‘Five shots fired’: Lucky escape for mother of cocaine dealers in third drive-by shooting

2 months ago 14

The luxury inner west home belonging to the mother of convicted cocaine dealers Joe and Ray Frangieh has been sprayed with bullets in what police are describing as a “targeted attack” on the occupants.

Neighbour Deidre Nolan said she heard “five shots fired in rapid succession” about 1.30am on Thursday.

Property developer Joe Frangieh with his wife Sharon.

Land title records show the Davidson Avenue house was purchased by Hasna Frangieh, 77, for $1.5 million in December 2015.

Since then, her son Joe, 48, a property developer, has built a two-storey residence on the site in Concord.

In April, Joe Frangieh listed the Davidson Avenue address as his residence on corporate records for his new company, Dud20 Pty Ltd. The property is also the registered address for Joe’s wife Sharon Frangieh’s new business venture, Aesthetics by SF.

Although nobody was home at the time of the shooting, Nolan told the Herald there had been “a high turnover of people” staying there in recent times.

This was Hasna Frangieh’s third drive-by shooting. In September 2003, the Frangieh family’s home in Bristol Street, Merrylands, was the target of up to a dozen shots. No one was injured.

A second targeted shooting of the Frangieh home in December that year proved fatal.

Crime scene at Davidson Avenue, Concord, where gunshots have riddled an upper-story window.

On the evening of December 7, 2003, Hasna’s daughter, Elizabeth, and other members of the family had just arrived home when a man wearing a stocking over his face jumped out of a car and pulled out a gun. Elizabeth fled but her father, Sayed, 59, who’d come out onto the porch, was killed by a single shot to the chest.

It emerged the intended target was Ray Frangieh. Ray and his brother, Joe, had been released from prison in February that year, having been jailed for cocaine supply.

Ordered to pay restitution to the NSW Crime Commission, Ray Frangieh had sold his yellow BMW to another crime figure, Ken Tan. When Tan failed to pay the $50,000 for the car, Ray reported the matter to the police. According to court records, the first drive-by shooting occurred on the same day the police confiscated the BMW.

Earlier on the day of the second shooting, Ray had run Tan off the road in a road-rage incident, which prompted Tan to retaliate by sending associates to shoot up the Frangieh house. Tan was later jailed for manslaughter.

In Brisbane’s Supreme Court in 2021, Ray Frangieh, a former Gold Coast nightclub promoter, pleaded guilty to trafficking in dangerous drugs including cocaine. His ex-wife, Melissa, narrowly avoided jail for money laundering almost $200,000, which the court heard was the criminal proceeds from her husband’s drug supply empire.

Bullet holes on the upper storey window in the Davidson Avenue home.

Ray Frangieh, 45, also has a conviction for assault, and in 2022, he pleaded guilty to dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception when he falsely nominated the previous owner of his car as the driver when he was caught doing 83km/h over the speed limit in Lane Cove Road at North Ryde.

Ray and his brother, Joe, had been jailed in NSW in 2002 over cocaine supply.

For more than a decade, Joe Frangieh was embroiled in a long-running dispute with the Australian Tax Office over an audit of his tax affairs dating to 2007. According to court documents, there was $3,234,064 in unexplained deposits made into Frangieh’s account that year.

Frangieh subsequently provided a number of statutory declarations from family and friends claiming that “certain deposits” made to his account were repayments of loans or payments for motor vehicles.

He claimed some of the deposits were loan repayments from Ray, whom he’d lent $200,000 to buy a car.

Joe Frangieh also claimed his sister, Elizabeth, and mother, Hasna, had deposited money with him to make property investments.

One of those who provided a statutory declaration was Robert Melhem, who was later sentenced to a maximum of 10 years’ jail for supplying commercial quantities of cocaine.

Another was Frangieh’s business partner George Cheihk, a Lamborghini-driving, ex-bankrupt Queensland property developer who had previously been banned from managing corporations for two years.

A third was a since-banned bookmaker, Leo Lewin. In recent times, the discount carpet seller has gained quite a reputation for agreeing to allow major organised crime figures to stay at his house while on bail.

One underworld figure, already on bail over an attempted murder, was charged with committing a fresh murder while on bail at Lewin’s Sydney home.

Leo Lewin has offered his house for organised crime figures to reside while on bail for serious offences.

Although Frangieh’s dispute with the ATO was settled, he sued the ATO for $8.75 million in 2017, claiming its pursuit of him had caused “humiliation, embarrassment, stress, anxiety, emotional hurt and inconvenience”. He lost and was ordered to pay costs.

His appeal was also unsuccessful. “Mr Frangieh submitted that malice, bad faith and conscious maladministration” had been demonstrated by an ATO official. “None of these grounds is made good,” the NSW Court of Appeal held.

In the hours after the shooting at the Davidson Avenue house on Thursday, a dozen heavily armed tactical police stormed the Frangieh home armed with battering rams. Arriving at 9am, they spent 10 minutes inside the luxury property before leaving.

Detectives looking at the shooting are searching for at least two people. After the house was sprayed with bullets, a white 2021 Genesis was found on fire 3.5 kilometres away in Burwood. CCTV obtained by Nine News appears to show the lit car rolling down Stuart Street. The car is believed to have been stolen.

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