A former high-ranking bikie who turned his back on crime has urged young people to avoid the ‘façade’ of gang culture, describing it as fundamentally evil.
Vince Focarelli – once the South Australian state commander of the Comancheros who survived five assassination attempts – spoke on the latest episode of The Felon Show podcast.
The show features reformed criminals talking about how they have turned their lives around and were making amends for their past, something Focarelli has been trying to do since his stepson was killed in a 2012 gangland hit.
The 45-year-old said he hoped his appearance on the podcast would speak to the ‘soul of young people and especially our brothers who are in gangs doing certain things’.
Former Comanchero bikie leader Vince Focarelli (pictured) survived multiple assassination attempts which left him riddled with bullets before giving up a life of crime
Focarelli urged young people to avoid the lure of gang culture saying the cars, money and women were an illusion that would fall apart (pictured, showing bullet scars from the attempts made on his life)
‘It is all good to wear a gold chain and walk with the boys with your chest pumped out and have a girlfriend who says she loves you,’ Focarelli said.
‘But that is until you have to do gangster things, when the shootings and the murder happens it’s not a joke.’
‘Muslim, non-Muslims, it doesn’t matter, it’s disgusting, hurtful and putrid, it’s very satanic.’
He said teenagers were deliberately targeted by those holding the reigns in bikie gangs to drag them early into the life with illusions of camaraderie.
‘The so-called love and respect and brotherhood in these organisations is not real… The only love and respect is for money and power.
‘Once you step into that life it becomes dark.’
Vince Focarelli appeared on The Felon Show podcast to discuss how he turned his life around (pictured)
Focarelli told podcast host David Obeda, himself a former gang founder who was deported to New Zealand, that it wasn’t just those directly involved that were affected by the violence.
‘You get shot, somebody dies, you get jailed… the suffering doesn’t stop there, it spreads to your loved ones.’
Focarelli said it was the murder of his 22-year-old stepson Giovanni Focarelli that was the catalyst for him to re-assess his life.
‘He was 10 times the man I will ever be, he had an infectious smile, even my enemies loved him,’ he said.
Vincenzo Focarelli (left) said it was the murder of his 22-year-old stepson Giovanni Focarelli (right) that was the catalyst for him to re-assess his life in crime
The bikie had a $900,000 bounty on his head when a shooter, who has never been caught, sprayed him and his stepson with bullets as they sat in their car in Adelaide’s northern suburbs about 9pm on January 29, 2012.
Focarelli pulled Giovanni’s lifeless body to the back seat.
‘I grabbed his chin and was trying to blow air into him.’
The older Focarelli was hit with four bullets and was bleeding as he sped away and flagged down a police car.
He spent several days in hospital before he ripped out his IV drips and discharged himself.
He had refused to co-operate with the police investigation and was admittedly out for his own justice, but was instead quickly arrested by detectives on drugs and firearms charges and spent 14 months in prison.
He spent the first weeks of his sentence in ‘depressing’ solitary confinement where he missed Giovanni’s funeral and had no distractions from replaying the night of his shooting.
When he emerged from prison he was a devout Muslim and vowed to reform his life.
By 2016 he and his wife had opened a restaurant in Adelaide called La’Fig Cucin which would feed the homeless and less fortunate weekly at its Tuesday night soup kitchen.
Focarelli and his wife (pictured together) opened a restaurant in Adelaide in 2016, named La’Fig Cucin, and used their position to help feed the homeless and less fortunate
In 2017, he fled South Australia to live in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur to escape a criminal-related deportation, leaving behind his wife and a stepdaughter in Adelaide.
He risked having his Australian visa cancelled under the Migration Act, which gave then Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton the power to deport a non-citizen who is regarded as a threat to community safety.
Thinking it would be revoked and he would be sent to a detention centre, he left the country before an adjudication process could begin.
A year later he appeared in a video endorsing a Sharia-compliant cryptocurrency called Bayan Token based in Singapore.
‘My name is Vince Focarelli and I believe in God,’ he said in the video, after delivering a brief introduction in Bahasa Indonesian.
‘I believe that when you do good, goodness will come back to you.’
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