Punisher: The life and death of Sam Abdulrahim

One of the most colorful underworld identities Melbourne seen in a long long time.

This is not a criminal mastermind. This is a lunatic kid who does stupid stuff. There were so many attempts on his life, so many bullets being sprayed around that someone somewhere wisely said this is no good. Somebody will be killed.

Family have become completely fair game in Melbourne's underworld at the moment.

I think one person said when that happened, yeah, no rules, anything goes now.

I'm Andrew rules his life in crimes Big Week in Melbourne. Another one bites the dust. He's had various names, this fellow, but mostly they call him Sam abdal Rahim. Known around the kickboxing circuit, where he was not a great practitioner. I don't think as the Punisher, which is probably a self appointed name or some promoter made it up. It didn't bear much resemblance to his ability. According to my sources, he was a man in the middle of the tobacco wars,

We were all in the office and we'd received an alert that someone had been involved in some sort of incident, and we didn't really know much more than that, And then tips started filtering through from all sorts of contacts and means of communication that it was Sam.

Have you heard it?

Sam? Sam's been shot? And it turned out to be true because there were a few other names that weren't obviously able to be verified weren't him, that were thrown into the mix. And then it became pretty clear as time went on, and as Reagan Race has.

Seen that it was him big day at the office.

Just a little bit. It was really really busy. I mean, this guy had nine lives and people had been literally gunning for him for years, and he almost had this impression that maybe they wouldn't get to him because he'd managed to escape every single time.

You could not blame him when you saw the bullet holes in his chest that time.

It is staggering, which he posted himself as a taunt to his enemies.

It was sort of funny in the dark way, Reagan, what was the scene that greeted you when you got out there.

It was about eleven o'clock on Tuesday morning, and it was a very hostile and volatile situation.

Did you fit into the situation?

No, I didn't, not visibly anyway. There were lots of his family, friends and associates that just rocked up. They had the hands on their heads. They were obviously visibly distraught. Some were trying to push their way through the police

Describe that actual scene. So this is in the car park underneath.

So he was shot in the car park of the Quest on High Street in Preston. So that's downstairs, below level, away from the public's eye, but still only twenty meters away from High Street in busy Preston.

There's no boom gate or any of that sort of stuff.

You do need a fob key to access the below ground car park as that's for guests only. So that's a good point as to how these alleged killers have made their way down there. That's center of the homicide squad's major investigation at this point.

You'd be a little bit interested, would you not? In footage and things.

Absolutely, the coppers said that it was caught on the Quest's footage CCTV. Obviously they'll cover the car park, but that will be the only footage available to them.

I see. And what's your guess about what will on the footage? She'll be miss well figures with hoods on. Well.

Yes, we've been told that Abdul Rahim was walking to his car at about ten thirty am on Tuesday and he was a few steps away from his car. He's I think big Mercedes vehicle wagon.

That's the one. That's the one is a repaired version of the one he was shot at in twenty twenty two, or another one.

He'd have enough money to buy another one.

I'd do that maybe.

And then the offenders, and there's potentially up to four of them have run at him and just fired a number of shots. And that's a quote from Dean Thomas from the homicide squad. Yeah, a number of shots impacted him, at least two in the head, I believe. And they've taken off in their white Porsche very quickly along High Street.

Was it packed outside the car pack? Do you think it wasn't downstairs with them?

No, it appears that the Porsche had driven downstairs. And how they've managed to down there without a four key is a mystery at this point in time. But they've driven right down there and then driven straight out head north over to the neighboring suburb of Reservoir where it was torched. It was, and it was a massive blaze at the sort of end of this little alleyway for a few private residents, and huge amount of flames at about midday or eleven o'clock.

It's a waste of a good car.

It was a very nice count.

We should run back through abd Rahim's known feats. I think the first time most of us heard of him was when he got into that rule at the courts? Is that right in two thousand and fifteen or sixteen, when he was only twenty three, I think? And I can recall that this figure with his shirt torn off, big muscly Bluke looked a bit pleased with himself at the time.

I thought, yeah, big unit. He shut down the entire third floor of the Melbourne Magistrate's Court, which is probably the busiest magistrate's court in the state. And yeah, there's these pictures and videos of him being let out in handcuffs, his shirts being torn off. His dad got swept up in the brawl as well. They'll both find that was the first time he sort of really burst into the headlines.

Prodigal son spoils lad by the sound of it, interesting how the system is fairly tolerant. It strikes me that fight. Now you've got a brawl inside the court building. He's find something like two thousand dollars and his father seven hundred and fifty. Well, you'd think you'd get that for jaywalking. I mean, it really is not much of it. I've a fine for a pretty serious breach of the peace, given that it is a courthouse, it's not a public bar somewhere.

Those pictures of him being escorted out of the court into the divvy van have ended up being quite infamous, given his shirt was torn off on the inside. He's got his muscles out, his tattoos all over him, he's handcuffed, he's got half a dozen police attached to him. He's got one of his mates trying to come over and whisper a few words to him, and he's being whisked away, and then he's put into the divvy van on the street. It was just chaos. It was infamous.

Now looking back on it was that his finest moment. Did he peak too early? It was a.

Genuine highlight, his breakout moment.

That's because he hits a few hurdles. Later on, he drives a Ferrari tell me if I'm wrong. Not long after that he hits four cars in High Street Preston would you believe, because that's the center of the world universe hit four cars in a ferrari and he kills an innocent person, an eighty eight year old woman. This is not a criminal mastermind. This is a lunatic kid who does.

Stupid stuff, and he did go away for it. For he did a while. He was out in not that much time though, about two and a bit years, accounting for time, sir.

Okuning for time, so he was out the following year. I think after they locked him up, I don't think the court case came up until twenty and eighteen, was sort of delayed, so effectively he was out within eight months or something in two thousand and nineteen.

That's right.

But the government did try to keep him locked up again because once he got out, he was clearly causing so many problems that the state considered him to hire a risk to be out in the community because of the risky pose to the public, so they tried to lock him back up.

Good point, I mean, he was there were so many attempts on his life, so many bullets being sprayed around that someone somewhere wisely said this, it's no good. Somebody will be killed. Let's lock him up again. Then he was let out, and he threatened to sue, or he did sue the prosecutors of the parole board or somebody, I I think the adult Parole Board for wrongful locking up. I would have thought parole is only a privilege that can be withdrawn at any time, and that when he

Knows what may have protected him and.

May have predicted him and might have been one of the safer places to be exactly right.

Although I hear that his time in jail was quite interesting. I have heard that from someone who was in there with him. In the what have you heard in the map the Metropolitan Assessment Prison, they said a particular chap said to me that he was not liked. He was not like so much that they had to move him from section to section because so many people did not

Not rat him, not very popular.

So someone during his time in jail, if not at another one in the country, apparently hit him in the back of the head with a rock.

That's right. I believe that was when he was taken back into custody when his parole was revoked because of those same safety concerns, and part of his legal fight may have been based on the fact that he was put back in carsody and in that time an inmate sees that opportunity and beat him with a rock.

Would that be a jailhouse rock to some it may be? I see, yes, I think it was perhaps at Lodden. It's a rural prison and they'd probably do some landscaping. They've got gardening all sorts of stuff, so maybe they've got rock walls or anything, because prisoners need to learn trades. Now, many people would assume that you know, his income stream is highly illegal. You're not driving out in g wagons and ferraris and stuff in your twenties unless you've got

Well, we know he had a range of dealings. The extent of his involvement in the tobacco wars has always remained a little bit murky, but we do know that he had some involvement because a number of shops in the northern and western suburbs that were linked to him were firebombed a number of times. One of them was set on fire I think about three times in the

So that's a financial incentive, but also possibly a personal.

One, that's right. I mean, as we've talked about, his list of enemies continued to grow, so any number of them could have been trying to warn him or to tell him something.

Regan. If you were listing his enemies, would you go with top of the list of chapters in Iraq, who dislikes him intensely over a particular shooting.

If I was a betting man, he would probably be at the top of that list at pretty short odds. Who's that Kauz m Hamad who's obviously living overseas in a raq at the moment, And it's widely believed that well, it's known that these two people hate each other, abdol Rahim and Hahmad, And it's believed, and it's a wide belief that abdul Rahim lured Kaz's mate to a deadly shooting at Campbellfield in twenty sixteen. And it's something that a lot of abdul Rahim's enemies have never forgotten.

That was a mister O.

It was O's at the Campbellfield Plaza, a red Holden commodore from memory, just rocks up to the bus stop YEP and a group of people jump out and they just fire a number of shots at Kadi Oors, killing him in front of office works I think it was. And it was the middle of the day. It was a sunny afternoon, broad daylight.

Very brutal, very dangerous, that passes by, very brazen, very brazen. And the man who was arrested for that and locked up from a long long time.

Is George Morogi notorious crime family founder?

What's your thoughts about George? Nice bloke?

I'm not sure how nice you can be if you're sitting in jail for three decades for murder.

So George is in prison for a long time, but he's known to keep operating outside with the using bowlers and you know, lawyers and all sorts of funny people. I think George might have been involved in that dreadful thing. Did his sisters to get pulled apart or something?

Yeah, his sister Micheline Moroggie died three or four years ago now from complications that were related to COVID. She was only relatively young, she was late twenties, early thirties, and and she died and as a message to Mroggie, her grave was defaced and desecrated a couple of years ago.

Yeah, a terrible thing. And they tried to remove her the casket with her body, but they couldn't quite get it out.

It was a really bold move because oftentimes, you know, be that as it mainly underweld and have your dealings. Family gets left alone. But this sort of marked a new shift in a new way to reach or to upset your enemies.

Absolute almost South American. It's sort of like the Colombians.

It's probably some of the wildest scenes that Melbourne had seen in the sort of criminal underworld. To go to that extent, it just beggars belief.

Absolutely never heard of that stuff in the old I never heard of anything like that. Pretty stayed on those sort of things.

Well, that sort of thing had ramped up in the last couple of years and that was probably the first really major incident where family had been brought into the dealings of the underworld. And we saw it again when the killers who tried to kill Sam again in May last year, when they shot at him seventeen times and missed all times. That was only after they had set his parents' cars on fire while they were parked outside

Basically used his parents in a sense as bait, a bit like towing up the nanny goat in the jungle for the.

Tiger family have become completely fair game in Melbourne' underworld at the moment.

I think one person said when that happened, Yeah, no rules, anything goes now.

I wonder if they'll put that one back in the box now and leave it alone. What are your thoughts about the future of this story. Do you feel that there'll be any retaliation or that it might fizzle?

Well, maybe not, because they've been hell bent on killing Abdul Rahim for years now and they've done the job, as we've seen multiple fire bombings at places he's associated with, multiple attempts on his life where you can count four, five or six of them. They're ending now because they've killed him at Preston, So those you could estimate that that would come to a close. Whether there's retaliation attacks, I'd say there's no evidence to suggest that that's a

But his sister could get angry and say things, But what she going to do hit somebody with a high hill shirt, I'm not sure.

Yeah, Well, she's got her theories and maybe some of his foot soldiers in that game that he sort of tried to research. I mean, all of that sort of hangs in the balance now because he really was the guy who's spearheaded the rere Surchers of Brothers for Life, which was the once defunct Sydney game. But he sort of adopted that name and tried to get it going again here. But that's to be seen.

They strike great, Wasn't great? Was it? If you think about her over the about you know, almost a decade we've had I don't know how many maybe a dozen people involved in trying to kill him, and how many shots you reckon have been fired out him all up.

Bullets, hundred, A lot of guns been procured for the century of him.

Yeah, seventeen at Thomastown. I think in one night all missed ate at the funeral and then a number of shots are pressed and so there's a few just on those three attempts.

That remarkable funeral thing where they ambushed him in his g wagon when he was in.

The Q slow Q of cars procession.

Coming out of the funeral was his cousin's funeral. Do you believe that those bullets did not penetrate his chest because they are at an angle and sort of skipped off. They weren't direct on Or was it to do with the very fine glass in the g wagon.

Or what the photos he uploaded to social media as we touched on before they looked to have penetrated him. They were pretty clear, four or five big holes in his chest left and right side. Yeah, well, yeah, they hadn't just grazed him.

I couldn't work out.

It is one of the most mind boggling pictures to see that he survived that across the left side and the right side, that number of bullets in his chest and none of them killed him or I.

Mean, we might have to a doctor, But I mean the amount of muscle that he gained when he first burst on the scene. In those photos that we were talking about outside the court, he was already a very big figure, yes then, and he only got bigger as he picked up more titles and trained harder. I don't know if that would have anything to do with it as well.

You would wonder whether this is a vote for steroids and human growth, Houlman, because maybe if you had enough of it on your chest, it might stop a bullet.

I went to his return fight. I think it was out at Thomastown as well, just a few months after that funeral shooting. He won, He belted the bloke and he just looked invincible. And that was only a few months after he had had eight bullets in his chest and he's come back. He trained every day, obviously, and he just demolished this bloke in the ring. He had a lot of supporters there, colorful characters out at Thomastown

The scars quite prominent as well. They're relatively deep. They sort of sit underneath that large tattoo that he's got all the way across his chest, but they take up probably the width of his chest as well.

Fair bit of real estate.

That's right.

It's a fascinating thing whether steroids can save him. You might have heard this or you might not have, but the thought that Carl Williams was saved on his twenty ninth birthday by the fact that he ate so much red rooster, that he had so much padding on his tummy. That little twenty two slug that was shot into him, only went in about that far.

He's got a lot of protection, a lot.

Of protection, and he walked home. They say fast food will kill you, but sometimes it saves him. Now, Olivia, I think you might have dressed very demurely and gone to the sam abdol Rahim funeral. How was it?

It was a relatively subdued affair. There was a large crowd, and it was tense because there was a very large media pack outside given the notoriety of the punisher, and his mum and dad were there. They were distraught. He had a lot of friends and close associates who went to the mosque in Epping for a ceremonial farewell there and then the procession, which was led by a sort of a series of motorcycles and some bouquets of flowers that spelt out his nickname Sooner, which is what his

And that totally less than three years ago.

It was June twenty twenty two.

Were there a heavy police presence at the funeral this week?

What was that like?

There was a car, a police car at every single entrance of the cemetery. I don't know how well people know that area, but it's a very large memorial park. It's almost split into two, with some main roads traveling between it. And when you are looking for the correct entrance to travel into fair Well someone, you do pass a number of different gates and at every single one

True, the police would have to calculate that it's conceivable that the other side, the bad guys might follow up with something just to rub it in. You can't blame them for and in fact the police presence might have assisted in.

That area possibly, although Olivia said that wasn't overdone and they didn't sort of take over. They didn't want to interrupt anything but imposing.

Definitely, there definitely a potential deterrent.

Good service. What sort of service if you're a Muslim gangster in Melbourne and you go out in a hal of bullets? What's the service like?

And a quick one? It was only a couple of days. He was buried on Thursday and he was shot on Tuesday, which.

Is in line with Muslim unburial customs. It does happen rather quickly.

It tends to be a Middle Eastern thing, come from thousands of years of hot places, and the Jewish customs are similar. So to wrap up, then, folks, who was Sam? How big a deal was he? And how will he be remembered? Your first Reagan?

He was one of the most colorful underworld identities Melbourne seen in a long long time. He just seemed to have so many lives. He was evasive, he loved the spotlight. I mean, he got his muscles out, his tattoos. He would go on social media and almost take the mickey out of his rivals, but that would almost ultimately bring his downfall this week at Preston. But one of the most colorful identities we've seen in a long time Olivia.

To me, he's almost reminiscent of the gang Lame that were a bit before our time two decades ago. The sort of profile that he amassed, you know, actively taunting his enemies, these public you know, fire bombings, shootings, fatal and non fatal, all linked to him, and just this singular person he just sort of is this, you know, all incomsting figure and all on his own. And some people will tell you his charismatic. Some people will tell you he had a short fuse. Others say he's loving.

And all of it a little bit true. Thanks for dropping in and helping us with that. It's great to talk to people who've been out on the street wearing.

Out shoe leather anytime.

Thank you, Drew, Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. My columns, features and more go to Heroldsun dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts sold And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description.