Crime figure Hamad Assaad was stealing drugs from organised crime gangs with a well-known Hells Angels bikie before he was killed in a hail of bullets outside his south-west Sydney home.
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Assaad was well-known in the area's underworld, having been investigated for multiple high-profile shootings in the past.
When he walked out of his Georges Hall home on October 25 and was shot repeatedly, he was on the police radar as a suspect in the shooting of Wally Ahmad at Bankstown some six months earlier.
However he had also come under notice for large-scale drug rips, carried out with a Sydney bikie figure he befriended in jail.
The Hells Angels figure was doing time over a money laundering racket when he forged a close friendship with Assaad, a relationship the police were aware of.
Someone who knew both Ahmad and Assaad said the suspected drug rip activity was where the pair's deep-rooted tensions came from.
He said Ahmad was engaged as a mediator by some crime syndicates to try and recover the drugs or money Assaad was accused of stealing.
By the time of his death last month, word had reached Ahmad's associates that Assaad – known as "H" – was responsible for his brazen downfall.
And he was doing little to hide that, driving around the area in a Rolls-Royce and frequenting a gym in Condell Park where Ahmad's associates worked out.
"They live around there, he was just being cocky," the source, who knew both men, said.
"If he just kept his mouth shut and kept low key they would have let him be."
In the days before two gunmen ambushed Assaad and shot him several times with little regard to who was watching, there were signs H was a marked man.
Underworld chatter was that someone was seeking to get their hands on a high-performance car – the type commonly used by crooks to carry out robberies and hits.
The police car he spotted sitting off his house on October 25 would have been another indicator he was in the frame for something sinister.
Those who encountered Assaad were not surprised he had met such a brazen fate.
Despite his "executioner" tattoo, police are yet to find evidence he was a contract killer.
Rather, people viewed him as a wannabe player.
Despite Assaad's recent close bond with the Hells Angels figure, it was Ahmad "Rock" Ahmad, the brother of the underworld figure Assaad was suspected of shooting, who helped pave the way for the club into his neighbourhood.
It is understood the bikie group recently set up a chapter in Punchbowl after seeking permission from Rock.
Investigators say Rock was seen as the obvious choice to fill Ahmad's patriarchal role after Ahmad's murder in April and after his brother Mahmoud "Brownie" Ahmad left for Lebanon.
One line of inquiry among many for police is whether Assaad was murdered in retaliation for his rumoured role in Wally's execution at Bankstown some six months earlier.
