The Comancheros are Australia’s most technologically savvy motorcycle gang, who have carved out a prominent place in the criminal underworld by controlling the importation and distribution of drugs.
As Australia’s most tech-savvy outlaw motorcycle gang (OMCG), being the first to adopt encrypted BlackBerry devices to communicate.
The bikie gang, which was founded in April 1966 on the NSW Central Coast, are known to selectively recruit members such as military trained snipers and were the first to use encrypted phones to communicate.
The Comanchero bikie gang was founded by former soldier Jock Ross on a paramilitary model
A court heard in 2015 the gang had about 400 members, more than half of them operating in New South Wales.
The history of the Comanchero motorcycle club covers half a century but can be told through the stories of just two violent men: Mahmoud ‘Mick’ Hawi and Jock Ross.
Mick Hawi the Beirut-born was shot dead aged 37 in his Mercedes SUV after leaving a gym at Rockdale, in southern Sydney, on February 15.
Ross, the Comanchero’s self-styled ‘supreme commander’, led the gang into the 1984 Milperra Massacre, in which four of his men as well as two Bandidos and a 14-year-old girl died.
Magistrate Beth Campbell said the former bikie member couldn’t make a decision based on hearsay and whether his withdrawal from the gang was merely a ‘severance of convenience’