Australia’s ‘Big 6’ motorcycle clubs and how they are changing
A new breed now filling the ranks of the “Big 6” – the Hells Angels, Comanchero, Mongols, Bandidos, Finks and Rebels – do not resemble the bearded bikers of the past. SEE THE VIDEO
The rivers of illicit money flowing through Australia’s bikie gangs keep them rolling on.
But while some outlaws live the high-life in Australia and abroad, others are lured into bikie gangs to do the dirty work and, when police come knocking, take the fall.
The outlaw motorcycle gang landscape has markedly changed from the founding days of “one per cent” motorcycle clubs in Australia.
A new breed now filling the ranks of the “Big 6” – the Hells Angels, Comanchero, Mongols, Bandidos, Finks and Rebels – do not resemble the bearded bikers of the past.
And with tougher state laws and a national focus on these gangs, they are becoming more ruthless.
Long serving “soldiers” are also being turfed and often bashed on the way out.
There are 44 recognised outlaw gangs across Australia with many of the senior members established as Middle Eastern Organised Crime (MEOC) players.
COMANCHERO
HISTORY OF THE COMANCHEROS
The Comanchero have been the most problematic gang for law enforcement in Australia for more than a decade.
Its powerbase has resided between Sydney and Melbourne, but borders do not matter to this gang, which has expanded its presence into Europe.
The “Comos” have a new Victorian (state) Commander, Yoshaan Vincent – a convicted drug trafficker from Melbourne’s east who has hoarded military grade weapons for the gang.
Since 2022, Allan Meehan, dubbed the bathrobe bikie, has been its national president.
But the gang has hit some hurdles in recent years.
The ANOM sting – a project combining US Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Australian Federal Police’s – alongside other significant investigations into some of the club’s members has led to significant arrests, damaging its capabilities.
The club remains a transnational player within the outlaw scene with members dotted across the globe, particularly in Dubai.
It has also been in business with Sydney’s Alameddine family, who have been a target of NSW police. The Comanchero even had the audacity to establish “The Commission”, which fixed the price of drugs and attempted to control supply to maximise its profits.
Their dominance, however, has landed plenty of their number in prison.
Tarek Zahed is the latest to go back inside.
He was wanted in NSW and Victoria for allegedly breaching his parole conditions. Authorities would also like to serve justice on other senior figures such as Hakan Ayik and Hasan Topal, who are languishing in Turkish prisons.
INFAMY
The bloodshed of the Comanchero shootout with the Bandidos in Milperra, NSW, in 1984. It was dubbed the Father’s Day Massacre.
Also the Sydney Airport brawl with the Hells Angels in 2009. Mick Hawi, later murdered himself, was convicted of manslaughter over the death of Zervas in the airport brawl.
THE NOTORIOUS “COMOS”
Allan Meehan
The Comanchero’ national president, has held on to power of the Comanchero longer than expected.
But it may be a case that although he has the stripes, he doesn’t truly call the shots.
Police hold intelligence files on Meehan stretching back to his teenage years.
Hasan Topal
The model-turned-bikie is on Australia’s most wanted list.
A suspected hit man, Topal left Australia as police began to circle over two unsolved murders.
The former model is also suspected of numerous non-fatal shootings and international drug smuggling.
Before he left Australia for the Middle-East, Topal was suspected to have been the target of a hit-plot himself.
The international fugitive was among major underworld figures allegedly involved in the ill-fated ANOM communications platform which was used by criminals to broker huge drug deals.
He was arrested by Turkish authorities two years ago but it’s unclear if he was released.
Tarek Zahed
Zahed is back in jail. But it probably won’t be for long.
The senior Comanchero, who was left blind in one eye in a 2022 ambush that left his brother dead at an Auburn gym in Sydney, was on parole over hindering a homicide investigation.
After months on the run, the “Balenciaga bikie” was found in October 2025 at a property in Dundas Valley, in Sydney’s north west, after police searched for him in NSW and Victoria.
HELLS ANGELS
HISTORY OF THE HELLS ANGELS
The Hells Angels are among the highest profile targets for Australian law enforcement.
Known for its discipline, it is one of the few gangs to penetrate Western Australia, which has historically been dominated by the Gypsy Jokers and Coffin Cheaters.
Its stronghold, however, is in Sydney and Melbourne.
The “Angels” are synonymous with some of Australia’s most violent outbreaks.
In 2009, a brawl at Sydney Airport between the Comanchero and Hells Angels left one of its associates, Anthony Zervas, dead.
The violence, in front of passengers checking in for flights, was sparked following a scuffle between “Como” bikie boss.
Mahmoud “Mick” Hawi and Hells Angel president Derek Wainohu as they disembarked a flight. It led to a larger confrontation inside the airport when more bikies arrived.
The same year a teenage German tourist was bashed by a Hells Angel with a baseball bat inside Melbourne’s Nomad’s chapter in Thomastown, north of the city, for falsely claiming to be a member of the gang.
Hells Angel Glyn Dickman only stopped beating the 18-year-old when he ran out of breath. Two years earlier, enforcer Christopher Wayne Hudson opened fire in Melbourne’s CBD, killing a lawyer and shooting a tourist who attempted to intervene as he attacked his girlfriend.
Hudson’s defection from the Finks to the Hells Angels also sparked what was dubbed the “Ballroom Blitz” at a kickboxing event at the Royal Pines resort in 2006.
Five men were shot or stabbed as bikies from both gangs.
THE NOTORIOUS “ANGELS”
Luke Moloney
The influential Melbourne boss says he quit the club years ago.
Moloney was one of the fallen “Angels” embroiled in the CFMEU scandal that led to the powerful union being put into administration.
The former Angel City chapter president told a judge his bikie gang days were over.
“You have since renounced your club membership and you have disassociated yourself from members and supporters of that club,” Judge Richard Maidment said of Moloney.
Peter “Skitzo” Hewat
The Hells Angel known as “Skitzo” failed to see the club’s new direction.
The end came quickly for the former enforcer at Melbourne’s East County chapter but there was no HR department for Peter “Skitzo” Hewat to complain about his axing.
Hewat, 70, devoted his life to the Angels.
When the tow truck owner arrived at jobs, he would intimidate other drivers. And when an elderly woman found his dog, Harley, he punched her for asking for proof of ownership. He was jailed for 10 months for that 2013 incident.
But earlier this year it was Hewat on the receiving end. There would be no “lifetime” membership for the ageing Hewat.
MONGOLS
HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS
The Mongols arrived in Australia in 2011 and began taking what they wanted.
Instead of recruiting members, it conducted a national “patch over’’ of the Finks in 2013.
It was a bloodless coup.
The Mongols, a heavyweight gang with networks across the globe, was originally a California-based club set up in 1969 by returned soldiers who were rejected by the Hells Angels because of their race.
Between 1971 and 1980 they waged war with the “Angels” over territory and the right to wear “California” on their vests.
In Australia, the Mongols recruits included young men who preferred Lamborghinis over motorcycles.
One of them would become one of the most significant players in Australia’s illicit tobacco trade – Kazem Hamad.
Although it’s not clear if Hamad was a “patched” member or an associate, he was pictured with gang members on a national run in Canberra.
It seemed a perfect fit to have an established bikie in their ranks who was unafraid to rumble even after being riddled with bullets from rivals and surviving.
But Mitchell and his lieutenants, Sam Abdulrahim and Mark Balsillie, were purged by Nick “The Knife” Forbes within three years.
Balsillie has since joined the Finks, Mitchell has quit being a bikie and Abdulrahim was murdered in Preston earlier this year.
Two of its Victorian members, Josh Rider and Aaron Ong, have been jailed over the mistaken identity murder of fruiterer Paul Virgona, who was shot while driving along EastLink in 2019.
INFAMY
The mistaken identity shooting of fruiterer Paul Virgona as he drove on the Eastern Freeway in November, 2019.
THE NOTORIOUS MONGOLS
Nick ‘The Knife’ Forbes
The Queenslander was part of a the infamous Finks “Terror Team” – which is tattooed on his neck – which started one of the wildest bikie brawls this country has seen, The Ballroom Blitz.
The kickboxing event at the Royal Pines resort in 2006 was abruptly ended when Forbes and other Finks ambushed Hells Angels.
It landed him in jail, as did another wild brawl in South Australia against the Hells Angels.
Forbes was key to ousting Toby Mitchell, Balsillie and Abdulrahim from the gang in what was an overthrow of its Victorian leadership.
Troy Mercanti
Mercanti was accused of rape in Western Australia last year.
Then his alleged victim, who police told a court was threatened by Mongols members online, decided not to withdraw her complaint.
The former Fink turned Mongol was awarded $1500 in costs.
He was jailed in 2013 for a series of brutal assaults on a long-term girlfriend, which included breaking her ribs, fracturing her eye socket and public humiliations.
Shane Bowden
Bowden picked the wrong bike.
A champion youth cyclist, the powerful Bowden could have been an Olympian.
Instead, he chose motorcycles and gang life.
It led him to the Finks and the infamous “Ballroom Blitz” – a Gold Coast kickboxing event where he non-fatally shot Christopher Wayne Hudson for defecting to the Hells Angels.
Later, Hudson would commit murder. And Bowden would become a murder victim.
But Hudson was not his killer.
In 2020, Bowden was chauffeur driven in a stretch limousine from Loddon Prison in country Victoria complete with a Mongol escort into the arms of the club in 2020.
But the good times didn’t last.
Soon after he was booted from the Mongols in “bad standing”.
It was clear Bowden’s life was in peril when he flouted Covid-19 protocols to flee Victoria for Queensland, having been shot at a house in Epping.
It is believed he had returned to the Finks, his original club.
It didn’t save him.
Four months later, in October 2020, Bowden, 48, was fatally ambushed after returning from a gym session to his Gold Coast home.
He was shot 21 times.
Charges have been laid over Bowden’s murder.
BANDIDOS
HISTORY OF THE BANDIDOS
The Bandidos are etched into Australian outlaw bikie infamy for its deadly conflict with the Comanchero at Milperra in 1984, dubbed the “Father’s Day Massacre”.
More than four decades on, both gangs remain thorns in the side of law enforcement.
The club’s National President, “Big Tony” Vartiainen, believes the club gets a bad rap from the press.
But even his rise to the top did not come without risk, as he has written in his book.
The bandits have had their fair share of conflict.
In 2020, a “motley crew” of men murdered one of their chapter presidents, Shane De Britt.
He was in bed and watching TV when murdered “execution-style” at his home in Eurimbla, NSW.
It was alleged De Britt had been involved in attempting to shut down a social club called the Grudge Bringers, stripping the misfits of their colours, before his death.
Other Bandidos have also ended up a target.
In 2011, the club’s Sgt-at-Arms Toby Mitchell was shot seven times in full view of shoppers outside the Bandidos’ then Melbourne headquarters.
The infamous Mitchell was a sitting duck when masked gunmen opened fire upon him.
The hit men were suspected to be underworld figures Gavin Preston and Nabil Maghnie, who years later forge links with the Comanchero before they too would be murdered at the end of a gun in separate shootings.
Mayhem erupted again in the years that followed.
In 2014, Michael Strike, 38, was bashed to death inside the Brunswick chapter before his body was dumped outside a cemetery.
His offence was to annoy one of the Bandidos’ dogs, named Trouble, tied up outside the clubhouse.
The Bandidos were evicted in 2020, but have started a new chapter – “North Melbourne” – this year.
INFAMY
The Bandidos were embroiled in a shootout with rivals the Comanchero in Milperra, NSW, in 1984, dubbed the Father’s Day Massacre.
Comanchero leader was convicted of manslaughter, while a jury delivered 63 murder convictions to other bikies. Six bikies, and a young, innocent girl, were killed in the shocking incident.
THE NOTORIOUS “BANDITS”
Stevan Utah
The Australian Crime Commission had a man inside the Bandidos, a source so good they spruiked it in a press release.
The 2006 blunder left Utah looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. He was bashed before he fled to Canada and wrote a book.
The former soldier infiltrated a Queensland chapter of the Bandidos as an “associate” and gave authorities information on serious crimes including murder.
Utah led investigators to the body of Victorian Earl Mooring, which Utah said he witnessed.
Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board gave Utah refugee status and accepted evidence there were murder contracts on his head.
Jason Addison
Addison rose to the rank of Bandidos national president, a meteoric rise for a stone mason from small town Echuca on Victoria’s Murray River.
As boss, he largely went under the radar.
Addison would ultimately “patch over” to the Mongols with other members of his chapter.
But he fell out with them too, forced out by Nick Forbes during a Melbourne purge of its leadership.
In mid-2022, Addison found out what it was like to be at the receiving end of bikie brutality.
The grandfather was bashed by at least three men at a motorcycle show at the central Victorian town of Knowsley.
The men, allegedly linked to the Bandidos, knocked his front teeth out and battered his head.
REBELS
HISTORY OF THE REBELS
No other “one per cent” bikie gang has the number of members the Rebels boast.
But one of their number will go down as one of the most ruthless hit men to ever wear bikie colours in Australia.
Sydney gunman Abuza “Asa” Sultani – now jailed for life – committed five murders between 2013 and 2016.
After his arrest, Sultani, a former university masters student, confessed to the slayings of Michael Davey, Mehmet Yilmaz and mafiosa figure Pasquale Barbaro, all shot dead within seven months of each other in 2016.
The serial killer has also been convicted of the bashing murder of Nikola Srbin, an 18-year-old he attacked three years earlier in Sydney’s CBD and Mark Easter in 2015.
Both Easter and Davey were fellow Rebels.
As reported by this masthead, an investigation is ongoing into whether Sultani was the gunman who shot dead Khaled “KK” Abouhasna in Melbourne’s west in 2015.
It is believed the passenger in Abouhasna’s car, illicit tobacco king Kazem Hamad, was the intended target.
In 2020, the Rebels made headlines when a trained sniper murdered former president Nick Martin at a Perth speedway.
INFAMY
The fatal shooting of deposed Rebels president Nick Martin by a sniper at a motorplex in Perth.
THE NOTORIOUS REBELS
Shane Martin
More famous than notorious, the father of AFL great Dustin had his Australian visas cancelled due to their links to the Rebels.
Shane was forced to return to his homeland, New Zealand, on “character grounds” in 2016. He died of a heart attack in 2021.
Aaron “AJ” Graham
The bikie boss was deported to New Zealand, in 2017 despite fighting the Australian Government all the way to the High Court. Graham was a founding member of the Hobart chapter.
The intimidating Graham once made a teenage fraud investigator sit on a chair and look at a flag flying above Graham’s home. As he did, Graham unleashed a violent attack.
FINKS
HISTORY OF THE FINKS
The Finks have their roots in Adelaide, and were named after a line in the newspaper comic strip the Wizard of Id.
They were listed as a serious criminal organisation by the South Australian government in 2009.
That meant they were not allowed to associate or meet in public. The club had also moved into Perth, but that created tension with the WA-based Coffin Cheaters motorcycle club.
There was a brawl at the Perth Motorplex where a Finks member had three fingers cut off during a fight with Coffin Cheaters’ members.
The club had planned to set up a new home in Victoria, advertising for new members in 2011.
As many as 90 per cent of the Finks members patched over to the Mongols in 2013.
Kosh Radford, their leader, fronted a Melbourne court in 2019, which heard he was the “world leader” of the Finks.
Radford claimed he was a stay at home dad as he defended charges over an assault at the Centrefold Lounge Strip club in Melbourne’s King St. He was convicted of common assault and fined $6000.
INFAMY
A fight between the Finks and Hells Angels at a kickboxing event on the Gold Coast was dubbed “The Ballroom Blitz”. The violence erupted over the defection of Christopher Wayne Hudson to the Angels. Five gang members were shot or stabbed
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Originally published as Australia’s ‘Big 6’ motorcycle clubs and how they are changing
