Gangster’s Paradise: Inside Head Hunters’ luxury overseas trip of a lifetime

Five members of the Head Hunters gang posing poolside at their hotel in Cambodia. Photo / Instagram

A squad of Head Hunter gang members have enjoyed a round-the-world holiday flying business class, staying in luxurious hotels and visiting ‘bucket list’ tourist attractions.

Over the past four weeks, the group have travelled to Cambodia, Dubai, Egypt, Rome, Paris and Greece and like many tourists, posted photographs of their dream destinations on social media.

Led by an influential member of the “Northside” faction of the gang’s East chapter in Auckland, the five Head Hunters have filmed themselves riding dune buggies and camels in the desert, brandishing guns and firing rocket launchers on a shooting range, and cruising on a boat in the blue waters of the Mediterranean.

Photographs posted on several Instagram accounts show the gang members sitting in business class, without their shirts on, when leaving New Zealand and then at their first destination, Cambodia, where they visited a memorial for victims of the Khmer Rouge buried in a mass grave.

“Run with us or run from us, makes no difference,” the senior Head Hunter wrote under a photograph of the friends standing outside the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center.

Another photograph showed the group posing in a pool at the Templation Hotel in nearby Angkor.

Cambodian authorities were alerted to the presence of the gang by the Australian Federal Police, who had been briefed by their New Zealand counterparts, according to a document obtained by the Stuff news website.

The Head Hunters were described as “big motorcycle criminals” involved in “many drug cases”, although none of the five men listed in the document were accused of any crimes.

The gang members then moved on to the Middle East and Europe. Wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the Head Hunter symbol, photographs show the group standing outside the Egyptian pyramids, the Louvre museum in Paris, and the Colosseum in Rome.

“Just another day in the life of E,” wrote the senior Head Hunter under a photograph of the friends standing outside the famous gladiatorial arena.

Members of the Head Hunters visiting the the Colosseum in Rome.

Outside the Louvre museum in Paris.

Visiting the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.

The ostentatious lifestyle displayed publicly by the Head Hunters on social media is an example of the generational change in gang culture, a new breed of gangster dubbed the “Nike Bikie” in Australia.

Where the first generation of gang members were often unkempt and wore scruffy leather, the modern gangster is cleancut and more likely to wear designer clothing.

“They wear lots of jewellery, heavily tattooed, gym bunnies, with attractive girlfriends hanging off their arms,” Deb Wallace, a former detective superintendent in Sydney previously told the Herald on Sunday.

“It looks like a very glamorous lifestyle.”

Members of the Head Hunters brandishing firearms and a rocket launcher in Cambodia.

Visiting the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

This influence has become noticeable in New Zealand over the past five years, as members of Australian motorcycle gangs have been deported as “501s” and established chapters here.

Their arrival has radically changed the criminal underworld in New Zealand.

The likes of the Mongols and the Comancheros, while small in number, had no fear and little respect for the longstanding motorcycle clubs in New Zealand like the Head Hunters.

To rub salt into the wound, the Australian gangs - with their deep pockets and even deeper international connections - were recruiting hard from other gangs into their ranks.

Their arrival challenged the established pecking order, leading to both an escalation in gang membership - as everyone recruited to bolster their numbers - and the inevitable conflict.

In particular, the Mongols were involved in shooting of rival gang houses in Tauranga and an ongoing feud with the Head Hunters in Auckland - which led to the Head Hunters retaliating inside a 5-star hotel.

This radical change in the underworld coincided with a subtle shift in New Zealand gang hierarchy from traditional “chapter-and-pad” to a more modern “brand loyalty”, according to a police intelligence report released under the Official Information Act.

“It is likely that the older, chapter-and-pad-based model is being gradually superseded by shared allegiance to the ‘brand’ or ‘franchise’ stated on their top rocker,” says the intelligence briefing (the top rocker is part of the gang patch).

“Modern gang leadership sets the direction and business priorities of a gang, and junior members and prospects operate within the resulting boundaries. Under this system members tend to operate more independently.”

Essentially, this means not every senior member of a gang is aware of what other members are up to.

While they might not know what their peers are up to, every patched member or prospect is expected to carry out the orders of their “captain” to further their own interests.

These personal interests do not always align with the aim of the gang, said a police gang expert giving evidence at the 2017 trial of senior Head Hunter William ‘Bird’ Hines on charges of methamphetamine manufacture.

This means it’s difficult to attribute the activity - sometimes criminal - of one captain with the gang as a whole.

The “basic privilege” of a patched member is to carry out his life and business, with the backing of the gang, said the police expert.

In other words, the patched member is now in a position to use the ‘name’ of the gang to back him in whatever he does, and to direct lower ranked members of the gang to assist him in whatever he requires, be it his own interests or that of the gang as a whole.”

Whether a “cell” in a gang moves from a “collection of frequent offenders” to an organised criminal group, according to the 2019 intelligence report, depends on whether their leader is dynamic.

“The most significant factor in the organisation of gangs is the willpower, charisma or physical strength of individual leaders.”