortune of living in the same Croydon street as a Finks bikie who had become a murder target.
It was that man who is believed to have been the intended victim of the attack on Mr Virgona, ruthlessly carried out by a blundering Mongols hit team.
The gangs had been in bitter conflict for months, with at least three people wounded in the period before the shooting of Mr Virgona as he travelled to work on EastLink.
On July 10, 2019, Finks members had gathered at The Sporting Globe bar in Fountain Gate shopping centre to watch New South Wales take on Queensland.
Among them was high-ranking member Hokafonu, a hulking man dressed in a Finks T-shirt who looked as though he could have been a starting prop for either team.
Also there was Mongols associate Liam Ryan.
When Ryan threw a salt shaker at a TV screen during the broadcast, a number of Finks dragged him outside and assaulted him.
Then, in what was a major bikie-world insult, his Mongols clothing was ripped off by the assailants.
Prosecutors likened it to a “trophy”.
Hokafonu and other Finks were heading home just after 11pm when, as he stood waiting at traffic lights, a gunman emerged and shot him in the foot.
The man labelled the OMCG’s world president went to hospital where he was patched in the company of another member, former Comanchero Elvin Bafto.
No charges were ever laid over the matter but the Finks believed they knew who was responsible.
About 10 days later, a Mongol was shot in an attack suspected of being linked to what had happened at Fountain Gate.
Curra was then shot on August 1.
Police were told that a woman linked to the gang was allegedly to be paid $5000 for setting him up in a “honey-trap” which resulted in the near-fatal ambush at Bulleen.
But Hokafonu, 29, and Sita, 32, were on Tuesday acquitted by a Supreme Court jury of his attempted murder and another member, Joseph Opapo, 27, was found not guilty of causing serious injury intentionally in circumstances of gross violence.
The trio denied any involvement, claiming police had the wrong men, and it took jurors less than three days of deliberations to acquit them.
They showed little emotion as the verdict was read out and refused to comment outside court.
Regardless of who shot Curra, the Mongols are believed to have formed the view that the Finks OMCG was responsible.
On November 9, Mr Virgona was to die in a Mexican drug cartel-style killing as he drove to work at Epping Market in the early hours on EastLink.
Police investigated whether it was the result of the earlier chain of conflict but the truth about why it happened may never be known.
Investigators were eventually able to establish and prove Mongol members Josh Ryder and Aaron Ong were the killers and both are doing long jail terms.
It is believed likely that others were involved in the events on EastLink.
Curra was a respected member of the Mongols and the attack on him would have angered his close, influential associates in the club.
But the secrecy of the bikie world and the potential consequences of talking to police means knowing why they did it may never surface.
What is suspected is that a Fink who lived nearby was the man who was meant to die.
It is also likely that Ryder and Ong expected he may leave home in the early hours, otherwise they would not have been waiting at such a time.
They followed him in their Mercedes-Benz to where one opened fire with a semiautomatic handgun while the other drove.
Ong and Rider then drove to a building site in Mooroolbark where they torched it and climbed into a Volkswagen Amarok utility.
A builder who had installed a camera at the site then alerted police who pursued the Amarok.
The killers abandoned the ute and escaped but they had left behind incriminating evidence in their haste.
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