REVEALED: Tassie bikies on wrong side of the law
From drug trafficking crimes, to assaults and firearms offences, some Tasmanian bikie club members and associates have been caught on the wrong side of the law. We take a look at Tasmania’s most notorious bikies and their criminal rap sheets.
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FROM drug trafficking crimes, to assaults and firearms offences, some Tasmanian bikie club members and associates have been caught on the wrong side of the law.
The Mercury today looks at some of Tasmania’s most notorious bikies and their criminal rap sheets.
Aaron (AJ) Graham
Club: Rebels
Rebels bikie gang member Aaron Joe Graham has a hefty criminal history, and has been shut out of Australia.
Graham, the founding member of the Rebels in Tasmania and former president of the Kingston chapter, was deported to his native New Zealand in 2017.
He had been in immigration detention since 2015 after he was swooped up in a bikie crackdown.
There were two attempts to have his visa cancelled to see him deported to NZ, which saw action taken in the Federal Court and High Court.
But Immigration Minister Peter Dutton cancelled his visa a third time as Graham prepared to walk free from Villawood Detention Centre in NSW.
Graham’s criminal record
2009: Graham was jailed for a minimum of 10 months for a brutal and sustained attack on a young insurance fraud investigator in southern Tasmania who was carrying out surveillance on a suspected insurance cheat in Graham’s neighbourhood in 2008.
2008: Graham was convicted of possessing a firearm without a licence.
2004: In South Australia, he was convicted of carrying an offensive weapon (a knife).
1999: Graham was found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm to Stephen Bannister, who Tasmania’s Supreme Court heard was beaten with a shovel and had both of his achilles tendons cut in a two-man attack in October 1998. He successfully appealed against his conviction and was cleared of the crime by a second jury at a retrial.
1994: He is jailed for assault and possessing a sawn-off .22 rifle.
Colin Picard
Club: Rebels
COLIN David Picard was a decade-long leader of the Tasmanian Rebels Motorcycle Club but lost his bid to avoid deportation and was sent home in 2016.
The former Rebels state president, then aged 69, was to be sent back to his native New Zealand on release from Risdon Prison, where he was serving a drug trafficking sentence.
Picard, then of Ravenswood, was jailed in 2013 for three years for his role at the “apex of a trafficking chain”, after being arrested and charged in 2011.
He pleaded guilty to trafficking 36 ounces of methylamphetamine between November 1, 2010 and July 5, 2011.
His demise saw the end of the Launceston Rebels chapter, which closed its clubhouse.
In 2015, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton cancelled his visa.
Mr Dutton said Picard’s 27-year membership of the Rebels, his continued connection with the club and his poor financial state had cast “doubt on his prospects for avoiding further criminal behaviour”.
Ryan Zmendak
Club: Rebels (associate)
The Tasmanian man and Rebels associate pleaded guilty to importing $5 million worth of ice from the UK and was jailed in 2017 for eight years.
Zmendak had pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking in methylamphetamine and one count of conspiracy to commit the crime of trafficking.
The crimes were uncovered as part of a 2014 operation between the Australian Crime Commission, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, and Tasmania Police.
When jailed, he was to be eligible for parole in January 2021.
Todd Walker
Club: Bandidos
A MAN police said was the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Mersey River chapter of the Bandidos was jailed in 2018 for firearms trafficking.
Todd Walker fronted Devonport Magistrates’ Court in 2016 on charges including assault, unlawfully possess a dangerous article in a public place and unlawful possession of property.
In the Supreme Court in Burnie in 2018, Walker was sentenced to six months in prison after pleading guilty to selling a 9mm Glock self-loading pistol with a 15-round magazine and two boxes of cartridges.
A suspended sentence of six months jail was also reactivated by the judge with sentences to be served cumulatively.
Jason Browning
Club: Rebels
THE former Hobart bikie boss who tried to buy $42,000 worth of methylamphetamine avoided jail time for that crime, but was still forced to do time in prison.
Jason Noel Browning, then aged 46, was sentenced in April 2014 in the Supreme Court to a wholly suspended seven-month jail term.
Browning, who was a former president of the Hobart chapter of the Rebels, had pleaded guilty to trafficking three ounces of methylamphetamine in 2011.
He was busted in Tasmania Police’s Operation Dorothy, which was considered one of the most successful drug operations in Tasmanian history.
Browning avoided jail for the drug trafficking crime, but had to serve three months after a judge activated a suspended sentence imposed on the former bikie in 2010.
The court heard in 2014 Browning was drug free, had disassociated from bikies and ran a business at New Norfolk.
Leonard Bird
Club: Outlaws
A court heard Leonard Frederick Charles Bird was the ringleader in the “torture and torment” of a man he thought was from a rival bikie group.
Bird was jailed in 2008 over the 2006 incident when he took a man hostage at the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in Bridgewater.
He grabbed the man by the collar and dragged him up the driveway while punching and hitting him with a baseball bat and 8-ball cue.
Bird and four others bashed the man and ran a studded glove or arm-band up and down both sides of his face, and a bucket of disinfectant was thrown over him.
The judge described it as a “prolonged period of torture and torment” and an “appalling beating” that the victim suffered psychological damage over.
Allan Mackenzie
Club: Rebels
THE Rebels Motorcycle Club member was jailed in 2003 after being convicted of breaking into his ex-wife’s house and beating her husband with three other club members.
Allan James MacKenzie, was found guilty by a jury in the Supreme Court of aggravated burglary and causing grievous bodily harm in October 2001 at Forcett.
The judge jailed him for three years for what was described as “an outrageous piece of violence” which was carried out with “breathtaking arrogance”.
The victim spent 14 days in hospital and had to undergo two surgical procedures for the injuries he suffered.
The court heard MacKenzie became a member of the Rebels in 1999 when he joined the club through his interest in Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
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