‘Blood vendetta’: Inside the Sydney underworld feud that nearly killed ex-Kiwis star Matt Utai

Police have confirmed Matt Utai, 44, has no known criminal associations - but Iziah has been linked to the Coconut Cartel.

He is on the run - wanted by homicide detectives investigating last year’s gangland murder of senior Alameddine member Dawood Zakaria.

Iziah Utai, aged in his early 20s, fled Australia five days after Zakaria was gunned down as he sat in his car waiting at a set of traffic lights. If police know where he is now, they’re not saying.

Last Friday police arrested six people – including several teens - in relation to the shooting of his father who was found writhing on his front lawn with critical injuries and two gunshot wounds. Those arrests include the alleged 25-year-old shooter and his 15-year-old alleged getaway driver.

Police detectives believe he was targeted in place of Iziah Utai - who was in hiding.

Prominent Australian organised crime and gang expert Mark Lauchs told the Herald the conflict between the Alameddines and the Coconut Cartel - including the shooting of Matt Utai - highlights how dangerous Sydney’s gang turf wars have become.

“Absolutely everything you’ve seen [about gangs] on Netflix applies here. And that’s often where a lot of these guys learn their trade,” Lauchs told the Herald.

“There was the Godfather generation, then there was Scarface. So many people copy what they saw in Scarface in Australia. Then the Sopranos.

“It’s quite frankly ... ancient Celtic barbarian ... the same as the barbarians fighting the Romans. There’s a blood vendetta element to it and hyper-masculine element to it.”

The head of Deakin University’s Covert Networks Lab, Professor David Bright, said the former New Zealand sport star’s shooting highlighted how dangerous Sydney gang feuds could be - even for innocent family members.

“Where there are these kinds of vendettas, this kind of bad blood, people who are in the social circle or family of the person who’s being targeted are most definitely at risk,” said Bright, who specialises in organised crime, gangs and terrorist groups.

In 2023, Iziah Utai was jailed after he was found with weapons, cash and drugs after a raid of a Sydney home. He also has an earlier conviction for armed robbery.

In earlier conflict between the Alameddines and the Coconut Cartel, his now-closed barbershop was twice firebombed last May.

Those attacks have been investigated by a New South Wales police gang taskforce.

Iziah Utai did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment.

Since Matt Utai’s shooting, verbal and online threats have ramped up between the Alameddine and Coconut Cartel factions and associates.

First came a firebombing at a property in the suburb of Toongabbie on January 14. Video footage of the attack included a man yelling “Coconut Cartel on top”.

The arson was followed by a disturbing post to social media: a photo of a gun, ammunition and a profanity-ridden message to high-profile Alameddine member, Bilal Alameddine, to “come out and play”.

It was his parents’ house that had been the target of last month’s firebomb attack.

Another threat posted on January 15 stated the Coconut Cartel was “Ready 2 Chalk Out Every Alameddine”.

The morning after his father was shot, a suspicious fire was lit at Iziah Utai’s Sydney home on February 18, with video featuring a male voice saying: “This is Ziggy Utai’s house. F*** him and the Coconut Cartel. This is the start of the destruction, brother.”

An ominous warning was later posted to social media stating: “To the rat Ziggy Utai and his joke of a cartel, this is just the start of a losing battle for you and anyone that dares to come up against us. Stay tuned from the one and only crime family, forever strong.”

The feud is the latest of several involving the Alameddines - who Australian media have described as being a “notorious crime family” since they rose to underworld prominence in the early 2010s.

Talal Alameddine - younger brother of Rafat Alameddine, the alleged boss of the organised crime group - was jailed for 17 years for supplying the gun used in the 2015 murder of police accountant Curtis Cheng; an Isis-inspired killing.

Other members have also been linked to extremist views.

And after a Daily Telegraph investigation, it was alleged that Lindt cafe extremist gunman Man Haron Monis - who killed a hostage before he was shot by police during a 16-hour standoff in 2014 - bought the gun he used from an ally of the Alameddines.

The Alameddines have been involved in numerous homicides and other violence in the years since; including deadly battles with rival crime family the Hamzys.

Tensions began with the Hamzys in the 1990s, after a Hamzy family member married into the Alameddines against her father’s wishes, then exploded in violent fashion between 2016-17 and 2020-22.

Lauchs – an expert in Australian organised crime, dark networks and outlaw gangs – said it was a brutal feud that left one clear winner.

“No one cares about the Hamzys anymore. They’re all in jail or dead,” said Lauchs, a recently retired associate professor at Queensland University of Technology’s Centre for Justice.

The Alameddines have meanwhile continued violent turf wars with other family-based crime networks in Sydney.

Sydney police say their latest rival, the Coconut Cartel, has strong Pasifika links and its membership is largely former associates or “muscle” for the Alameddine family.

Lauchs said a lot of young Pasifika men who travel to Australia without formal education find jobs on construction sites, some of which are controlled by organised crime networks - and a small minority are then enticed into providing protection for gangs.

But gangland loyalty can be short-lived, he said.

“One day [they go], ‘Hang on, why are we protecting you? Why don’t we ... take it [the drug market] off you?’.

“That’s nothing new in the world. That’s probably thousands of years old.”

Bright said he hadn’t done in-depth research on the Coconut Cartel but it appeared to have the tell-tale make-up of young “feeder” groups willing to take risks for larger organised crime groups.

“They’re paid to go and firebomb this house or shoot at this house or shoot this bloke,” Bright said.

“Younger guys are given those tasks, partly because ... they will have fewer consequences from the legal system. [And] because they’re younger, they’re [less] risk averse.”

Members of the younger Sydney gangs taking on established crime networks often come from “low socio-economic, poor opportunities” backgrounds, attracted by quick money and reputation in the crime world, Bright said.

Lauchs and Bright said drugs were the main drivers behind Sydney’s gang wars.

The city’s annual illicit drug trade has been estimated to be worth up to $6 billion.

Controlling the lucrative cocaine market was something organised crime groups sought, he said.

Lauchs said outlaw networks also had “very good” lawyers and accountants on their books, as well as other professionals who helped with money laundering operations.

The decades-long trail of bodies and other bloodshed showed how ruthless those wanting control of the drug market were.

“The drive for the money from the cocaine won’t [change] and people are willing to kill a whole lot of people to make sure they’re the ones with the money,” Lauchs said.

“There’s a big churn of people [being killed or fleeing] and what’s driving it all is a multibillion-dollar cocaine market.”

Firearms are more often than not the means used to “resolve” Sydney gang rivalries.

Bright has co-authored a study interviewing 75 inmates with long histories of firearms crime.

They spoke of guns as “instruments” or protection in the criminal world, as well as means of retaliation.

That included being used to murder or maim rivals; the latter targeting parts of the body that would leave lasting damage but not kill the victim.

The rise in the numbers of younger gang members wanting to build reputations meant there was no shortage of people keen to carry out a “hit”.

Lauchs said the days of “absolute high-level professionals” being paid high six-figure sums to kill had passed. Now some were offered as little as $50,000 to kill someone in Sydney, he said.

The rise of gun crime had led gang figures to flee Australia and run their empires from overseas, Lauchs said.

One initially moved to Dubai, then - still feeling unsafe - relocated to Iraq, he said.

Others have escaped to Belize in Central America, while Rafat Alameddine is understood to now be based in Lebanon.

One of the lines of inquiry New South Wales Police are pursuing after Matt Utai’s shooting is whether a crime boss living overseas ordered the violence.

Lauchs said other crime figures in Sydney have chosen not to flee, despite being warned of the target on their head - and at least one was killed.

“The police went to him and said, ‘You’re going to die. People are coming to kill you’,” Lauchs said.

“And he said, ‘Tough luck, that’s life’ and rather than going and hiding, he actively went out openly for everyone to see and they got him.”

When a leader of a Sydney organised crime group decides a rival needs taking, there’s rarely any going back, Bright said.

“Where there is a lot of bad blood ... [they] will just try and try and try again until they succeed,” he said.

“The way it plays out is usually there’s either significant harm or death basically.”

Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 34 years of newsroom experience.

Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.