The Underworld Podcast - The Iraqi-Aussie Gangster Lighting up Melbourne: Kaz Hamad

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Melbourne has been gripped by a new wave of underworld gang wars, this time fueled by the booming billion dollar black-market tobacco trade. Firebombings, drive-by shootings, and extortion targeting shops across the city have roiled the city as middle eastern syndicates and biker gangs fight over profit. At the center of the chaos is underworld figure Kaz Hamad, whose name keeps surfacing as rival crime crews battle for control of a trade worth tens of millions. Deported to Iraq, he kept running the racket remotely until his arrest in early 2026, blazing a path of ruthlessness that authorities seem incapable of stopping. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. January 28th, 2025, Melbourne, Australia. People keep trying to kill Sam the Punisher Abdulrahim, professional kickboxer and infamous underworld figure. In 2019, he's first ambushed in a drive-by and then later bashed in the head. with a rock while serving his first day in prison. In June of 2022, he shot eight times outside his cousin's funeral. Then, in May of 2024, 17 shots are fired at him outside of his home. His house is also shot up when he's not home, then firebombed. That isn't even to mention all the times the police have warned him

to cancel a fight because of a contract on his head. Or the multiple times, he's had the venues he was supposed to fight at firebombed and burned down right before the fight. It gets so bad, it basically ends his career as a professional fighter. Abdul Rahim has given plenty of people reasons to want to hurt him. In 2015, he infamously got into a wild brawl at a Melbourne courthouse with a rival kickboxer. That same year, he crashed a Ferrari while high, killing a grandmother and injuring 10 others. He'd also fallen out with the Comintera Biker gang, of which he was a member, then switched up and joined the Mongols Biker gang, only to fall out with them after pissing off another gangster.

And yet another gangster who he worked with had a falling out with him after Abdurahim refused to back him up in a casino brawl. The thing he did that most likely pissed off people enough to want him dead, though, came on the orders of notorious gangster and drug lord George Morogi. In 2016, Abdurheim allegedly set up a lieutenant of one of Morogi's up-and-coming rivals. lowering him to a location where he was ambushed by a hitman and killed. Unfortunately for Abdulahim, that up-and-coming rival happens to be Kaz Hamad, who over the next 10 years is going to rise to become the king of Melbourne's gangland, taking on all comers, firebombing and murdering rivals, even after he's deported to Iraq.

By 2026, his fortune will be estimated to be in the hundreds of millions as he blazes a path of violence across the city. Nearly everyone thinks it's Hamad behind all the attempts on Abdurahim's life. Abdurahim finally wises up in 2024, going underground and bouncing around Southeast Asia to try to stay one step ahead of the bounty on his head, which makes it all the more confusing as to why in January of 2025 he comes back to Australia. And on this day, January 28, 2025, a Tuesday morning, he's walking in the parking lot of a hotel apartment complex, he had just secretly stayed out with his girlfriend when he's ambushed by a hitman squad of four and shot dead.

They escape in a white Porsche, later found burned. Abdur Rahim had been planning to leave the country again soon. But somehow, Hamad's people get tipped off about his location and sneak into the supposedly very secure complex. Very few people are surprised at the hit. In Melbourne, anyone who stands in Kaz Hamad's way is sure to be rude. ruthlessly dispatched. This is the Underworld podcast. Welcome back to the Underworld podcast,

where every week, two journalists who have reported on crime and conflict around the world, bring you our listeners, a new story of international organized crime, past, present, and future. I am one of your host, Danny Gold, here in New York City, and I'm joined by notorious and unrepentant gringo, Sean Williams, now based in Buenos Aires, where he was already beloved by local bartenders and late night empanada salesmen.

And 5 p.m. coffees. It's finally the unacquited love I've been seeking my entire life. Hello, everyone. I'm looking forward to watching you transition into like an Argentine man. I don't know what you're going to be. I don't know what in my head being like a bullfighter costume

even though that's not an Argentine thing, right? But we look forward to it, dude, seeing how you grow over the next month, over the next year or so. I will be growing if I eat the same food, yeah. As always, we have bonus episodes up on patreon.com slash the Underworld Podcast, and you can also sign up on Spotify and iTunes, ad free as well. You can sign up even if you don't want the bonus episodes, just to support us.

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buy a t-shirt, treat yourself and your loved ones. Okay, so Melbourne, Australia. Is that how you pronounce it, John? Yeah, Melbourne, yeah, good. You know, I feel like everyone I've ever met from Melbourne has been ridiculously attractive. Is that, is that accurate? It's up there. Yeah, maybe Buenos Aires has given it wrong for its money, but it's pretty good.

Yeah. You know, I've actually never been there or to Australia, which is why I wanted Sean to do this episode, but he was too busy working on some incredibly obscure who that, F-nosed Southeast Asia episode, something about like Cambodian shrimp farmer mafias or something, and it was too good to pass it up. We had a few listeners asking for it,

so I jumped on it, and I'm glad I did because it is wild, wild stuff. And big news happening with Kaz Hamad recently arrested in Iraq, I believe that was in January. And the one thing you have to know about Melbourne for the story, and Victoria, the state where Melbourne is, is that the people who run it, I think they're morons.

I don't think I've ever seen a government that seems so focused on creating an insane black market for organized crime groups to make as much money as simply as possible. It makes prohibition in the 1920s in America look smart by comparison. Australia, I think, is the strictest country when it comes to tobacco regulation and the most successful in cutting smoker rates. And they've done this in some relatively inconsequential ways when it comes to this story, right? They have really strict packaging laws, public awareness campaigns and bans. Wait, Sean, this is a sign-out, actually. Did I ever tell you I did an anti-tobacco ad?

Like that was aired on TV and on, like, YouTube. As myself, I think it must have been like 2018, 2019. We have this thing in America. It's called the Truth Campaign. It's like Dare, but for cigarettes. You know what Dare is? No, no, I don't. Dare is like the anti-drug campaign.

Like, don't do drugs. Truth is that, but for cigarettes. And I basically did like a commercial spouting some tobacco facts. I had to sign a contract saying I wouldn't be photographed or seen smoking for like a year. This was when I was doing a lot more like on camera documentary stuff. But yeah, so that was the thing I had to do. I paid me 15K through like 10 days of work. So that was pretty cool.

How did that first cigarette feel when the year was up? Is that good? Oh, dude, it was the bad. I miss smoking so much. Smoking is the best, dude. Can we find this video? Can we find this video online? I need to say this.

They might have taken it down, but you can look for it. But yeah, I mean, smoking definitely destroyed my throat and my esophagus, but it really, it really was great for a while, you know? Just smoke, kids. Drunken sigs, dude. Drunken sigs are like sigs on vacation after you have your first drink outside somewhere. Just the best. Or in a bar if it's the legal there.

Yeah. Anyway, where were you? Oh yeah, the podcast, right? Anyway, the thing Australia does to curtail smoking rates that backfires a immensely is they jack up the prices of cigarettes through taxes, which, yes, all countries or most countries do that, but they do it by an insane amount in Australia. Like, each individual cigarette is taxed at 19 cents or so prior to 2010. And then it goes up to 36 cents around like 2012, 2013. And now it's a dollar 40 a cigarette. That's just the taxes. Packs go for like 40 to 55

Australian dollars. So we're talking like 30, 35 US dollars per pack. And I believe they're actually actually tax it something like 65% at the moment, which is pretty nuts. Like New York City, I think is like $20 a pack in Manhattan, 16, 18 in Brooklyn, but 30 to 35 is insane. Now, the reason they do this is because not only do they want people to quit smoking, but it generates tax revenue, like billions of dollars in tax revenue. That is until it does it, until people start buying way more black market sigs and illegal tobacco that is untaxed because who wants to pay $45 a pack when they can pay 15. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I've ever smoked a legal cigarette in Melbourne.

I don't think anyone does. I don't know anyone who does. Yeah, I mean, apparently, once we find out how much these guys are making on the black market, you'll see why. There's so much money to be made. It's kind of like, there's, I forget what the economic principle is, right? Where it's kind of like, um, diminishing returns when you raise the taxes level where people are.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's, this is like a case study though and how not to do this. Prior to the big tax acts, there was a lot of what they call chop chop on the market, which is like unbranded,

loose-leaped tobacco illegally grown. But then once the prices really start shooting up, you could just smuggling counterfeit or specially made cigarettes. You know, loose tobacco, of course, is always much cheaper, but real cigarettes can be cheap enough when they're untaxed in comparison, that is, to what's happening in Australia. So what happens is, well, you know,

criminal groups can make immense profit on untaxed tobacco. I mean, over a dollar per cigarette, basically. is insane, right? You're talking like you can make $20 profit per pack if you're in organized crime, which is thinking about how much packs people buy. I mean, that is pretty insane. I keep saying insane, but it is.

It's nuts. I just ran out of synonyms. So where do you get the tobacco? Where do you get the cigarettes? Plenty of knockoffs and cheap brands created specifically for smuggling in China and Southeast Asia. Those are illegally made.

The others are made legally in the Jebel Ali Free Zone in the United Arab Emirates. which we will get into further down in the episode. And then you just need some kind of funny paperwork and they're good to go because they're legally made, right? And then these goods are brought in smuggled the way most smuggled goods are in chipping containers labeled as something else.

One container can carry tens of millions of dollars worth of on tax cigarettes. Yeah. And interestingly, like to tee up a trip I'm going to be on in, in what is people here there's in a couple of weeks or so. Here in Latin America, I think most of the illegal cigarettes go through Paraguay, which is like, Oh man, there's so much weird stuff going on there. And it's the far as richest man, which is exactly what they've been doing there since 1950s. Anyway, yeah, look out for some Paraguay stuff coming soon.

I can hear everybody licking their lips just waiting with bait of breath for the Paraguay content that everyone was crying out for. Just to reiterate, the cigarettes made in Dubai, they're made legally, right? But they're not supposed to be legally sold in Australia. So the manufacturers, we'll get into this more later, can just like wash their, hands of it once they're sold to the people who basically smuggle them into Australia. But probably those two people are one the same, just shell companies. Again, get into that a little bit more, a little bit more later. So from there, once they smuggle them into Australia, it's just a matter of distributing them,

getting them into one of the 1,300 or so tobacco shops in Melbourne in the surrounding area, and the shop owners stocking them and selling them who, of course, aren't going to balk at paying half or one-third as much as they normally do, right? And of course, enforcement is generally super lax. But you also need the shops to be in on it, right? And they are, but different criminal groups sell to or control different shops. When I say control, I mean, the shop owners need to also pay a protection tax to sell the illegal cigarettes. And also they need to buy the tobacco from the gangsters.

And that's where the wars come in. Does this all, does this make sense? Yeah, yeah. It's pretty crazy how widespread this seems to be as well. Yeah. reads one Australian newspaper, quote, authorities say illicit cigarettes are smuggled in from United Arab Emirates, China, and Southeast Asia,

with border forces seizing 1.8 billion cigarettes in 2023. But they complain that they can only check 1% of the 3.2 million containers that pass through Melbourne's ports each year. There's always been money to be made in this hustle, right, the untaxed cigarettes hustle. But as the taxes have skyrocketed, so has the money to be made. Honestly, there's a pretty big market for this in the U.S. as well, at least in New York City, where cigarettes, like I said, are like $16, $18 a pack. People trucked them up from the South or Native American reservations, where they're either

much cheaper or untaxed, and then bodegas sell them for, I think, like, $10, $12 a pack, or two Lucy's for a dollar. It's been a while since I bought cigarettes. The thing is, there's no, like, major violence or real gang wars over it, because, A, the margins here aren't that great, and B, there's actual laws in the U.S. in the U.S. for stuff like this and for prosecuting organized crime, for the most part. But definitely organized crime involved in that, too, just nothing like Australia. Actually, going back to one of your first show, actually, was it maybe the first show we ever did on

Arkansas Tigers in the formal Yugoslavia? Wasn't that, wasn't a bunch of his kind of illegal operations bank rolled by like a hooky cigarettes coming across the border? I think it still happens like in that part of Europe as well today, like a massive amount. Eastern Europe, the Balkans. I think the Androngeta play a lot of a big role in that. Albanian crime groups just smuggling it on speedboats, basically. But yeah, massive, massive money in untaxed cigarettes. So the first organization that seems to have figured out this play in Melbourne is the Hadara

clan or the Hadara crime family. They live in a fortified compound in Melbourne and are no joke. They're of Lebanese descent and have serious connections there in Dubai, of course, and use it as a point to launder their money and invest it in legitimate businesses. They get their start just doing simple robberies at gas stations, supermarkets, and flipping those cigarettes that they steal,

like I said, in those stores. By 2013, they're actually importing shipping containers full of cigarettes and frozen tobacco, making good money doing it. But again, the taxes aren't super high then. They dominate the illegal tobacco industry for something like a decade. There's other crime groups involved,

as well as some biker gangs, which are massive in Australia. I think Sean's talked about this before. are banditos, Comancheros, Mongols, the Fink's are one too. But the Hadaras, led by the patriarch Fadi, have the big international connections. In February of 2022, they're linked

to a confiscated shipment of $40 million to cigarettes. A year earlier, a member of the clan is linked to the theft of $7 million worth of smokes. That's another element, like I said, ripping off the big shipments of legal cigarettes or doing a heist and then flipping them in the stores or two stores. They've also got links to drug trafficking, extortion rackets, money laundering,

and your run-of-the-mill sort of gangster violence. They contract out actually a lot to the biker gangs of the violence, which seems to be what a lot of the other organized crime groups do. They also seem to move in and out of them. Like some are members or associates while also being in the other organized crime groups. The whole thing seems very fluid. I mean, I'm not, Sean, are you more familiar with it? Not this world so much.

Uh, because I did, I did one of the, like, the early shows on the stuff that was going on the late 90s and early 2000s, but this is like a whole other world. That entire underworld was stripped out there and then it seems to be replaced by this. So I don't know a lot about it, to be honest. Does Mr. In Between take place in Melbourne or is that, I think that might be Sydney, right? Yeah. Either way, highly recommend. I mean, I'm actually re-watching it now. Just incredible show. I think it's on Hulu in the US. Yeah, man, that's such a cool show. We should do an update at Best Gangster TV show is bonus, actually, because I think, we did one like five years ago, so we should definitely do one soon. Because people look to us to change tastes around the world, did they not? Taste makers? That's the one. They should pay us to recommend them.

But the ones I've seen, like, the Sylvester Stallone one is terrible. Oh, man, yeah. The one in Tulsa is terrible. And then I tried to watch the one with Tom Hardy and Pierce Brasden, but that also seemed terrible after one or two episodes. I heard it's better. Moblin? I don't know.

I didn't. Yeah, I didn't make it through the first episode of that. Yeah, it was so. Once you kill off 15 guys in the meeting in the first episode, I don't like this. It's like, be more like Gomorrah. Like, come on. Yeah. Help us out.

For all intents and purposes, things seem pretty under the radar in the tobacco trade, at least in terms of like massive violence and fire bombings and people being attacked through the 2000s into the 2010s. Like, it's a known thing and there's extortion, there's protection rackets, but it wasn't completely out of control. Melbourne definitely has a violent underworld, that's for sure, but there's no egregious tobacco-focused violence then. That is, until Kazim Hamad gets involved,

otherwise known as Kaz. Kaz is born in Basra, Iraq, which is the gateway to the marshlands in the south in 1984. Interestingly, it's become a major crystal meth area in the last decade or so. But Kaz was long gone before that. His family is Shia, they suffer under Saddam, especially after the Shia uprising in 1991, and they end up fleeing the country and living in refugee camps in Syria, in Jordan, in Lebanon,

before they moved to Australia in 1998 when he's 14. He dropped out of school at 15, and by his late teens, is apparently estranged from his family living the street life, and like on the street. His first court appearance is in 2001 when he's 17. He later gets convicted of burglary, armed robbery, assault with a weapon, and a host of others. Some sources say his family actually briefly returned back to Iraq in 2003, after Saddam got overthrown before returning back to Australia

shortly after that. Others mentioned that a much beloved brother is killed there in 2009 in a bombing attack. By that time period, the late 2000s, Kaz is implicated in a bunch of assaults and kidnappings for money, and in most of these cases, witnesses refuse to testify. By 2010, he's got a file in the police database

19 pages long, and he's standing trial for one of the assault and kidnapping charges, which are soon dropped, allegedly because, you guessed it, the victims don't want to. talk anymore. So is he associated with a bikey's gang or like a Lebanese mafia family there at this point or is he just kind of a sole trading nutcase? He's just like a small time guy, I think,

at this point. But he has, he has people. I think he's, he's tight with the leader of one of the biker gangs. But he's not in a biker gang. That's what I mean. Like it's very, it's very fluid over there, you know? They're not like patched and then they're all fighting each other all the time. They're kind of moving around. I mean, I think they are, but it does seem like some of these, you know, there's a lot of Lebanese crime families there. It does seem like some of them kind of move in and out of the biker gangs. I don't have a great understanding of it, so I could be wrong, but it does seem very fluid

in that way. Also at this time, he's a heavy crystal meth user and has a few psychotic episodes, according to the courts. In 2011, he's convicted on a different kidnapping charge and gets locked up for two years or so. At that point, he's starting to make a little name for himself in Melbourne's gangland. which is enmeshed in these wars between biker gangs and Middle Eastern crime syndicates, which are primarily Lebanese.

When Kaz gets out after a sentence, he forms a crew and they do the usual, you know, low-level drug trafficking, robberies, protection rackets. He also gets close with some outlawed biker gangs, including the head of the local Mongols chapter. An underword source tells a local Australian paper, quote, he came up really fast.

Nobody knew who he was and then all of a sudden his name was all over the place. You kept hearing Kaz did this. Caz was responsible for that. He's started to be talked about a lot and seen a lot. This is right around the time, 2015, that Kaz gets arrested in charge with major heroin trafficking. He's actually sent to the detention center on Christmas Island to be deported, but eventually it's ruled that he has to stay in Melbourne to face the drug trafficking charge. Yeah, that place is not for the faint of heart.

Did you read that Luke Mowerson piece from back in 2013? That is like an all-timer. I think New York Times, Meg. It's one of the best pieces of journalism I've ever read. It's not I don't even think he key it's from Christmas Island lot it's when he goes with a bunch of refugees I think he pretends to be Georgian yeah waits for like months in Europe or weeks I'm sorry he ends up Europe to, I think, UAE or somewhere there. Yeah. I don't remember exactly what Gulf country is.

And then he gets on the raft that they were taking to Australia, which is like a multi, multi-day trip. And I remember there's a visual in the article that's just like 10 seconds of the waves they hit and the raft basically going like 90 degrees up. And I remember thinking it was the most terrifying thing I've seen in a long time. So I proposed, I wanted to do a trip. I knew this crazy French reporter who I'd met in West Africa, who had been a, I think French Foreign Legion

or some French Special Forces unit. And he had done the trip, this is like 2014, 2015, the trip from Libya to, I forget where they go. What was the island? Or one of those Italian islands. Yes. One of those islands. And he was like, dude, this is when I was working for Vice.

He was like, I know the captain of this ship. he called him a sea wolf which I don't think I'd ever heard someone before or captain ship before I thought that was cool he's like we can do this trip I can do it with you it's less than 24 hours and at that point I was like

I'm willing to do anything so I actually I had a I had done some report this is like late 2014 so I had done the Ebola reporting which like got me in really good graces with Shane Smith and he was like look what do you want to do

like to tell me what you want to do and that was one of the things that I proposed and he was like I can't, can't let you do that. They actually said no. But when it made my career, man, like three stories like that when it made my career that did not get to do, but I mean, I was ready to do it. That is genuinely extremely dangerous. Like, that is, I don't think it's, I don't think it's as dangerous as Luke's

trip. Because Luke's trip is like, multi-days. It's long. Yeah. I think Lampedusa was like, what's that? Yeah. I mean, Lampedusa's like less than a debt. I mean, you got to get that sunscreen gone.

I would have been in trouble under the sun. But the guy that. I trusted that French guy so much, even though I'd met him like three days. And he was just like he had done it. And he was like, this guy's a seawolf. And that just stuck in my head. And I was like, I can do this.

Did not get to do it. Is that what the Shakira song's about? I didn't know that. But yeah, it was a bummer. Probably might have been gone badly. So we'll see. Guys, let's talk about Quint. You know this brand.

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Someone on Deepop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Deepop where Taste recognizes taste. Okay, where were we? Okay, April that year, 2015, I think, right? Cause is with his cousin in a car. pulling into a driveway in their home in the western suburbs of Melbourne

when a gunman, a hitman likely, opens fire and kills his cousin. It's believed that Kaz is the actual target here, and now we need to meet two other major players in Melbourne's underworld. The first is George Marogi, who is a major crime boss and rival drug trafficker at Kaz, even though he's basically been locked up forever

and will continue to be locked up for decades. Interestingly, he also came to Australia as a child refugee from Iraq. he's Assyrian and the gang he starts later in prison, NCF or notorious crime family is predominantly Assyrians. Shout out to the Assyrians. You know, real survivors. They really are.

Yeah, been rocking out since Sasha Bannapal. Great beards too. Great bards. I'm actually kind of upset that you haven't mentioned my awful mustache that I'm going to keep for the next week or so. It's not coming in that. Oh, my gosh.

To be honest with you. What a bunch of effort wasted. All right, never mind. I mean, yeah. I mean, I can't really come. My facial is just terrible these days, ever since the beard kind of lost its footing. It's just awful.

So I can't really, you know, compare it to anything. Good a good shout for advertisers anyway. So then it's been. Okay. George Mirogi alleged to have been the one behind the hit that killed Kazas cousin. Then in September of 2016, our friend from the cold open,

Sam, the Punisher Abdur Rahim, arranges to meet two men in a parking lot of an office work store. One of those men was a close friend and a high-ranking member of Kazas. crew. This is broad daylight, by the way. The two men are waiting there when Marogi burst out of a car and opens fire, killing Kaz's man. Marogi is later arrested, convicted, and sentenced to decades for that murder, that he continues to move weight and run things from prison. A punisher, Abdu Rahim,

had been a former member of the Mongols and apparently was formerly a criminal associate of Kaziz before setting up his friend allegedly. After this, both men are basically vendetta enemies of Kaz, which is bad news for them because he is on the way to the top. Abdurh King's story is completely insane, by the way, we're going to catch up with him later. In 2019, while Kaz is locked up, he makes a secret deal with the Australian police to hand over a bunch of weapons for a reduced sentence.

Apparently, this is a pretty regular tactic for gangsters to do this in Australia, typically not seen as being an informant since you're only really giving up your own supply to get time reduced. But some of Mirogi's associates, though, including his sister, they get a hold of the paperwork, and they start spreading rumors around that Kaz has become an informant, throwing dirt on his name. Yeah, this I find amazing because like one of the major themes in the Melbourne gang wars of the late 90s,

early 2000s, which I think I did on the show like 2021, they had a massive inquiry about all the connections between Victoria, cops, and organized crime. And here is this guy, Maragi, years later. And he's somehow got a hold of like confidential police files. It's pretty insane, actually. Dude, what he's able. I don't go into it. too much in here, but what he's able to do from prison is pretty nuts. Like, he really builds, like, an empire from prison.

Yeah. So I don't know what's going on. It's going on there with the guards, but probably on the takeout is all? Yeah. Years later, Kaz has one of their houses shot up, and then to get back at Marogi, he sends his goons to steal the corpse of Morogi's sister, who had died years earlier because of COVID and desecrated, like grave robbing from a mausoleum. The plan is fun to dig it up and feed it to dogs.

Videotape that and then send the video around, including directly to Marogi to humiliate him. This is all like the break-in to steal the corpse is caught on CCTV, but at last the elevator in the mausoleum is broken so they can't move the, the grate, not the grave. What am I talking about here? The pine box, the, how am I can't do the word here? The casket.

Dude, I am brain dead. So they just crack it open. and they steal tens of thousands of jewelry from her body. Wow, man, that's pretty dark stuff. Calm down, guys. To shoot each other. It's a little too far, Brad. Yeah, just shoot you.

Like, that is a little, I mean, go to his street and, like, make a Instagram video of you being there and saying he's, you know. Yeah, just like. Skid up or a pussy. You don't have to dig up. Ding up Graves is like a bridge too far, man. Like, don't settle down. By the early 2020s, when Kyle Zamad is really starting to take over, he's putting million-dollar bounties on Abdul Rahim's head and two million on Georgia's head.

Sounds excessive, but the guy, you know, he holds a grudge. And he's got a ton of money now. So another interesting facet of the Australian justice system. Because of the attempts on his life in 2015, the shooting, I mean, the informing thing, which isn't really informing, there's a blanket ban in the media on mentioning Kaz's name for the entire time he's in prison. I don't quite understand it, but apparently that's the way it works in Australia. the police can just ban the media

for mentioning your name if they deem your life as danger. Even if you're a high-level criminal, not in WITSEC, which can be an advantage, keep you off the raider and whatnot, but probably for a lot of these guys, they actually want the headlines,

they want to be on the raider. But for Kaz, he kind of uses it as like a Kaiser-associate thing, right? He's just operating, no one can mention his name, and he's building and building and building. So Kazamad while in prison, he starts building his network,

alliances, biker gangs, international drug traffickers, he wants to emerge from prison more powerful than ever. He's keenly interested in the tobacco market too. He's got lieutenants on the street, cousins, brothers, uncles, a cousin named Ahmed al-Hamsa only in his early 20s. They're said to be like a really proficient leader, smart, calm, violent, even stays off social media. He starts putting together the street crew.

They call it Kaz's boys. And he's running Causa's Drug Trafficking Network, which includes coke and meth. A big shipment gets busted in 2022, and the cousin, Ahmed al-Hamsa, he flees Australia before he can be charged. He's set to be right now in Dubai or Kuwait. Still, though, he's really laying the groundwork. I've not heard of gangsters laying low in Kuwait. Is that a thing? Or is it just because he's from Basra, which is next to Kuwait, right?

It's like right on the corner there. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's the first time I've heard of Kuwait being a place. Gangsters gal. Yeah. I don't think the lifestyle there. is as good as Dubai. Possibly the most boring place on earth, which is just personal.

Yeah, yeah, it's really not cool. I don't think there's anything there, really. That is fun. Probably not. I mean, you know, if you want to hang around in a kind of like Sheraton all day and all night, sipping expensive coffee and then drinking overpriced beer, it's great. It's awesome, actually. If not, I'd go somewhere else.

Sign me up. So there's a number of attacks on rivals during this time, shootings, whatnot, during this sort of lead-up. There's also, unrelated to just the Kazamad Syndicate, tensions rising in the black market tobacco game. As everyone is sniffing out how much money is actually on the tables, as the cigarette taxes keep going higher and higher. According to the head of a task force created to shut down the tobacco wars, at this point, untaxed sigs in one shop can make $20K a week close to a million a year. in one shop and there's 1,300 of them. And it's not even including the protection tax, which at that point I think is 1K month,

which soon grows the 2 and then 3K. So there's four main groups. Yeah, it's, dude, it's... Can you imagine, like, the amount of cigarettes people are getting through in Melbourne with the numbers of afters kicking off with hipsters, like, in kind of the core areas? Because I imagine quite a lot of Sigis are getting done

around that way. Money, money's been made. So there's four main groups dominating. the tobacco market at that point. There's biker gangs, Middle Eastern Crime Syndicates, the Hadaras, and they decide they're going to sit down in March of 2023 and have a summit.

It's an attempt to kind of form a commission, right, to avoid things getting chaotic, to set things up so everyone gets a taste. They can agree on territory, pricing, all that, a true cartel, if you will. They're also wary of Kaz and his crew who are attempting to gain a foothold. Some sources say Kaas wasn't invited.

Some say he was invited and declined. It's unclear. Everything is from, quote, underworld sources, so you never know what to make of those. Only six men of ten, among them the Hadaras, a syndicate led by a guy nicknamed Afghan Ali, and biker club leadership from various gangs,

including the Finx and the Mongols. Remember, to these guys at this point, you know, Kaz is still kind of seen as like a small-time player in Upstart. He's not thought of as like a mastermind, somebody who can do the complex big-time moves. They seem as a guy who sends young crews of armed robbers to go after certifications and whatnot. They underestimate his abilities and his ruthlessness.

This meaning, though, this is the event that most say is the trigger point for the launch of the tobacco war. Because shortly after it, on March 24, 2023, a tobacco store is firebombed. Within a matter of months, dozens more are torched and firebombed as Hamad, Kats Hamad, and its crew go to war against everyone. And Tidford attacks become the norm. Yeah, and also, I think, if I'm right, most of this is going on in Brunswick, which is like a central suburb. suburb, full of hipster bars, also massive Middle Eastern community. This is not like some out of borough somewhere. This is like right in the middle of the city.

And I'm guessing is part of this also Shisha tobacco at all? Because that's been a big part of Lebanese organized crime in Berlin. But I'm not sure if it's the case here. Did not see that. I did not see that discussed. That's interesting. I didn't realize Shisha had that much of a, I know Shisha bars are like the primary way to launder money.

Oh, yeah. Have your little gang hangout for a lot of places. I didn't see anything about shisha tobacco as the profit margins for that. But I got to imagine far less as smoking cigarettes. Yeah, but I think there's like a big funnel. I think it's all to do with the money laundering as well, like money going back and forth with Shisha tobacco, definitely in Germany with some of the biker gangs as well, which are Kurdish.

So yeah, the lot of crossover. So that summer, 2023, Khaz Khamad is freed from the Australian prison and swiftly deported to Iraq, but it doesn't slow them down. In August, Afgan Ali, a fearsome gangster in his own right, and ahead of one of the tobacco syndicates who was at the big meeting, he's gunned down allegedly by when it causes crew. No one is ever charged for the murder. And the tobacco shops keep getting lit up.

And the way Causa's crew operates, it's actually similar to the way we talked about the Swedish gangs, right, and others where, like, increasingly younger and wilder soldiers are recruited off social media and paid to do extortions, threaten shop owners, commit arson, throw fire bombs. They get sent into the tobacco shops that eat through threats. Sometimes they even put the higher-up members on the phone. Writes an Australian paper, quote,

if a tabactionist refuses to handle Hamad stock, sources say, an encrypted contract is offered online. This is taken up by a teenager or motorcycle gangs who then confronts store owners with a death threat, and if the owners refuse to comply, the shop is firebombed in the dead of the night. Australian police, they launched a task force called Lunar to go after the major players and stop the war,

but it doesn't really help, because within a year and a half, over 100 shops have been fire. Yeah, you would think they could do something about it. But isn't this like the blueprint for how local business owners end up getting victimized by gangs? Like if the police don't step in, that is, like first they offer the product for a price. And then they're forcing the products onto threats of violence and the threat gets carried out. The more they know they can get away with it.

I'd imagine this is how the kind of street gangs that you've seen in El Salvador function as well, except they don't just firebom the shop. They just shoot everyone dead. Yeah, I mean, those gangs are no more. But, uh, true. Yeah, I mean, it's a typical mafia extortion. record, you know? Protection fees, all that. Join us or we blow you up. Yeah, what the hell of the police doing? Tried and true, tried and true methodology. Kassamad, meanwhile, he leaves Iraq for Dubai, of course, but he's quickly kicked out and resettles back in Iraq in the fall. Come on meanwhile,

he leaves Iraq for Dubai, but he's quickly kicked out and resettles back in Iraq in the fall. By the way, we talk about Dubai being this home base for a lot of criminals, and I think it is, but I do feel like they've kind of like, uh, crack down a bit, you know? Yeah. I mean, I just feel like we do still like, remember Hush Puppie got raided, all that sort of stuff. Like it does seem like they're trying to clean it up a little bit. Yeah, I think in next week's episode as well, uh, they do kick somebody out, uh, which is pretty small, right, when we listen to that show, but, uh, something is happening

anyway. Here's the thing though, too, with these guys that are outside the country and running stuff inside. It seems kind of counterintuitive, right? Not being on the ground to oversee your criminal empire. Remember, Sunny always said you need your guys to see you in the neighborhood. You need to make your face known to be on top of things. But nowadays, I feel like it's not really the case. Like everything is phone. Like everything else in life too is everything is phone. Your life has lived on phone. It's all apps now, right? Everything's encryption. So there's no need for face-to-face. And if you can just hire people off the phone to do like the violent parts of the job, it seems pretty

I don't know. Like, you don't need to be there. Why? Like, even if you, if they get you on stuff, if you're in some Middle Eastern country that doesn't give a crap about extrading criminals to the West, you know, for the most part,

like Turkey or Iraq or Iran, unless you really push it too far, like, what's going to happen? Especially if you're operating in like a northern European country, Australia or Canada. Like, it's not like the U.S. In that regard, like, no offense intended.

But they can't really swing their baton around, like, to put it euphemistically, you know? Like, smaller, character, smaller stick. I mean, the quality of life is certainly lower in a lot of these countries, but why wouldn't you leave and set up shop somewhere else where it's a lot harder to bring you down? Yeah, to see up next week's show as well. That happens in a part of West Africa that I think you've been to as well. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have. We'll get there. I think we're going to it right after this. Anyway, by December of 2023, all the weird Australian name

censorship things are removed, and the media starts naming Khazamad and detailing his operations. read the Australian newspaper at the age, quote, The rise of a ruthless new kingpin has embroiled Melbourne's underworld in a gangland war in which police suspect he orchestrated a string of the tobacco war firebomings, a murder and a plot to desecrate the body of the sister of a long-time enemy.

He's got major players, though, still in the country, like his cousin we talked about earlier, and Majid Aba al-Badi, said to be his operations manager, who drives a car with a personalized license plate M-E-O-C, short for Middle Eastern Organized, which is actually pretty funny. He's arrested in the beginning of 2024 at 25 years old

and faces more than 30 charges, including more than a dozen related to firebombings, witness intimidation, and armed robberies. The court details his lavish lifestyle, dropping 30K at Fendi and constantly eating at Nobu. Nobu, Nobu, Nobu, Nobu. I didn't realize there was a nobu in Australia, but I guess this guy liked to eat.

Maybe he was doing in Dubai. Is there a nobu in Australia? Do you know? Uh, do you think I got a Nobu? Jesus. What does Nobu even do? Sushi? I don't know.

The Chilean Seabast thing. I mean, I've never been, but sponsorship opportunity right there. Yeah, why not? Yeah. Um, Hamad and his crew, they get a lot of press during these court hearings or during his, his, his, his guys' court hearings, including the story of a $27,000 mail check from Kaz's for his defense. and Kaz gets a reputation for spending top dollar on the criminal defense of his boys. He does stuff like send Rolls Royces

to the courthouse to pick them up when they're charged, gets the top lawyers, obviously, and gives a ton of cash to their families, all that sort of stuff. He really takes care of his crew. Meanwhile, his crew is also just still bombing the hell out of the Hidaras who just can't keep up. They just don't have the muscle.

In November of 2023, his crew burns down Fadi Hidaras-priced restaurant, the charisma restaurant, at a bunch of his other businesses not just tobacco shops. Things are not looking good for them. Their backs are against the wall and their allies are leaving them.

Then, Fadi finds a tracker on his car, I think it's an air tag, and rumors of a one million dollar bounty being placed on his head and make the rounds. There's talk of a deal of them being offered a safe way out. They give up all their tobacco businesses and pay a heavy cash sum

and they get to keep their other businesses not involved in tobacco. They take the deal and pay Kaz's crew a million dollars as well as handover, all their tobacco businesses and network. By April of 2024, they're basically out of the war. Kazdoki still wants total control, and there's still some other players he needs to bomb out.

The war continues through 2024, but then December, January, three major incidents happen back to back. The first is that in December of 2024, there's an arson attack against the synagogue. And this goes back to our recent episode about the Swedish gangsters that were hired out by the Iranians, like the IHGC, to attack J. Jewish sites. Fingers eventually point to Casa Mahmod. At in mid-2020,

the Australians actually kick out the Iranian ambassador after determining they played a role. Hamad denies his involvement, and it's still under investigation. That's crazy shit. Not so. Yeah. Where is Daredevil? Am I here. Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil born again. So what's next? I'll be liberated.

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But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. Ministurfer. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history. From Killer Cannibal Brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult, and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times.

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Then in January of 2025, an innocent woman, a 27-year-old, is killed when Kazazaz guy's firebomb, the wrong house. There really haven't been that many murders specifically in the tobacco wars, especially a civilian, but like a young, innocent women being fired bombed to death. That's not something that goes away quietly. And then, at the end of January, we get our cold open, the execution-style murder of Sam, the Punisher of the Orhim. I'm unsure of whether or not Abduarhim was involved in the tobacco market there. I've seen some reports saying, but most don't mention it. Either way, it's seen as a real power move by Khaz and the Hamad syndicate that they're able

to pull this off. Fun fact, in the year prior, Abduarahim worked as a bodyguard for UFC fighter Habib in Malaysia at a fight. Whoa, buddy. Are you saying that the UFC attracts some shady characters? Dude, I don't know how their PR people do it, man, with the amount of stuff that comes out of their guy's mouth or the stuff that they do. It is, uh, the garage of good at what have. I guess actually the NFL. People just love drinking energy. NFL things, things happen, uh, for sure, but, um, not, not like the UFC, man, not like the UFC. Things actually calmed down for a while after this. There's a real lull in the violence.

And in March, that task force lunar, they arrest 20 or so Hamad crew members, but in general, they don't have a ton of luck with prosecutions. 2024 sees a lot of cases collapse. A lot of witnesses and victims too scared to follow through. There's intimidation campaigns, and Kaz also pays, like we said, top defense attorneys.

In the spring and April, that's basically when the Tobacco Wars finally end, and Kaz Ahmad officially takes over and there's a truce. There's apparently another Middle East crime family in the western suburbs that couldn't be named that throws in the towel, and a businessman that secretly controls 400 tobacco shops nationwide that used to be allied with the Hedars, he switches to the leadages to Kaz's syndicate. Kaz, with all the power, he now ups the protection fee to $5,000 a month for each shop.

Like we said, it had gone to 2K, 3K, but now they call it the Kaz tax, and it's a lot of money. I wonder what the profit margins are on $12 packs of cigarettes, no tax for these shops, that it's worth that. One source put some of the big shops as moving as much as $50,000 with a cigarette a month. So I could probably calculate it some way with that. In July of that year, it's even reported that some members of the Hadara clan are now working under cause and the Hamad syndicate after meetings are held in Lebanon with Hamad guys and the head of a Dubai-based cargo clearing company. So yeah, the Hadara clan or family, apparently very big all over, because this meeting is with elements that either broke away from Fowdy or didn't have tight relations with him,

or it's just business is business. And this is amazing. A month after that meeting is held, he posts on social media. I think it was Facebook. I could be wrong, though, a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio, I think it's from blood diamond and black and white, like a portrait. And it's got a caption on it, a quote, a quote, It reads, Sean, let me tell you what it reads. Quote, a year ago, I would have died for certain people. A year later, half of them are dead to me. Wow. I mean, this is the kind of thing that 17-year-old girls on the Jersey Shore whose boyfriends cheated on them with their best friends. They used to post that on their AIMA messages. It's just, it's powerful stuff. He must have been going through a lot. I mean, this is the kind of our AI is going to rub us off, man. But just like,

I mean, I would have assumed he would have gone for like a black and white photo of Thomas Shelby, maybe something with like Tom Hardy, but honestly, like, what a world or even like gangland bosses are sad quote posting on socials. Like whatever, whatever happened to the song silent type, Sean Williams. Now, I mean, look, me and you, we do some talking about our lives here on the podcast,

maybe some shit talking on socials, but like earnest personal life slash emotion posting, like, come on, man, you are a gangster. Have some self-respect. Why are you a grown man sad posting like this? It's actually quite an outdated view, don't you, don't you? Did you learn nothing from Melfi and Soprano?

Like, come on. Tony couldn't do that. I mean, he could talk to like his wife and his high reps. But what is it? Tony was not on social media, okay? Like there was no way he would. I shouldn't have come at this guy with a soprano's reference. Yeah.

Damn it, right. I'm standing down. And frankly, frankly, I apologize. Yeah, Dale, you can cut that entire bit out, actually. I feel all. Don't cut it. I'm going to actually sad post myself. Show the world, show the world Sean's ignorance, you know?

I'm not saying you don't be emotional, but like, inside. like inside, people you know, you know, keep it, keep it, have some respect. There's nothing wrong with it. I just don't want to see it. A little bit of shame, a little bit of shame. Fadi Haddad, if you're out there though, be strong brother, you know. Like God shuts a window, opens a door. What, shuts a door or opens a window?

You'll make me a fence. Is that in Russia? I don't know. It's doable. Yeah. Join a, join a club, you know? Maybe a rec soccer league like Sean did. That's true.

It's very nice. Are you going to join the rec soccer league? Are you going to join a rec soccer league? Argentina, they're going to smoke you, boy. Oh, I'm already on it, mate. I'm already on it. I mentioned that I'm, I went on an app where you can choose a team and they make you choose your like level of ability out of five and I picked four out of five stars in

Argentina and I'm about to get embarrassed. Get it. They have Tinder for soccer teams a lot of everything? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's a F out of here. That is incredible, dude. They should do Tinder for drinking in, in, uh, does that exist?

Is that what's that? I don't know. That's just everyone in Buenos Aires. No, but like you want to get a beer. Like as you age, as you hit like 35 and all your friends either get married or move away, they should have like a thing where like you need to, I just came up with that idea, right? This is genius. So if you want to like. What?

Just sad man who want to find people who are older than 35 who like want to go drinking on like a Wednesday night. But most of their friends either have real jobs or families and they can't. So you're like, let me scroll through and see who. And you put like what you want to talk about. And it could be like the NFL. the NFL Crypto schemes Alien pyramids

Yeah Dude this is our Should we cut this Is this our million dollar idea Yeah let's do it Yeah why not We're gonna solve the male loneliness We're gonna end this episode now

And we should leave it up Just so investors know that they can come to us We're idea guys Anyway Where were we Oh yeah Fadi Haddad Fadi Haddad is very sad

Although Maybe Maybe he has good reason to be Because one thing we haven't talked about, and one of the things handed over to Kaz's, is a big stake in the most popular underground tobacco cigarette company that's sold in Australia. Now, this is fascinating. The company's name is Manchester United Kingdom, and technically, it's illegal to import or sell their sigs in Australia. Well, not technically, it is illegal.

Now, the company is supposedly headquartered in the UK, though it's really just a peopbox there, like in the new season of industry with that tender and all that. By the way, I find this sort of gray area, like import, export, financial crime stuff more fascinating than the firebombing stuff. Yeah. Because it's a crazy look at how the organized crime big players actually work, right?

So this company, it operates out of that free zone we mentioned earlier in the UAE, the Jebel-A.E., which is also one of the busiest shipping ports in the world and, quote, serviced by a vast plane of factories and warehouses that enjoy special tax advantages, employment conditions, and secrecy provisions governing their operations, which is a very euphemistic way of talking about how businesses run in the UAE.

The Hidaras apparently had a stake in it, remember, their international connections in Lebanon and Dubai. Now, the brand itself, like I said, legally, this is important, legally manufactures and cigarettes in Dubai. But cigarettes in nearly every country in the world have very strict requirements for quality, for packing, everything. I think it's like 97% of the population of the world lives in countries where these cigarettes would be illegal if sold there. but they're legally made in the free zone and legally sold to the exporters. And the company can say, well, we sold them legally, which happens, what happens after isn't our business, right? So then the exporters, who I would wager, are just a different shell company from the manufacturer, but run by the same people,

then illegally smuggled them into Australia and then spread them out through the network of shops, the synagrant, the same key controls, which is kind of fascinating, right? Like, this is a really good hustle. Yeah, this money stuff is like so, so interesting. Also, I used to play football in Jebel Ali. Incredibly weird place. Of course you did. Yeah.

More containers. Actually, we had the Lebanese guys on the wing because they were like tiny and they were really quick. But I think they bolted on like a golf course and a mega mall and a bunch of other stuff. Because each one of these three zones is run by some different Emirati prints, right? So they each want to build their own Disneyland in the desert. I think there's a palm in Jabal Ali that almost no one lives on as well. It's a really, really weird place. And I'm 99% sure that I've smart.

to go to Manchester UK cigarettes in Dubai. And I'm still alive, so maybe we should legalize it. I miss the ones we used to smoke in Syria, the French ones. I don't know that we were made in France, probably not. Gawasas. Oh, Gawah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those were incredible, dude.

Yeah. There's something about, like, being in the desert drinking tea, where I could smoke like two packs a day and be fine, but like I go home and smoke like four parliaments and I'm like coughing all night. all night. Yeah, you got to make sure that someone takes a photo of you wearing like a bulletproof fair smoking a gawar, then that's, that's Tinder sort of for the rest of your life. Sitting around with a bunch of useless soldiers just ripping six all day and drinking tea. Take me. Nothing better. Nothing better. I missed that. Also, how do you play soccer,

football, whatever, outside in Dubai, dude? You have to do it around 10 p.m. and then it's 40 degrees and then you drink water every 10 seconds. And then you just about don't die. That adds up. That adds up. Okay. So the Hidaras and now Kazamad Syndicate control everything top down with these cigarettes from manufacturing to distro to retail. Some estimate the profit on this is in the billions, though that sounds exaggerated. But I have seen 900 million bandied around, and it might be legit.

We talked about how many cigarettes people are buying, how much it's moving. Like, it seems like there's a lot of money there. Report to the Sydney Morning Herald, quote, Manchester United Kingdom, owned by JSS Tobacco Limited, is just one of hundreds of companies that occupy a suite in the building, a virtual office that has been described as a scammer's paradise by the British media. This is the PO Box area. The suite has appeared as a registered place of business in multiple legal proceedings

and document leaks related to tax-avoiding schemes. Incorporation records show JSS Tobacco Limited has just one employee in Britain, and its operation is so small it is not required to file financial paperwork, except the declaration that, quote, The company confirms that its intended future activities are lawful. Jesus. The UK is such a pirate nation, man. I mean, there is not an Arab or a Russian oligarch or gangster that we will not channel all of their funds into the UK.

It's nuts. Love it. I love it. The UAE apparently exports 100 billion cigarettes a year. I had no idea. The article continues, The Jebel-I. Lee Free Zone is home to more than 20 tobacco factories and has become a major transit point for a list of cigarettes smuggled into Australia, Europe and beyond, according to intelligence assessments and

court records. What's interesting is that this isn't super new. There's a BBC article from 2015 detailing how Manchester Brent is a problem already in the Australian black market, but it doesn't go into ownership. Now, the Adaras may have had a huge stake in Manchester, which has then transferred to Qas Ahmad, but the true owner, according to the documents, is Khaled al-Mahmahmed, who is a Syrian businessman who was prominent in the Assad opposition. no idea what he's doing now, could be in the government.

Who knows? Wild stuff happening in the Middle East and just fascinating. Honestly, this is like the stuff I love learning about when it comes to international organized crime. Maybe not as sexy as like dudes offing each other in alleyways, but definitely makes you think about how the world works, you know? And just when you think it could not get any crazier, in early 2024, Australia bans importing vapes.

Apparently, vapes can be sold only through pharmacies now. Anyway, the ban They ban importing babes So Casa Modernist crew Link up with Chinese Organized Crime Groups, most notably a guy known as Chinese Simon

to start importing Chinese made babes straight from the source, Shenzhen, which I mean, a lot of bad, like the nicknames in Australia for crime, notorious crime family,

that's your gang's name, Chinese Simon, that's your guy's gang name. Like, come on, man, these guys aren't even trying. Anyway, this kind of reminds me of the thing of the U.S. did that was incredibly idiotic,

where they banned flavored jewels, RIP mango, you were too good for this world, because I don't know, like, jewels were refillable or something, which again, jewel American made, American manufactured. Then the market just gets flooded with disposable Chinese basement vaves with like Baskin-Robbins flavored strawberry guava, cotton candy, gumball or whatever, which are 1,000% poison and unregulated. Instead of having the American manufacturer probably still poison, but maybe like not as bad fruit-flavored jewels, just a complete moronic own goal. Van Air Bar, ban Alkbar, bring back mango jewel parts.

It's goddamn crooks in Congress, Sean, I tell you. I mean, I agree with you. This stuff is so fascinating. I just looked up how many cigarettes are smoked in the world each year, and it is $6 trillion, and one in 10 is illicit. So, like, that is massive. That is a gigantic market. But yeah, like this dark money, like illicit companies,

tax havens, flying cash. I mean, I think the estimates at the moment are that one in eight or nine dollars in the world is dark. So it's in the criminal economy, which is, oh, it's pretty, pretty consequential stuff, all of this. I wonder if tobacco companies are banned from advertising on podcast. I know they're banned on TV. Are they banned on podcasts? I don't know. I feel less worried about cigarettes than I do most podcast advertisers.

So, bring it on. Where was that? Yeah, so, Caz links up with Chinese Simon, again, major international criminal groups, and he's bringing in this vape company called Ali Barbar, which is a hilarious name for a vape company, and the vape sell for $35 to $50,

and probably cost 12 cents for the vape itself, and $0.22 for the lead-based fruit flavors. And again, just insane profit margins. Like, why bother with heroin when you can just move this? But all is not well in the world of Kazamai. He settled in now, living in a wealthy suburb of Baghdad, and a fortified compound with armed soldiers patrolling.

He claims that family high up in the government, including in the military, one would assume he's untouchable. But that turns out to not be the case. In mid-January, reports the Australian press, quote, Iraq's National Center for International Judicial Cooperation announced that Hamad accused of shootings, murders, kidnappings, violent assault, extortion, drug imports

have been arrested in response to an official request from Australia. Interestingly, it's not just that one would expect Iraq not to give a dam when someone is wanted by Australia, and especially when someone has high-level connections in the government, it's also that Australia has a policy of not assisting foreign governments if charges can lead to the death penalty, which they can in Iraq for these charges. Well, also, they spent years chasing this guy and doing absolutely nothing about his gigantic empire, so it's kind of boggling that they now, now they do something. Yeah.

In fact, even Hamad thought he was pretty much untouchable. In the week leading up to his arrest, he gives an interview to an Australian media personality blogger, podcaster, and Ryan Namenco, who was once, like, you know, I think a gangster in the underworld, now as a podcast in site called Outlaw Media, you know, one of those guys. He's done a bunch of reporting on the Tobacco Wars. Even at his house broke it into because of it, I think some people roughed up his grandmother. He actually had this comment where he was like, yeah, they hit, like my grandmother said they hit like cowards or like little girls or something like that, which is like, you know, pretty, pretty funny thing to say. He's done, like I said, a bunch

reporting on the on the tobacco wars so kasamad goes on his show to talk and talk he does mentioning that he had been actually been arrested before in malaysia in turkey but had been sprung free and that not only was he untouchable in iraq but he had i had heard from friends that australian authorities even admitted as much i mean what do we say what is our what is our tagline like what is he doing on a podcast man do not instagram your crime friends do not podcast your crime friends. So he starts talking about on the podcast how he pays $220,000 a month to his crew in Australia. And he also adds sounding value Australian. And I'm going to do, I think we can try an Australian accent, right? Yeah, that's totally cool. Because he's Iraqi, but he has the like really

Australian accent. And I can't do accents, but I'm going to do it anyway because the way he says, he's like, yes. I swear to God, mate, I wake up, I get messages, bro, you're a sick cunt. We love you. That's what, that's all. Can you do it? I mean, can you? You do like heaps, heaps, that's all I can do what I'll show. I sound like Jonah from Tonga when I do it, but that's all I got. Yeah, we're at the end of the show so we can just mess her out. I mean, bro, you're a sitcom. We love you.

Yeah, that was more like sort of Eric Banner and Chopper, but, you know, it'll do. But it's funny when you hear his voice because you don't expect him to have like the quintessential Australian accent. And he really does. He also says, I'm not going to do the accent for this one because it's not as good. I want my boys to be proud of who they are. That's what I want. I don't want nothing. I know my boys, if anything happens, they're there for us all.

I mean, you've never once said anything like this on the group WhatsApp. I'm pretty. That's not true. I say stuff I get all the time. I hype you up all the time, dude. Every week, I'm like, Sean, this episode is great. Don't I say that? Yeah, you actually did that like a couple hours ago.

So that was that was nice. I do it all the time. I do it every week. It gave me a little spring in my step. Yeah. Well, that's one. It's bad, but most of them are very good. People just don't listen to yours for some reason.

Oh, but yeah, not much is known about a situation right now. Yeah, especially right now. But he is detained in Iraq. Currently, there was a mugshot recently posted, but who knows if he's going to get out or not? Honestly, my money kind of says he's freed in Iraq. He's got too much cash to spread around. There's no Calshu market yet for it,

but I'll keep my eyes open. Meanwhile, Australian media reports at his cousin, who we talked about earlier, Ahmed al-Hamsa, next line's stay charged, and he's said to most likely be in Iran or even Kuwait, probably better to be in Kuwait right now. So the Australian underworld and Kaza's crew, they live on. But who knows if someone else will now rise up,

to take over his tobacco shops like Kaz did to the Hidaras. And look, I mean, I'm no genius, but like, how hard is it to actually shut this down? Like, I mean, there's 1,300 shops. One guy could probably hit 20 or 30 in a day. Go in there, buy Manchester. It's illegal. Grounds to go back with a search warrant and whatever the law is in Australia is. Confiscate all the legal ones, like rinse, repeat day after day.

Like, fine, shut them down if there's repeated offenses. Like, what am I missing? Are you, like, chat, callers, whatever? Let me know why is this so hard? Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure there is. cameras in most shops. And you could probably listen to a podcast where the guy who is doing this says that he's spending a quarter of a million dollars like on his crew to do this exact crime. I don't know. Yeah. All right. That was a great episode. I might do it. I think actually I'm going to

look into like vibe coding that app. If it's good enough, I'm going to tell Dale to delete that because that could be real. Dude, we can make money doing that. Well, you got to make it. Does it have to be funny? Like does it have to keep be kind of like, no, I think it could be a real. I think it could be a real app. I'm going to ask people after this.