The NRL star, a wayward son and a gangland war with Sydney’s most notorious crime family

By late 2022, the heat was on the Alameddine crime family. The long-time rulers of Sydney’s underworld had survived a years-long feud with the rival Hamzy family, but they’d been left bloodied and bruised – and police were circling.

As detectives closed the net on the notorious Merrylands family, its leaders faced a difficult choice: stay in Sydney and risk years inside a prison cell and losing control of the city’s gangland, or get out while the going was good.

In the end, the family’s patriarch, Rafat Alameddine, chose the latter. Amid increasing police scrutiny, he left Australia for his family’s ancestral homeland of Lebanon where authorities say he has directed a sprawling criminal network, while living a life of luxury beyond the reach of the law.

But in the years since he and other senior figures relocated to the relative safety of the Middle East, internal conflicts stemming from a lack of local leadership have divided the Alameddine network, which has haemorrhaged once-loyal members.

Now, a new threat to the Alameddine family’s supremacy – the self-proclaimed Coconut Cartel – has emerged amid an escalating conflict over control of Sydney’s lucrative drug trade.

For several months, the group has publicly targeted the Alameddine network as part of an increasingly violent campaign to unseat the once-feared family from the apex of the city’s underbelly that has sparked the second major police crackdown on organised crime-related violence in less than a year.

This week, retaliation was swift and severe; on Tuesday morning, retired NRL star Matt Utai was ambushed outside his Greenacre home in an attack police believe was motivated by his son Iziah’s alleged links to the Coconut Cartel. The 44-year-old was shot twice and has since undergone surgery.

Within 24 hours, Iziah Utai’s Guildford West home had been set alight, another property linked to him had been peppered with bullets, and the Alameddine network had declared war on the 24-year-old, whom detectives this week identified as a “central” figure in the Coconut Cartel and the escalating conflict.

Iziah Utai, also known as Ziggy, is wanted in relation to the murder of senior Alameddine figure Dawood Zakaria last May. He is believed to have left Australia shortly after the 32-year-old was shot during the attempted assassination of one of his associates as they drove through Sydney’s west.

The target of the attack, who cannot be named for legal reasons, survived the shooting. Lawyer Sylvan Singh was travelling in the car with the target, Zakaria and another associate, and was shot several times. Zakaria died in hospital several days after the shooting.

Weeks earlier, Iziah Utai’s Merrylands barbershop was firebombed twice in two days. In June, detectives from Taskforce Falcon – established two days after Zakaria’s shooting to quell the violence linked to a conflict within the Alameddine network – arrested a 16-year-old boy over the fires.

In the months since, the Alameddine network has been weakened by the arrests of several senior members, including Ali Elmoubayed, whom police allege is the group’s onshore leader.

Rafat Alameddine, wanted over the foiled attempted murder of gangland rival Ibrahem Hamze, still wields significant influence and is directing the group’s activities from abroad.

Court documents in 2023 describe Iziah Utai as an associate of the Alameddine network. But the attacks on his family this week suggest his loyalties were short-lived.

“F— him and the Coconut Cartel,” a man says in a video, published by SCN Worldstar, showing Iziah Utai’s home being torched on Wednesday morning. “This is the f—ing start of the destruction, brother.”

Messages sent shortly after and addressed to “the rat Ziggy Utai” left little doubt about which side of the conflict the 24-year-old had placed himself on.

Video of a St Clair home linked to Iziah Utai being sprayed with bullets from a high-powered rifle was circulated shortly after.

“F— you and the Coconut Cartel,” a person can be heard yelling moments before more than a dozen shots are fired.

In what the Coconut Cartel said was retaliation for the attacks, members torched a car allegedly linked to the Alameddine family at North Rocks.

Iziah Utai, like other alleged Coconut Cartel members, is believed to have defected from the Alameddine network during a mass exodus of foot soldiers now aggressively pursuing their former allies.

The group is believed to be comprised of young men of Pacific islander descent who were once employees of the Alameddine network. The emergence of the Coconut Cartel follows a pattern of gang members once affiliated with the network who have broken ranks to challenge the Merrylands-based family.

Members of the KVT, a street gang long used as muscle by the Alameddine family, have also cut ties with their one-time employers to pursue their own stake of the drug trade. Several were late last year charged with supplying $16.5 million worth of illicit drugs.

Amid the conflicts, G7, a new street gang of young men and teenagers police allege carry out violent crimes for both sides of gangland conflicts, emerged as another player in the feud. Several G7 members have been charged over shootings linked to last year’s spate of gangland violence.

The targeting of Iziah Utai and his family this week sparked the establishment of the second major police response in less than a year to crack down on organised crime-related violence. On Wednesday, NSW Police’s Raptor Squad, which has long pursued members of Sydney’s underworld – including the Alameddine family – formed Strike Force Halesowen to investigate the attacks on Matt Utai and his son.

On Friday, Strike Force Halesowen detectives charged Matt Utai’s alleged shooters – a 15-year-old boy and a 25-year-old man. Both were charged with the 44-year-old’s attempted murder and refused police bail to appear in court on Saturday.

A day earlier, detectives arrested four teenagers, including a 16-year-old boy, over their alleged roles in attempted murder of Utai and the attacks on the homes linked to Iziah Utai. Police believe the teenagers were contracted to carry out the shootings and the firebombing of Iziah Utai’s home and that they were working as part of a “criminal for hire group”.

Other incidents have been linked to the conflict, including the firebombing of Bilal Alameddine’s Toongabbie home in January.

Claiming responsibility for the attack, the Coconut Cartel vowed to “chalk out” every Alameddine.

The ability of overseas-based powerbrokers like Rafat Alameddine to pull the strings in the current conflict remains a concern for NSW Police, who are working with federal counterparts and international law enforcement agencies to locate and apprehend several high-value targets living outside Australia.

“We are concerned that people from overseas are able to effectively task people in Sydney to commit crimes on their behalf while they remain, basically, tucked away free from reach at this stage,” Detective Acting Superintendent Brad Abdy, the acting commander of the Raptor Squad, said on Friday.

“They don’t remain out of our reach forever, but there is a process that we have to follow.”

Several police strike forces, already investigating incidents linked to the conflict, including Halesowen, are now sharing information to probe the broader feud and map its key players in the mould of Taskforce Falcon – established as a response to the Alameddines’ internal conflict days after Zakaria was shot.

“We’ve seen one man shot, we’ve seen a house firebombed, and we’ve seen the shooting of another house,” Abdy said.

In the meantime, detectives are bracing for more tit-for-tat attacks, as both sides of the conflict promise retaliation.

“This is just the start,” one message, allegedly sent by a member of the Alameddine network on Wednesday and published by SCN Worldstar, says.

“Its [sic] a losing battle for u [sic] and anyone that dares to come against us.”

Despite Thursday’s arrests, and the seemingly relentless pressure of the Coconut Cartel, Sydney’s self-proclaimed “one and only crime family” claims says it is “forever strong”.

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