Mafia in Australia?

I've always wondered if there actually was a proper mafia presence in Australia. Currently, the only crime you hear about in the headlines either revolves around middle eastern crime gangs or outlaw biker gangs but never anything mafia related.

So if anyone has anything on mafia in present day Australia, give us a yell.

No mafia that I'm aware of but not a good place to go hitchhiking.

I'm sure by just using a simple google search you will be able to find that there has been a long presence of Italian organized crime in Australia.

What do you have a no show job with that union gegt up off your ass delly go take a dump make something to eat

no not a no show, its a no work job... ya know like in the sopranos where everybody seating around in lawn chairs dressed in track suits looking like jerkoffs.

I know there has been a mafia presence in Australia, particularly in melbourne and rural NSW but what I was interested in was Australian mafia operating right now in Australia. Allegedly there are some groups in Australia that are connected to Ndrangheta in Italy but there's not much info on that.

There are at least 3 groups in Melbourne:
Calabrese Crime Family
Honoured Society
Carlton Crew

'Ndrangheta has Aus. divided up into 6 pieces: Adelaide, Melbourne, Griffith, Canberra, South Australia, New South Wales.

The Barbaro 'Ndrina is in Melbourne and Griffith.

Good updated info in this article:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/mafia-link-to-melbourne-pizza-wars-20140307-34cyp.html

There is an Irish group, Moran Family, in Melbourne as well..

That's about all I know without spending hours digging for things.

Thanks for the link, mate

The "mafia" here in Australia is actually Ndrine.
As opposed to the USA where the family's (LCN)make anyone of Italian background, the family's here are primarily related along bloodlines and most actually hail from two towns, Siderno and Plati in Calabria, dividing them into two groups along these lines.
In Adelaide, South Aus. there is what's known as the "seven cells of Adelaide". Predominantly organized along family(blood) lines but all one big Family. They are Sergi, Barbaro, Trimboli, Romeo, Nirta, Alvaro and Perre.
In Melbourne, Victoria you have family's Italiano, Arena,, Muratore, Benvenuto, and Condello.
Other family's of note are Medici, Musitano, Pochi and Agresta.
You will find them in all capital cities and across major rural locations like SA's Riverland, Mildura and Shepparton in Victoria and famously, Griffith New South Wales.
They are involved in all the traditional crimes that the mafia is known for. In recent years there has been multiple arrests over drugs. Once the primary supplier for marijuana across Oz, they have branched out into amphetamine and coke with connections back to Europe and with Mexican cartels.
They have a strong presence in labour racketeering especially in the construction, transport,gaming and produce industries.
For many years standover tactics were used even on some of the nations largest supermarket retailers (Coles)to force them to buy fruit and veg from certain wholesalers. The profits were in the tens of millions.
They had rackets at Victoria's wholesale produce markets shaking down sellers for stands, buyers for loading of product. This went on for decades.
Some years back they had heavy ties with unions on the docks in many Australian ports but I haven't heard much on this for some time since John Howard's(then prime minister) anti union clean up of the stevedore industry in the mid to late 90's.
In Aus. there is a great need from law enforcement to go after easy and highly visible targets like OMG's that bring big media attention with staged seizures and nice perp walks for the cameras to make it seem like their doing their jobs, so long, protracted, expensive type investigations that are required to takedown long established organized crime syndicates are often overlooked in favour of the quickie arrest and flip type of policing...hence you don't hear a great deal about the Italians often.
N'drangheta has had a presence in Australia dating back to at least the early 19th century. A lot of the early cases are readily available with a quick Google search. See: Melbourne produce market wars. Donald McKay murder.
Some later ones of note is the case of Dominic Marafiote who was killed in Mildura(rural Victoria) on the same night his parents, Carmelo and Rosa were clipped in Adelaide.
Dominic Perre a high ranking South Australian member heavily involved in Marijuana and amphetamine distribution who's crew blew up the NCA (national crime authority) offices with a letter bomb in Adelaide, killing the leading detective.
Peitroantonio Cerullo who was arrested with 317kg of coke and 3 million in cash in Prospect, an Adelaide suburb.
Two brother in laws, Rocco Medici and Giuseppe Furina who were capped and dumped in the Murray river for following a breakaway group led by Vince Angilleta (also blown away)
Ranking mobster Tony Romeo shot gunned at his Griffith orchard while pruning a peach tree, allegedly for stepping out with another's wife. Link to story: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/29/1027926854483.html

There has been a couple of attempts at infiltrating with law enforcement undercovers but these often can only go so high due to the insular nature of only making blood relatives and a lot of intra family marriage making the ties strong and the desire to rat less attractive.
There was a making ceremony recorded in a Melbourne house a couple of years back. It was on the net for a while but its entirely spoken in Italian, so unless you speak it I haven't seen any transcripts released that have been translated.

A good link to the story of Capo Nicola Ciconte. Huge bust in 2004 with over 150 arrests.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-ord...2-1226678168792

A link to Gangsters inc site with section on Aus mafia.
http://z14.invisionfree.com/GangstersInc/ar/t57.htm

Link to news article on induction ceremony.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-ord...2-1226679012810

Link to news report on history of aussie mob. Deals predominantly with Melbourne.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-ord...k-1226678598417

http://www.academia.edu/1810710/Family_Influence_Italian_mafia_crime_group_in_Australia

Google Bruno "the fox" Romeo of the Romeo/Rispori family

DiMaggio's info is good, accurate and in-depth.

Yes, you hear a lot about 'MEOC' (Middle Eastern Organized Crime) in Sydney.

Australian cops are lazy, over-paid and over-resourced idiots. Total dipshits. Total waste of tax-payer money.

Too many young rookie cops with no life-experience drive around Sydney in squad cars at night, looking for something to do. That's when you get pulled up or pulled over for silly or trivial reasons or for nothing at all.

"Random Breath Test" is perpetually used as a reason for pulling over a road-user, especially if you're on a bike.

I ride myself and I am firmly convinced that cops are targeting unfairly anyone on two wheels, mainly due to the on-going drug distribution amongst MC gangs in Australia - Hell's Angels, Banditos, Finks, Comancheros, etc.

There's a lot of middle eastern types, mainly Lebs, in the MC gangs.

Middle Eastern crimes also involve ram-raids on expensive retail stores and the theft of desirable motorbikes and luxury cars, mostly exported for re-sale in the Middle East. Tell them what you want and they'll get it, often by jumping owners when they get out of their car when they get home.

There was also maverick smaller gangs like the violent Vietnamese "5T" gang (in Cabramatta, in Sydney - probably busted up now) and the Bra Boys (from Maroubra Beach).

Those are small gangs - there's is also the much larger "Chinese Triads" organization, but despite their size you NEVER hear anything about them. I wonder why. It's been said the Triads are responsible for 90 percent of the heroin that comes into Australia, yet you never hear about them or hear of any busts.

We specialize in overnight news video reporting. The TV networks have NO overnight news crews because they consider it too dangerous (which it is) and too expensive. We specialize in police misconduct videos - check out a sample here: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjZAw00CNtA -- our Youtube channel is called SydneyCamera (one word).

Middle Eastern crime types are also involved in discos, bars, strip clubs and prostitution in Kings Cross, Sydney's red-light district. We are "the trusted camera" in those places when anything goes wrong overnight - we get the call coz they know we don't include any venue signage in our video footage of the carnage that goes on ;-)

Italian Mafia may be active in Sydney's "Little Italy" district situated around Stanley Street in East Sydney. Maybe active in Leichhardt on Norton Street, too. Apart from that, Italians were said to be in the rural town of Griffith and in Melbourne.

...BTW, Italians moved in a wave to Sydney in the 1950s after World War Two - that's when the Mafia got their foothold in Sydney. That is common knowledge for anyone, such as myself, who spent most of my life living around Little Italy (Stanley Street) in Sydney. There's a couple of good pubs there, too - The Strand and Lord Robert's.

@ night_timer

What about the activity of Pacific Islanders in Australia?

Killing Joke? That was the name of an 80s punk band in Britain!

Pacific Islanders are involved to some extent in Sydney, but I don't know their gang names. Many are into legitimate stuff like security guard and nightclub "bouncing" work.

To put it gently, I think they have more muscle than brains generally, so they don't get involved in sophisticated (white collar crime) rackets.

The guys getting arrested (for nothing) in my video above - they are Pacific Islanders.

Most nightclub bouncers in Sydney are Pacific Islanders because those guys are physically massive.

John Ibrahim's personal bodyguard is an islander - his name is "Tongan Sam" and he's from (you guessed it) the Pacific island of Tonga.

I know John, but I won't say too much. I follow the rules and always act respectful. We can film inside his clubs (we're the only ones allowed to) because he wants to show that his clubs are 'legit' and to show that he has "nothing to hide".

Do you want to see the strength of a Pacific Islander? Watch my two video clips here:

Firstly, we see multiple cops trying to restrain an angry islander: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiklkY1XPlw

Then we see the Islander after he is released from the Police Station following his arrest. I wonder what they did to him inside the cop-shop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyLOqoC4jjc

The teflon John haha

Hahaha I got my name from the infamous Batman comic story. Didn't know there was an 80's punk band with the same name

A lot of Islanders indeed tend to have a morbidly huge physique, so it doesn't come as a surprise that they're involved in security work. From what I now outside of Australia Samoan criminals tend to be muscle over brains, but apparently in Hawaii there's something resembling Samoan organized crime and in California some Samoan street gangs have the same reputation in the local underworld as the much more widespread black and Hispanic gangs.

Yeah, I've read about the Ibrahim family. There appear to be very little direct connections between John Ibrahim and criminal activities. The same can't be said for his brothers though
Here in Europe several German cities also have become ground zero for Lebanese OC. It's mostly large Mhallami (a local ethnic group) clans that immigrated from Lebanon to Berlin, Bremen,... Most Mhallami families are (as with any ethnic group) law-abiding of course. But there are several families like Al-Zein, Miri or Omeirat that literally have hundreds of family members in which some of them formed mafia-like structures rivalling the established criminal Turkish, Kurdish, Albanian, Italian, Serbian, Greek and German (mostly in the form of Hells Angels) ones.

It's the Lebanese Muslims, not the Christian Lebanese, that cause the problems.

In regards to OMG (Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs) in Australia, they all seem to have moved to The Gold Coast, also known as Surfers Paradise - that's like Florida in the USA - it's summer all year round.

Sydney is nothing but cement and stressed-out people these days.

John Ibrahim owns nightclubs. He doesn't get his hands dirty, but there has been incessant rumours about his connections...

http://www.academia.edu/1810710/Family_Influence_Italian_mafia_crime_group_in_Australia

I remember some years ago I read an article about Russian Mafia being a priority in Australia.

There is a poster on here, Mickey Meatballs (something like that), who lives in Australia and researched the mafia there extensively. He wrote a good piece for Gangster's Inc a while back.

http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-calabrian-ndrangheta-in-australia

The Russian Mafia has a reputation for fearsome violence, but I don't know if they're prominent here in Australia. (I'm in Sydney.)

The biker gangs and Lebanese 'MEOC' get mentioned a lot around here. Southwest Sydney is crime hot-spot nowadays.

There's also quite a lot of crime amongst Aboriginals - Australia's indigenous people, but discussing it is 'politically incorrect'.

To the OP ("The Australian") I touched on the Australian mafia topic a few weeks ago - that would've been before you joined the boards; check out the activities of the Italian mafia (controlled by Robert "Aussie Bob" Trimbole) in the rural Australian town of Griffith (marijuana crops).

Griffith high-profile politician Don McKay got killed, probably by the Griffith Italian mob:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce0GbjOt0Wk
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw3L0NIifDk

Australian-Italian mafia attack media news crews at Robert Trimbole's funeral:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX4O8rDVP5g

I work in the media and I met Mark "Chopper" Read in 2008. He is from Melbourne and when I met him (here in Sydney) he seemed fearful, like he was in enemy territory. The two young bodyguard goons/associates with him looked paranoid, too. They were watching everything. Not a relaxed environment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnuk79z1MDc

In Australia, also watch the 'Underbelly' TV episodes. I don't know if they're available overseas. I've worked in the media for almost thirty years and I know a few of the cast and crew from those Underbelly shows. Shit, some of the episodes got filmed around my local streets in the dead of night.

PS... I strongly recommend (to the OP) that you research and look into the following topics:

The Nugan Hand Bank - an American bank in Australia that went bankrupt and was a CIA front. Two American guys ran the bank - one was killed (I think) and the other disappeared with millions of dollars and has never been seen since. He's been missing for 25 years.

"The Octopus" conspiracy - (the suspicious death of Danny Casolaro) and the death/disappearance of Robert Booth Nichols.