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The murder of Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim was done by the numbers, a meticulously planned job executed by professionals.
They had less than a day to prepare after learning Abdulrahim and his girlfriend had checked into a Preston hotel, a chance to finally pin him down. And the window of opportunity would close in just another day, as Abdulrahim was set to slip out of the country for his own safety.
Sam Abdulrahim’s message to enemies, posted online.Credit: Instagram
A four-man hit team. Three getaway cars – stolen, loaded with petrol cans and positioned in suburbs 30 minutes apart.
A failsafe way to bypass two locked doors to slip undetected into a secure hotel parking garage.
Hiding in plain sight, they had to patiently wait to see if the 32-year-old would head to his car or walk out into the street.
It took less than 30 seconds for Abdulrahim to ride down the elevator and into the ambush, trapped inside a basement with nowhere to go but into a hail of gunfire – it was a kill box.
After a decade on the run and 18 prior attempts on his life, Abdulrahim finally got “got”.
It’s been nearly 12 months since Abdulrahim, the former bikie turned boxer and wannabe player in the illicit tobacco trade, was murdered in one of the most brazen gangland executions in years.
The parking garage where Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim was killed in January 2025.Credit: The Age
Only a handful of people know what actually happened in the Preston hotel parking garage shortly before 10.30am on January 28, 2025.
Even fewer knew that the underworld’s most hunted figure, a man with a $1 million bounty on his head, would be in that particular place at that exact time.
Abdulrahim was extremely paranoid and hyper-vigilant, not least because in the last “close call”, in May 2024, 17 bullets were fired at him but missed. In 2022, he was shot eight times outside a funeral but survived.
He was living overseas until only days before his death, and came back to Australia for a lightning quick visit before he planned to go back into hiding again in a foreign bolthole.
It’s no wonder his death sparked a furious rat hunt among his friends and associates in the days after.
The identity of the prime suspect for ordering the hit, underworld kingpin Kazem Hamad, has been an open secret since day one – but there have been no arrests for the murder.
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In fact, nearly 18 months before the now infamous hit, Hamad taunted Abdulrahim by telling him he couldn’t protect himself and Hamad’s men were like “ghosts”.
Victoria Police’s homicide squad says a “significant investigation” has since taken place to determine who was responsible for the shooting and their motivation.
“This includes both those directly involved and anyone who may have directed the offence to take place,” a spokesperson said.
“Detectives have spoken with a number of people and the investigation remains active and ongoing.”
An inside man?
How the shooters gained access to the underground parking garage has never been made public.
The five-storey building is both a 79-room hotel and a 21-apartment residential complex, which offers a “full security building with swipe access to all entries and lift”, according to promotional materials.
Walking into the lobby requires a key card or being buzzed in by the hotel operators or a resident, and the entries are covered by multiple CCTV cameras.
Getting access to the garage also requires a swipe card to use the elevator, unlock the stairwell doors leading underground or activate the roller door to enter by car.
Once Abdulrahim was gunned down, the killers’ escape route meant either running up the stairwell to the emergency exit out to an above-ground parking lot, or a 12-second wait for the roller door to rise, which could be opened from the inside without a key.
The murder would have been caught on CCTV, with cameras positioned in the garage for blanket coverage. Victoria Police has never released any stills or video in an appeal for information.
The shots were heard by a hotel staffer who called police, starting a ticking clock for the shooters to make their getaway.
The hit team raced 1.4 kilometres north of the scene to a dead-end road, Alexandra Street, which backs onto a public water reservoir. After reversing the getaway Porsche SUV through an access fence, the car was torched.
The men changed vehicles to a waiting grey Ford Ranger ute, the second getaway vehicle.
Athan Boursinos was gunned down in a laneway behind his family home in Wollert in July.
The trip to the burn site for the second escape vehicle was about 25-30 minutes, depending on the route.
The stretch of Western Avenue in Westmeadows where the ute was burnt runs along an isolated stretch of vacant land owned by the Cleanaway waste company.
The car the shooter used to make their final, clean getaway has never been publicly identified by police.
Murder for murder
In July 2025, a member of Hamad’s crew, Athan Boursinos, was climbing into his BMW in the alley behind his home in Wollert. He was in a suit, due to appear in Heidelberg Magistrates’ Court that morning on charges of drug and weapon possession, theft and driving offences.
As witnesses tell it, someone approached Boursinos and they had angry words. Seconds later, several gunshots rang out, and Boursinos was lying dead in the alley.
The 21-year-old was suspected by police and underworld sources to be one of the gunmen who ambushed Abdulrahim in the parking garage.
Later intelligence suggested a hit team had been contracted out of Sydney to kill Boursinos.
As a member of “Kaz’s Boys”, retribution for Boursinos’ murder was expected to be swift and brutal. But nothing came.
Boursinos had apparently fallen afoul of the gang despite pulling off the clean execution of The Punisher.
In memoriam
In recent months, the Abdulrahim family has erected a black marble shrine to The Punisher at his grave site, complete with a near six-foot tombstone inlaid with photos and a gold-embossed silhouette of the boxer.
In an area of low-key, almost flat grave sites at Northern Memorial Park it is instantly recognisable from a long distance off.
Fresh flowers are laid regularly on the grave.
The tombstone of Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim.Credit: The Age
Up close, it also turns out The Punisher has been buried next to an old enemy, Mahmoud Karam.
Karam also died in a hail of gunfire, about two months before Abdulrahim.
Two men who hated each other now have their monuments next to each other forever.
And the final irony?
The man who is alleged to have put Abdulrahim in the ground, Hamad, is also the prime suspect for ordering the murder of Karam.
In a recorded phone call between Hamad and Abdulrahim from 2023, which was leaked onto social media in the aftermath of the latter’s killing, the gangland kingpin laid out what was going to happen.
“I can protect myself, none of your boys have been seen down here in Melbourne,” Abdulrahim said.
“They’re ghosts,” Hamad said.
“I’m still alive, brother. Eight shots later and I’m still alive,” Abdulrahim taunted.
“You’re lucky. Luck. Luck … You can’t protect yourself, my brother,” Hamad responded.
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