How exiled bikie snared mates in AN0M web

Exiled Comanchero Hasan Topal led police to swoop on other bikies during the AN0M sting after he spruiked the encrypted app to his mates.

Exiled Comanchero bikie Hasan Topal pushed the disastrous AN0M app to other gangsters from his overseas bolthole, incriminating them in the process.

The Sunday Herald Sun can reveal Topal spruiked and communicated on AN0M with high-level criminals who were subsequently entangled in the worldwide Operation Ironside bust.

Sources say this means Topal has more to fear from his criminal associates than the bikie shooting victims and homicide investigators he left behind in Melbourne when he took off to Turkey almost three years ago.

Among those believed to have been impacted by Topal’s use of the encrypted app were his brother Muhammed, Victorian Comanchero sergeant-at-arms Christian Taumoefolau and some formidable Middle-Eastern organised crime identities in Melbourne, New South Wales and overseas.

Hasan Topal spruiked the AN0M app to associates.

AN0M was promoted as a surveillance-proof method of communication as it was accepted by organised crime identities.

But police had created it as a trojan horse app and were monitoring messages for a long time, before moving in an international swoop in June last year.

Muhammed Topal and Taumoefolau were among many figures arrested during the Melbourne phase of last year’s wave of arrests.

Others included Comanchero clubmates of Taumoefolau and associates, some of whom remain on remand in maximum security prisons while they wait for legal proceedings.

Former Sydney underworld figure Hakan Ayik, regarded as Australia’s most wanted man, was also a key promoter of the AN0M app.

The Sunday Herald Sun understands Topal has been in contact with Ayik while they have been in Europe.

Both are believed to have spent time in Turkey but have had their arrangements disrupted by the Ironside sweep.

Topal left Australia in April, 2019, soon after finishing a jail term in the ACT over a savage brawl between Comanchero members at a Canberra strip club.

He had rapidly ascended the Comanchero ranks, filling in as state boss while Mick Murray did a spell in jail.

The Herald Sun revealed last year Topal was under homicide squad investigation over a burst of unsolved shootings, including two homicides, in 2017.

The killings were the mistaken identity ambushes of Muhammed Yucel at Keysborough and Zabi Ezedyar at Narre Warren.

The intended targets were men connected to the Mongols OMCG.

The same weapon used to murder Mr Ezedyar was also used in the wounding of two Bandido bikies on the Bolte Bridge, the shooting of a senior Comanchero and a drive-by attack on a Richmond car hire business.

The Bandidos had identified the Comanchero as having been behind two drive-by shootings targeting its gang in 2017.

Topal was suspected by the Bandidos of being the triggerman in which three Bandidos were shot outside the Brunswick clubhouse in Weston St in April, 2017, before the drive-by on the Bolte Bridge three months later in July.