Police allege the Hells Angels use mainstream industries to launder existing funds and to exploit new income streams, using the strategies they developed during a series of gang wars to intimidate business competitors.
[15] On 8 July 2013 Tyrone Lee Slemnik, 37, was standing guard outside the home of Hells Angels Sydney chapter president Suvat Sarimsaklioglu when he was gunned down as shots were fired from a passing car.
[23] Hells Angels members Nicholas Frank "Shonky" Cassidy and James Scott Parnell Knight were convicted of aggravated assault and sentenced to fifteen and twenty months' imprisonment, respectively, in September 2009.
Cassidy attempted to conceal the accident by moving Griffiths' body to an area on the Stuart Highway in Coolalinga several kilometres from the crash site, replacing the windscreen, and by spraying the vehicle with bleach and insecticide.
[29] The raids were carried out as part of a national joint operation against the Hells Angels coordinated by National Task Force Morpheus and involving the Australian Federal Police (AFP), Australian Border Force (ABF) and other government agencies, which resulted in a total of twenty-four arrests and the seizure of firearms, ammunition, cash and drugs including methylamphetamine, cocaine, steroids and GHB at twenty-eight locations nationwide.
[22] Bruno and Nuno Da Silva, two Portuguese immigrant twin brothers and former Brisbane Hells Angels members, were arrested following a police surveillance operation and pleaded guilty to trafficking methylamphetamine from June 2012 to October 2013.
The brothers operated from an East Brisbane locksmith business and passed a percentage of their drug earnings to the Hells Angels at weekly meetings, although they had left the club at the time of their arrest.
[31][32] In 2012, Peter Sidirourgos and Zeljko "Steve" Mitrovic, both senior Hells Angels members in Sydney, were granted Nomad status and spearheaded a push into the Gold Coast, founding a chapter in the suburb of Burleigh Heads.
[34] The Hells Angels were one of 26 motorcycle clubs designated as criminal organizations in the state of Queensland under the Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment (VLAD) Act, which was passed on October 16, 2013, and went into effect immediately.
During the investigation, codenamed Omega Two, the police tracked club members' movements ferociously, prompting Jim Brandes, the Melbourne Hells Angels' American contact, to try to assassinate Bob Armstrong, a detective on the case.
[42][43] Terrence Raymond "Terry" Tognolini, the president and enforcer in the Hells Angels Nomads, was involved in an apparent road rage incident with motorist Mustafa Yildirim in Campbellfield, Melbourne on December 22, 1995.
[44] Terrence Tognolini was later implicated in the murder of Vicki Joy Jacobs, a 37-year-old woman who was shot six times as she slept next to her six-year-old son in her apartment in Long Gully, Bendigo on 12 June 1999.
Victoria Police bulldozed their way into the fortified Thomastown headquarters of the Nomads chapter in July 1999 as part of the investigation, seizing a sawn-off shotgun, bulletproof vest, bags of documents and three motorcycles.
[49] The Victoria police seized assets worth $3 million Australian dollars including six houses, cars, trucks, and motorcycles..[49] In 2004 the Hells Angels and the Rebels were involved in a brawl at the Dance Music Awards at the Adelaide football stadium that ended with the bikies first using the chairs and their fists as weapons, followed up by guns.
[49] Hells Angels members Raymond Joseph "Ray" Hamment, Jr. and Paul Peterson, and club associate Andrew Hinton, each pleaded guilty to charges of conduct endangering life, intentionally causing serious injury, false imprisonment and rioting after abducting Brendan Schievella from outside a bar and holding him captive for five hours in Ivanhoe, Melbourne on June 25, 2005.
[50][51] In January 2007, Terrence Tognolini was expelled from the Hells Angels, had his tattoos removed, was savagely beaten and dumped on the street outside the Thomastown clubhouse after his fellow members learned that he was the subject of child sex allegations.
[58] Hells Angels member Glyn David Dickman was found guilty of intentionally causing serious injury and threatening to kill, and acquitted of theft, while club hang-around Ali Chaouk was found guilty of recklessly causing serious injury, threat to kill and false imprisonment in October 2014 after the pair beat 18-year-old German tourist Faisal Aakbari with a baseball bat at the Hells Angels clubhouse in Thomastown in September 2009 when he falsely claimed to be a club member.
[60][61] Hewat was sentenced to 10 months in jail in January 2014 after he pleaded guilty to assault, weapons offences, handling stolen goods and operating a tow truck without the proper licence.
[66][67] Ray Hamment, Jr., the president of the Hells Angels Nomads, pleaded guilty to a charge of recklessly causing serious injury and was jailed three months after attacking a man who approached him in a McDonald's restaurant in Thomastown on June 7, 2013.
[69] On October 13, 2013, Victoria police raided every Hells Angels property in the state in an attempt to curb bikie-related violence, seizing guns, ammunition, drugs and cash, and arresting 13 people, but failed to retrieve the assault rifles used in the shootings.
[71] The president of the Hells Angels' Darkside chapter, Mohammed "Sam" Khodr, was jailed for 7+1⁄2 years for selling more than $220,000 worth of amphetamines to undercover police officers in January 2015.
He had been targeted during an investigation code-named Operation Statin, part of a major crackdown on motorcycle gangs by Victoria Police, and sold 910 grams of the drug to officers in 11 separate transactions between October 2013 and February 2014.