Once a feared bikie boss, protection racketeer, and legendary Kings Cross enforcer, Sam Ibrahim now lives in near seclusion with his ailing mother in Sydney’s western suburbs after escaping deportation to Lebanon.
Hassam ‘Sam’ Ibrahim was once an intimidating presence across the city but now spends his days at his mother Wahiba’s fortress-like mansion in Merrylands.
Wahiba, 77, is said to be in poor health following a battle with cancer over a decade ago and more recent hospitalisations.
Sam Ibrahim, now 59, rarely leaves the house, in marked contrast to the free-wheeling life he once lived as the leader of the Nomads bikie gang and convicted gun-runner.
Last month, he briefly appeared at the front door wearing a plush white bathrobe, white socks, and Nike Air slides. He politely declined to speak when approached by Daily Mail Australia.
Later that day, friends of notorious Kings Cross bodyguard ‘Tongan Sam’ – who lives across the street – delivered KFC to the home. A family minder then visited, before chauffeuring a frail Wahiba away in a black Porsche GTS.
Despite past underworld whispers that Sam planned to ‘live like a king in Lebanon’ spending the millions he made in Sydney, he is now believed to be struggling.
His fall from power has been dramatic.
Once a feared bikie boss, protection racketeer, and legendary Kings Cross enforcer, Sam Ibrahim is now living a reclusive life with his ailing mother in the Sydney suburbs (pictured above)
The former Nomads outlaw motorcycle gang leader, who later became a gun runner, answered the door of his mother’s house wearing a plush white bathrobe and politely declined to comment
Sam Ibrahim, once a dominant presence in Kings Cross and Sydney’s western suburbs, now spends most of his time inside his mother’s fortress-like mansion, living off food deliveries and rarely venturing outside
Sam served nearly six years of a nine-year sentence for firearms and drug offences after being caught running a supply ring with ex–Rose Tattoo drummer Paul DeMarco.
After being paroled in 2020, immigration authorities tried to deport the Lebanon-born Ibrahim back to the Middle Eastern country, bundling him into a van and flying him to immigration detention in Perth.
He spent three years in detention – first in WA, then on Christmas Island – before his lawyer secured his release under a High Court ruling that deemed indefinite immigration detention unlawful.
He quietly returned to Sydney in late 2023, welcomed by his nephew Harley, lawyer William Levingston, and Tongan Sam.
He moved back into his mother’s compound, which was built on the site of the family’s original housing commission home, originally purchased by his brother John, and has rarely been seen since.
Upon returning to the Merrylands house, Sam visited the grave of his father, who had died while he was in prison.
‘I went to pay my respects,’ Sam said later. He said authorities had told him in Perth, ‘We can’t deport you, you haven’t had a case (in court) for three years’.
The Ibrahim brothers Sam, Michael, and John (pictured above) have had very different paths: Sam has faced deportation to Lebanon, Michael has spent decades in prison for drug importation, while John has found success as a scriptwriter and property developer
Wearing Nike Air slides with white socks and a bathrobe, former Kings Cross enforcer Sam Ibrahim is now holed up in his mother’s mansion, outfitted with security cameras and motion-activated lights
Matriarch Wahiba Ibrahim lives in a sprawling five-bedroom mansion, built on the same Merrylands block where she once raised her six children in a humble housing commission home
He said at the time that he would abide by the multiple condition of his release, some of which have since been relaxed or changed.
Under the conditions imposed in 2023, he can’t learn to fly a plane, work in a pool shop, accept more than $10,000 from anyone, or socialise with people who have even considered committing a crime.
He was also banned from possessing guns, explosives or instructions on how to use them.
Sam was also required to notify the government ‘within two days’ if he has contact with an ‘individual, group or organisation that is alleged, or is known by (Ibrahim) to be engaging in criminal or illegal activities’.
After being released from immigration detention, Sam said people close to him had told him to ‘stay out of trouble,’ and he had promised, ‘Of course I will.’
‘I’m not going to do anything wrong. I’m not like I used to be 20 years ago. I’ve been out of bikie clubs for 20 years. It’s so long ago that’s not me,’ Sam said previously.
However despite those comments, he is due to face Downing Centre Local Court later this year over an Apprehended Violence Orders taken out against himself and his younger brother Fadi on behalf of Fadi’s longtime business partner, Benjamin Scott.
The AVOs were taken out last December following a phone call from Fadi after an alleged falling out over money.
At one point, a young man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with ‘TONGA’ delivered a bucket of KFC to both Sam and Semi ‘Tongan Sam’ Nagata, who lives across the road
Police march Sam Ibrahim off for deportation to Lebanon in 2020, but instead he languished in a Perth detention centre and on Christmas Island until his lawyer successfully argued he be released under a High Court ruling
A despondent Sam in the back of a prison van as he believed he was about to be sent back to Lebanon – a country he hadn’t seen in 50 years
It is understood Sam Ibrahim was in on the call.
His brother John has flourished, transitioning from Cross identity to successful property developer, author, and creator of Last King of the Cross.
Sam, by contrast, now lives in semi-isolation and remains tethered to legal restrictions. At one point, he was fitted with a tracking anklet, though it’s unclear whether it remains in place.
The compound has seen its share of violence. In January 2011, Sam was shot twice in a drive-by shooting outside the house. Just weeks earlier, the Ryde home of his sister, Armani Stelio, was also targeted.
In 2017, during preparations for the wedding of Sam’s nephew Sam Sayour to Aisha Mehajer (sister of jailed developer Salim Mehajer), Tongan Sam was shot in the back near the family homes.
Sam’s humble new life in Merrylands is a long way from his early days in the Cross, where he forged a fearsome reputation running collections for notorious standover man Louis Bayeh.
In the 1980s Kings Cross was a nest of strip clubs, bars, nightclubs, brothels, gambling dens and porn stores run by criminals like Bayeh, Lenny McPherson and Bruce Galea.
Business owners had to pay racketeers like Bayeh up to $1000-a-week to to stop criminals robbing their joints and to pay gaming and vice squad coppers to turn a blind eye.
Sam became the ‘the number one collections guy in the protections racket’, and when John Ibrahim gravitated to the Cross and eventually opened his nightclub, Tunnel Cabaret, it was Sam who appointed Tongan Sam his bodyguard.
John Ibrahim (centre) with Semi ‘Tongan Sam’ Nagata (left) have known each other for decades during the time Ngata acted as a bodyguard for the ‘last king of the Cross’
John Ibrahim is the success story of the clan and now a wealthy property developer who lives in Sydney’s eastern suburbs with his glamorous fiancée Sarah Budge and their child
Sam lives with his mother in lives in the family compound in Merrylands, constructed and paid for by John on the site of their old housing commission home
In his book Last King of the Cross, John Ibrahim affectionately recalls how he was hypnotically drawn to a life in the Cross via his big brother’s career which started there in the 1980s.
John said Sam had become head of the family when his father left for long periods of time and their mother subsisted on a single mother’s pension.
Sam had attained his sixth dan black belt as a Taekwondo champion, and was ‘that legendary person with the balls to walk up to ten men and tear them apart. The hardest of hard men fear him’.
A sixth dan Taekwondo black belt and natural leader, Sam became the ‘number one collections guy in the protection racket,’ according to John Ibrahim.
‘My big brother Sam was a really funny and charismatic person, a natural leader,’ John wrote in Last King of the Cross.
‘He doesn’t need cocaine – he’s a natural. Cocaine is taken by people to feel more confident, sexier and capable of anything.
‘Sam doesn’t need that boost because he’s already all of the above.
‘Every bad decision, every catastrophe that had fallen upon him and our family, all started after his introduction to cocaine.
‘My brother pressed the ‘f*** it’ button that first line of cocaine he had.’
KEEPING UP WITH THE IBRAHIMS: WHO’S WHO IN THE DYNASTY
SAM IBRAHIM
Sam Ibrahim, currently on three month bridging visas, was described by his famous brother John as a ‘funny and charismatic person, a natural leader’ who had previously strayed into cocaine addiction
The eldest of the six Ibrahim siblings and once a Kings Cross protections hard man, he became one of the first Lebanese-Australian men allowed into an Australian bikie gang and rose to became president of the Nomads while massively expanding its membership. These days the 59-year-old is living in the shadow of a criminal career forged after he became addicted to cocaine and ended up in jail on drug and gun charges.
John Ibrahim acts as groomsman along with Simon Main (right) at the 2023 star studded wedding of radio ‘king’ Kyle Sandilands to Tegan Kynaston
JOHN IBRAHIM
The success story of the clan and now a wealthy property developer who lives in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs with his glamorous fiancee Sarah Budge and their child, John has achieved fame through the Paramount + series of his bestseller book, The Last King of the Cross. Mates with leading radio broadcaster and other Sydney celebrities, John has been accused of being an underworld figure and convicted of nothing. He only just survived a knife attack in Kings Cross when he was 16, and more recently was the target of a murder plot. Two men staked out Ibrahim’s Dover Heights home and planned to shoot John, but the plot failed.
Family matriarch Wahiba Ibrahim leaves her heavily fortified mansion in Merrylands this week to go out in a Porsche GTS with an Ibrahim minder
WAHIBA IBRAHIM
The matriarch of the Ibrahims, now aged in her late 70s, Wahiba brought up her children virtually as a single mother as her husband was absent for long stretches of time while she survived on a single mother’s pension and Sam then left school early to supplement the family finances. Wahiba’s health has been failing, although she was described as ‘terminally ill’ in 2011, allowing her daughter Armani Stelio to be bailed on kidnapping charges, and survived. She lives in the family compound in Merrylands, constructed and paid for by John on the site of their old housing commission home.
Fadi, who was shot in 2009 while sitting in a Lamborghini outside his Sydney home but survived, avoided jail for the importation plot which saw brother Michael sentenced to a maximum 30 years
FADI IBRAHIM
Now aged 51, Fadi is called the ‘sweet’ one by the family, but also regarded as a bit of a liability and magnet for trouble. In 2009 he was shot five times while sitting in a Lamborghini outside his Sydney home but survived, and in 2011 he and brother Michael were ordered to stand trial on a charge of conspiracy to murder John Macris, believed to be behind the shooting plot. They were acquitted. Michael and Fadi Ibrahim, and others, were arrested in Dubai in 2017 amid a multi-agency sting on illegal drug and tobacco importation. Michael is now serving two decades in prison for the MDMA plot, while Fadi avoided jail for possessing $600,000 in suspected proceeds of crime. He was convicted and give a wholly suspended sentence.
Michael is the youngest Ibrahim and the only sibling born in Australia. He is currently in jail serving a 30-year jail sentence for trying to import illegal tobacco and two tonnes of MDMA
MICHAEL IBRAHIM
The youngest Ibrahim and the only sibling born in Australia, Michael is currently in jail serving a 30-year jail sentence for trying to import illegal tobacco and two tonnes of MDMA into Australia. In 2020 police alleged he threatened to kill his sister Armani Stelio in jailhouse phone calls, but both told a court that they loved one another as brother and sister and that’s just how they spoke with each other. A conviction was recorded against Michael, but no further penalty imposed.
Ibrahim sister Armani Stelio was arrested on kidnapping and extortion charges which were later dropped
FIDA IBRAHIM aka ARMANI STELIO
The glamourous sister who with brother Michael was arrested on kidnapping and extortion charges in 2011, Armani Stelio, formerly Maha Ibrahim, She was accused along with her brother Sam and Semi Ngata with kidnapping a man and demanding he repay $100,000 given to a relative who was a protected witness in a conspiracy to murder case. The charges were dropped the following year.
MAHA SAYOUR aka JAZZ DIOR
Maha Sayour, who is now named Jazz Dior, was charged in 2009 with recklessly dealing with proceeds of crime following a police raid on her home where police allegedly found packets of cash amounting to nearly $2.86 million hidden in the roof. Charged with recklessly dealing with proceeds of crime, she ws found not guilty at trial in 2011. In 2017, she was sentenced for conspiring to supply firearms in a plot with her brother Sam, but avoided jail.
Loyal, longstanding and tough, the two metre tall, 120kg bodyguard Semi ‘Tongan Sam’ Ngata met he Ibrahims in the 1980s and was a security gaurd for John (both pictured above) for decades
SEMI ‘TONGAN SAM’ NGATA
Loyal, longstanding and tough, the two metre tall, 120kg bodyguard who lives across the road from Sam and Mrs Ibrahim in a house belonging to the Ibrahim family, is regarded as ‘a brother to all Ibrahims’ and apart from protecting John from violent attacks, he has also taken one for the family. Tongan Sam was shot in the back during a drive-by in the lead up to the wedding of Sam Sayour, the son of Maha, to Aisha Mehajer, the sister of jailed property entrepreneur Salim Mehajer. Ngata worked as a bodyguard for John Ibrahim since the pair met in Kings Cross in the 1980s, and although he is understood to have retired from that role the now 67-year-old is seen as an extra security layer whenever he is around.
