A big target on flashy ‘Fathead’

On Natasha Youkhana’s 51st birthday, her partner, drug kingpin Alen Moradian, was killed, execution-style, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Alen Moradian.

He was one of the biggest players in Sydney’s underworld drug market and a Versace-obsessed gangster. She runs a health food store in the sleepy town of Richmond and was friends with slain gangster Lametta Fadallah.

On Natasha Youkhana’s 51st birthday on Tuesday, her partner, drug kingpin Alen Moradian, was killed, execution-style, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Moradian, known as “Fathead”, was involved in what was at one time Australia’s biggest ­cocaine trial and was sentenced in 2011 to 16 years for his role as a kingpin of the “Golden Gun’’ drug-smuggling ring.

Alen Moradian's wife Natasha Moradian, left, pictured beside murdered gangster Lametta Fadlallah. Picture: Facebook

The 48-year-old arrived in Australia with his family in 1980. Court records list his country of birth as Iraq but company records variously list Iran and the Russia.

When Moradian was sentenced for his role in the cocaine ring, judge Andrew Haesler said he was a man motivated by greed who, during that period of his ­offending, “sought to live outside the law, enjoying the substantial material profits and rewards available to those high up in the ­illicit drug trade”. Moradian’s prison sentence was set to end in late 2017. In a letter to the court ahead of his sentencing in 2011, Moradian expressed a desire to “start afresh”.

On Tuesday morning he was found shot dead in his car in an underground carpark on Spring St, Bondi Junction.

Detective Superintendent Danny Doherty said Moradian had a “a big target on his back” and was a major player in the Sydney underworld who had links to the Comanchero bikie gang.

When the national president of the Comanchero bikie gang, Allan Meehan, was handed a serious crime prevention order in November, Moradian was one of the people he was ordered by the court not to approach, contact, speak to, or associate directly or indirectly with.

Neighbours say they saw Moradian at his Kurrajong Hills home in the Hawkesbury region as recently as last week alongside Ms Youkhana, who would often be seen mowing the lawns or supervising the construction of the fence at the home they purchased last year for $2.35m.

A neighbour said Moradian had been working on a large black fence, over 2m high with spikes, and was near completion. “I think they’re trying to keep someone out,” a neighbour said.

Ms Youkhana was seen leaving a Bondi Junction apartment complex about 11am on Tuesday following the shooting but declined to speak.

The 51-year-old rebranded a wholefoods store in Richmond called Kiana Organics earlier this year. At the time, she told the Hawkesbury Gazette she took over the business during the pandemic because she wanted a job closer to home and had previously been travelling into the city to an IT job.

“A lot of people during the lockdowns re-evaluated their life, their careers, spending more time with family,” she said. “I have had a cafe in the past but this is something totally different. It sort of just happened organically – pun intended.”

Ms Youkhana once ran a car hire business, called Go 2 Go Rentals, with murdered female reputed gangster Lametta Fadallah, who was shot dead in August 2022, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The close friends operated the business from 2007 to 2012. There is no suggestion Ms Youkhana was involved in any wrongdoing.