Savage attacks drag secretive crime gangs out of the shadows

Sydney Morning Herald

15 hours ago

Detectives seized $10 million worth of drugs, $1 million in cash, encrypted devices, guns and almost 50,000 black market cigarettes.
The Herald can reveal Lupin, although it officially ended in December, has remained partially active. Faux's officers are still monitoring the crime syndicates and working with the homicide squad.
'For those who breach the trust, there are very significant consequences – it's violence, and no holds barred.'
Detective Superintendent Peter Faux
One victim, Rich 'Dylan' Choup, was increasingly erratic in the days before he vanished in July 2024. The father of one was paranoid, distracted and snappy at home, his partner recalled to detectives.
CCTV on July 25 captured him clutching a Vietnamese iced coffee as he was slapped on the face by a man on the street, right near Cabramatta police station, and marched to a waiting Audi SQ2.
He was never seen again.
Lupin's detectives concluded Choup had been vanished by his employers, a Melbourne-based drug syndicate.
Their fears were confirmed a month after his disappearance, when dirt bike riders in Lucas Heights made the grisly discovery of his remains. An autopsy found his right ear had been severed.
'We don't know what the exact nature of the disputes were,' Homicide boss Joe Doueihi said last month, his squad now leading the investigation. 'It may be a case of missing drugs or missing money. If I were a betting man, that's what I would say the situation was.'
Homicide detectives believe Choup's death was the third act of savage housecleaning by the Victorian syndicate within six days.
The same 'kill crew' also kidnapped a 31-year-old man in Auburn and sliced off part of his ear with a box cutter at a home in Canley Vale. He remains so terrified that he has yet to officially report the attack.
The crew are suspected of then bundling a third man into a car and driving to Queensland, where they shot him in the head and buried him in bushland.
Miraculously, the man survived, dug himself from the dirt and stumbled into a service station to ask for aid.
'They have a strong focus on loyalty in these groups – part of it is cultural,' Faux said.
'But for those who breach the trust, there are very significant consequences – it's violence, and no holds barred.
'It means they work very well together, and it can be challenging to police because people on the edges of these gangs don't report anything, even when they become targets.'
The Asian gang's vicious internal retribution has continued in 2025.
In April, a few months after Lupin wrapped, Sydney woman Thi Kim Tran was kidnapped from her home while her terrified children tried to save her.
She was forced into a stolen car, driven to neighbouring Bankstown, and executed with a gunshot. Her body and the car were set alight.
Police suspect the 45-year-old was targeted because her husband, thought to be a drug cook, was ripping off his bosses.
That syndicate, also believed to be from Victoria, is a separate crime entity from Choup's employer-turned-killers.
Vietnamese crime gangs dominated Sydney's heroin scene in the 1980s and 1990s, with the infamous 5T gang going so far as to assassinate NSW member of parliament John Newman in 1994.
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Over the past 20 years, they have refocused on cannabis hydro houses and, increasingly in Sydney, on methamphetamine.
Lupin found almost no heroin, Faux said, but plenty of meth labs and underworld experts.
'The role of Vietnamese gangs, now, is bringing in people from overseas who are skilled in crystallising methamphetamine, or laundering money,' Faux said.
Today, Sydney gangs are more collaborative, contracting jobs out based on strengths. Islanders provide muscle, cocaine flows through Middle-Eastern connections and Chinese run underground gambling.
Asian crime gangs are no exception, Lupin found, but they still use trusted operatives to carry out violence more than other gangs.
'The Asian gangs trust their people – they have the skills,' Faux said.
'They're not using 15-year-olds to carry out shootings – they're sophisticated, and not ad-hoc.'
Vietnamese gangs in particular are also unique for a willingness to elevate women to commanding positions, describing them as 'Aunty' as a matter of respect.
Dung Thi Ngo, for example, was convicted in 2018, and later acquitted on appeal, of allegedly ordering her devoted underling, Kevin Ly, to execute a thieving meth cook in a Canley Vale home.
The pair was accused of killing the cook's girlfriend simply because she was in the home as well.
While many of the gangs operate within strict boundaries of the state, or even postcodes, Asian crime gangs cross any border.
Part of that is because methamphetamine requires the importation of precursor chemicals from offshore.
'It has to be stopped at the border. As long as it keeps slipping through, we will keep having work,' one police source told the Herald on the condition of anonymity.
'It has to be stopped at the source.'