‘You just don’t go near someone’s home — all bets are off now’: Sam ‘The Punisher’ Abdulrahim survives shooting ambush
Major unspoken boundaries regarding how underworld figures settle their differences were crossed during Friday’s attempted hit on Sam ‘The Punisher’ Abdulrahim, a source has revealed.
Police & Courts
Don't miss out on the headlines from Police & Courts. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Major unspoken boundaries regarding how underworld figures settled their differences were crossed during Friday’s attempted hit on Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim, which would likely trigger retaliation attacks, an underworld source has warned.
They said “rules had been broken” by targeting Abdulrahim and his loved ones at their homes.
“The family home is off limits,” they said.
“You just don’t go near someone’s home. All bets are off now.”
Abdulrahim was lured out of his house by a hit team who set fire to the vehicles of family members.
The Herald Sun understands those relatives, who live in the northern suburbs, contacted Abdulrahim after 3am on Friday to tell him the cars had been set alight.
Abdulrahim then left his Larch St, Thomastown, home.
A hit team was laying in wait there in a stolen SUV and opened fire on the 32-year-old former Mongol bikie.
Abdulrahim somehow avoided being shot and chased the shooters in his vehicle before being forced to give up the pursuit.
Abdulrahim was not wounded and the shooters remain on the run.
Detectives collected about 17 bullets and bullet casings from outside his home and along his driveway, with a bullet hole visible in the front of the house.
A fleet of security cameras had only been installed at the boxer and gangland figure’s two-storey townhouse in recent weeks.
A tall, black steel fence had been erected several months ago.
Organised crime police have repeatedly warned Abdulrahim that he has a target on his back.
“There’s so many people that want him dead. He’s got multiple significant enemies,” one source said.
“He hasn’t sought to make himself a small target.”
The Herald Sun has been told Abdulrahim has made no attempt to withdraw from the illicit tobacco sector, which has generated so much of the volatility which has engulfed Melbourne’s underworld in the past year.
It is not clear whether the Abdulrahim attack has any link to a shooting on the Western Ring Rd at Jacana this month
In that May 7 incident, a 50-year-old Truganina man suffered life-threatening wounds when shots rang out near Pascoe Vale Rd.
He later presented himself to hospital after what investigators suspect was a targeted incident.
The attack on Abdulrahim comes during a period of gangland instability in which some of the biggest names in Melbourne organised crime have come under attack.
In August last year, career criminal Mohammed “Afghan Ali” Keshtiar was shot dead at South Yarra in an ambush with suspected links to illicit tobacco trade conflict.
Feared underworld player Gavin Preston was murdered a month later at the Sweet Lulu Cafe in a hail of bullets which wounded his mate AJ Maghnie.
Robert Issa died in a shopping centre ambush car park at Craigieburn in October.
In December, it was the turn of Mohammed Oueida whose family came under attack as he languished in a Perth prison awaiting trial on drug charges.
Thugs opened fire on the Fawkner home of his parents in a terrifying late-night incident.
Drug boss George Marrogi’s family was also singled out last July when the remains of his late sister Meshilin were dragged from her crypt.
Abdulrahim has for years been aligned to the Haddara and Marrogi crime families, bitter foes of exiled gangland kingpin Kazen Hamad.
The hit attempt comes in a period of escalating tobacco wars tensions as shops and other businesses are torched after a month of relative quiet in the conflict.
Hamad has in the past 18 months aggressively moved to take over the illicit tobacco market previously dominated by the Haddaras.
Abdulrahim’s life has for years been under threat from underworld rivals.
Associates of northern suburbs drug dealer Kadir Ors blamed Abdulrahim when he was shot by George Marrogi at Campbellfield Plaza in 2016.
Abdulrahim had been talking to Ors at a bus stop in the minutes before Marrogi pounced.
Maytham Hamad, the brother of Kaz Hamad, then pursued Marrogi through the streets of the northern suburbs.
Marrogi was forced to open fire on Hamad’s vehicle at the height of the drama.
Police later successfully applied to have the parole of Abdulrahim revoked because of multiple threats to his life.
Gangland investigators have on numerous occasions warned him of contracts on his life.
Despite this, Abdulrahim has not gone underground and some observers have been surprised he was living in a residential street in Thomastown.
He has continued his boxing career, recently fighting in Thailand.
The Herald Sun revealed earlier this month that Abdulrahim had become aligned to the powerful Sydney-based gang Brothers for Life.
Brothers for Life is a Middle-eastern organised crime gang linked to shootings and other underworld attacks in New South Wales.
One of its leading lights, Mohammed “Little Crazy” Hamzy, was recently photographed with Abdulrahim.
Abdulrahim has been the target of several assassination attempts in recent years.
There were reports of another attempt on his life in February shortly before a venue due to host his fight for a major boxing title went up in flames.
In 2022, he was sprayed with bullets as he left his cousin’s funeral in Fawkner.
Friday’s reported attempt follows a spate of smoke shop fires in recent weeks that reignited the fight for control over the state’s illicit tobacco trade.
A long-time resident of Abdulrahim’s Thomastown street, Giuseppina Ali, said Friday’s attempted hit was the first violent incident she had seen in her street in almost 50 years.
“I saw the police. They closed the street before somebody told me somebody had been shot,” she said.
“It’s a very quiet street I’ve never seen anything like that.
“It was very scary. Before, there was never anything like this happening.”
Punisher’s business ventures under fire
Abdulrahim’s suite of businesses has also been subject to a series of firebombing attacks in recent months.
His alignment to the under siege Haddara clan has seen Abdulrahim’s assets dragged into the escalating turf war.
In March of this year a Sunshine West milk bar connected to Abdulrahim was firebombed.
He also has ties to a Young St smoke shop in Moonee Ponds which has been torched and targeted on three separate occasions.
The repeated attacks in May and June last year almost completely destroyed the smoke and vape shop in the busy shopping hub.
That shop was formerly a beautician business named Queen of the West, which was registered to Amira Abdulrahim, sister to Sam.
A northern suburbs gym linked to the 32-year-old was also razed by fire in October last year.
The Power Gymnasium on Holmes St in Brunswick was suspiciously set alight in the early hours of the morning but the cause of the fire remains unknown.
More Coverage
Doctor who cut wife’s throat with kitchen knife won’t face criminal charges
A doctor who sliced open his dead wife’s throat and waited more than three hours to call an ambulance won’t be charged after detectives found there was “insufficient evidence” to secure a conviction.
Questions linger 12 months on from Gavin Preston’s very public murder
It’s been 12 months since standover man Gavin Preston was gunned down in broad daylight at a busy Keilor cafe and there’s still much we don’t know about his very public killing.