Organised crime
Smokes and fires: How warring tobacco gangs ship millions of cigarettes in plain sight
Boxes stacked high in a fully laden shipping container. The Manchester brand looks legitimate, proclaiming itself the “house of quality”, but it is all a ruse.
- by Tom Cowie
Latest
‘Back-to-back bullets’: Families caught in spate of drive-by shootings
Baryalai Rahmanzai was sleeping next to his pregnant wife when their Dandenong home was sprayed with bullets. Now he feels less safe in Melbourne than in Afghanistan.
- by Marta Pascual Juanola and Cameron Houston
‘Laughable’: Police release shocking footage of Baldivis bikie drive-by shooting
A second man has been arrested and charged over the incident but officials say this was unlikely to be an organised gang incident.
- by Rebecca Peppiatt
Exclusive
Crime
Underworld loses Sydney mansions, jewels, cars worth $1b in AFP raids
From Sydney’s gilded mansions to humble suburbs, see where, and why, the hammer dropped across the city’s underworld in the past four years.
- by Perry Duffin and Nigel Gladstone
Senior bikie shot in Ballarat as Bandidos staged national run
A bikie took himself to hospital after being shot near the gang’s clubhouse in the early hours of Sunday morning.
- by Lachlan Abbott
‘The last Godfather’, captured after 30 years on the run, dies at 61
Matteo Messina Denaro was only caught in January. He once claimed to have murdered enough people to fill a cemetery.
- by Crispian Balmer
Exclusive
Melbourne gangland
The prison tattoo that got Gavin ‘Capable’ Preston in hot water with an outlaw bikie gang
The infamous standover man had a large Comanchero insignia inked on his head in jail, but tensions arose when he never officially patched over.
- by Chris Vedelago, Cameron Houston and Anthony Dowsley
Exclusive
Crime
Surgeon unmasks ‘open secret’ making underworld fortunes
John Crozier is on a crusade to stop criminal syndicates unravelling decades of progress against lung cancer and heart disease.
- by Perry Duffin
Updated
Crime
Sister of high-profile Comanchero boss arrested as anti-gang squad swoops
The police squad tasked with halting Sydney’s gang war has arrested nine people with alleged links to bikies and organised criminals, including Asmahan “Azzie” Zahed.
- by Perry Duffin
The key underworld figures fuelling tobacco trade firebombings
A notorious crime family and an exiled convicted drug trafficker have been linked to a multimillion-dollar tobacco trade turf war, which flared up again on Wednesday with a convenience store firebombing.
- by Chris Vedelago and Marta Pascual Juanola
Exclusive
For subscribers
The gangs of Melbourne: Why more than a dozen of the city’s tobacco shops have been turned to cinders
Pay or burn. It’s become an open secret among Victoria’s tobacco shops that you have to pay the ‘tax’.
- by Chris Vedelago and Marta Pascual Juanola