Australian gangland’s love affair with the gym is literally killing them, with the cursed daily ritual leading their hitmen executioners straight to them.
Alen Moradian, 48, is the latest underworld boss to die as a result of his fitness habit, gunned down in an underground car park on his way to the gym on Tuesday.
But he is only one in a string of crime world slayings that have preyed on the musclebound gangsters’ narcissistic love of pumping iron, often fuelled by steroids.
Preening in front of countless mirrors as they lift huge weights to bulk up their mass, the gangsters are hopelessly addicted to their self-indulgent regime.
Ironically, it seems Moradian – nicknamed ‘Fathead’ – had tried to give up the gym and work out at home after police had warned him there was a ‘target on his back’.
The druglord supremo compiled a set of home exercise routines on a bizarre Pinterest page he created, along with pictures of Lamborghinis and tattoo designs.
He had pinned a selection of high intensity exercise drills including the Military and Burpee Workouts, a Cross Fitness cycle and the ‘Butts, Abs and Shoulders’ workout.
Alen Moradian, 48, is the latest underworld boss to die as a result of his insatiable habit, gunned down in an underground car park on his way to the gym on Tuesday
Druglord supremo Alen Moradian compiled a set of home exercise routines on a bizarre Pinterest page he created (pictured), along with pictures of Lamborghinis and tattoo designs
But the lure of a real gym proved too much for Moradian to resist and he returned to a regular fitness routine which gave his killers their lethal window of opportunity.
The coke kingpin created the all-powerful Commission cartel which ruled Sydney’s cocaine industry, but it proved no protection against the hitmen sent to kill him.
They pounced as he got into his vehicle on the way to the gym at 8.15am in the car park of the Bondi Junction unit block where he had been hiding out in Sydney’s east.
He died in a hail of bullets from two gunmen who fled the scene in a Porsche Macan, later ditched nearby. A pistol and mobile phone were found inside when they failed to torch the car properly.
On Wednesday, eerie photographs emerged from inside the carpark where Moradian died.
His death comes just three months after Taha Sabbagh, 40, was gunned down in front of his young son outside Elite Fight Force mixed martial arts gym in Sefton in Sydney’s south-west about 6.30am on March 2.
CCTV revealed the killers had waited for more than an hour outside the gym before launching their deadly attack 90 seconds after Sabbagh pulled into the car park.
Less than a year earlier Comancheros enforcer Tarek Zahed and his brother Omar were targeted at Auburn’s Bodyfit Fitness Centre in western Sydney on May 10, 2022.
Comancheros enforcer Tarek Zahed and his brother Omar were targeted at Auburn’s Bodyfit Fitness Centre in western Sydney on May 10, 2022
The gunmen struck in the 8pm attack as the two men stood in the foyer of the gym, with the killers peppering the men and the front of the building with bullets.
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Omar, 39, was hit multiple times and died from a cardiac arrest in a pool of his own blood on the floor of the gym after the brazen attack.
Tarek, 41, amazingly survived, despite being shot 10 times including in the head through his eye.
At the time, one bikie source admitted there was a multi-million dollar bounty on Zahed’s head and that the bikie boss had been told to lie low – but he was hooked on his workout high.
‘They warned him the other week: ‘Stop going to the gym, change your routine’, but he didn’t listen. They are fuming,’ he added.
A few months later bikie associate Levi Johnson, 23, was stabbed and killed in the carpark of a busy Brisbane gym in Carindale on September 12, 2022.
Four assassins cornered him while he was leaving the car park after a dispute between two groups linked to rival motorcycle gangs.
His Mercedes was hemmed in by a black Audi A3 hatchback and rammed from the front by a white Nissan Patrol as he tried to leave the Goodlife gym driveway.
The attackers smashed his window and he tried to flee through the passenger door was but was caught and stabbed before he was left to die.
Two years earlier another Queensland bikie Shane Bowden had been ‘looking over his shoulder’ for months before he was shot dead in an execution-style shooting on the Gold Coast in October 2020.
The 48-year-old was gunned down in a hail of bullets inside his BMW moments after returning home from the gym as he pulled into his driveway in Pimpama at midnight.
He shot 21 times in an alleged reprisal attack after he patched over from the Mongols to the Finks bikie gangs and had fled north from Melbourne after an earlier attack.
Omar Zahed, 39, was hit multiple times and died from a cardiac arrest in a pool of his own blood on the floor of the gym after the brazen attack
And on February 15, 2018, bikie boss Mahmoud ‘Mick’ Hawi, 37, was riddled with bullets outside the Rockdale’s Fitness First in Sydney’s south when he was ambushed at the gym.
Masked assassins targeted the former Comanchero national president as he left the club, pumping bullets into his head, shoulders and chest in a frenzied attack.
‘Only I, his close friends and family know how truly beautiful his heart was,’ his widow Carolina wrote on Facebook.
Motorcycles Clubs Australia added poignantly: ‘He never snitched.’
