“I wanna kill him so bad.”
That was the explosive text message, purportedly sent from a former outlaw motorcycle gang member turned Four Corners reporter to his former podcast co-host, quoted in a news story splashed across the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
The story was referenced in an Australian YouTuber’s video that has clocked up just under one million views, and in another video published by a US YouTuber with over 17 million subscribers, where the allegations were viewed an additional two million times.
The text message, along with a number of others, allegedly revealed ABC journalist Mahmood Fazal was seeking to create podcast episodes as a favour to the Alameddine crime network and wanted to kill prominent YouTuber FriendlyJordies, real name Jordan Shanks, whose house had been firebombed by alleged Alameddine associates. The story sent shockwaves throughout the Australian media industry and risks bringing down Fazal’s career as a journalist.
The messages, sent between Fazal and Ryan Naumenko, a social media figure whose Instagram account covers gang crime in Melbourne, and with whom Fazal agreed to record a podcast, were first published by Kate McClymont, one of Australia’s most respected and awarded investigative reporters, in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
“Fuck [Friendly] Jordies and his people they’re dogs I wanna kill him so bad,” Fazal is alleged to have said, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. In a reference to Sydney’s most notorious crime family, he purportedly said “Bro Alameddines still wanna hit me I need to make up to em with this pod and we will kill it,” before returning to Shanks and writing “Nah he has to get what he gets he's a dog ratted me to jacks [the police]”.
When first questioned about the messages by McClymont, Fazal said they were fabricated. He denied sending them, and said he had no recollection of expressing those sentiments. McClymont’s story contains Fazal’s denial, writing he has “accused former associate Ryan Naumenko of fabricating an explosive text message in which Fazal speaks out against YouTube figure Jordan Shanks, known online as FriendlyJordies.”
Nevertheless, the published story contains a recreation of the text exchange between Fazal and Naumenko, details about the date it allegedly occurred, Naumenko’s denials that he fabricated the messages, and details of other aspects of Fazal’s life and alleged associations.
Lamestream has seen the messages that McClymont was sent by Naumenko. While a number of the messages appear legitimate, the most incendiary texts – including the threat to kill Shanks, and the reference to making it up to the Alameddines – appear to have substantial discrepancies and inconsistencies that suggest they may be fraudulent and raise questions about what steps the The Sydney Morning Herald took to verify their authenticity before publication.
