Tattoo & Organised Crime

Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs are Australia’s predominant criminal element. They control the lion’s share of the illegal drugs, prostitution and weapons markets here and many other lucrative illegal trades. The law is so far behind the problem that the most urgent difficulties these folks face is,” What the hell to we do with all the dirty cash we make?” There is a famous documented story of a well-known club that had so much extra cash they decided to spend tens of thousands of dollars on Lottery tickets every week. You guessed it, they won big. Turning they’re initial investment of a few dirty dollars into hundreds of thousands of legitimate, clean dollars.

The Tattoo Industry is such an integral part of the Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs operations here, that they jealously guard it as if each studio represents not only a marker of the clubs turf but a strategically necessary link in the financial chain the clubs have established.

They say that my part of Australia is 20 years behind the rest of the country, and that Australia is at least five years behind the US & Europe, so the rest of the world may have faced up to this already. Or it may even be unique to my part of Australia, I’m not certain.

What I can say for certain is that a trained & talented, hygienic & sanitary Tattoo Artist of many years’ experience built a studio at his home in the town I live in, he is well known and well regarded & on December 25th of 2012, his home was fire bombed. This came after a sustained campaign of intimidation from the established Tattoo Studios controlled by OMC.
The word ran through the Tattoo underground here like wild fire. The attack was a deliberate and clear message to the many other backyard Artists in my town that, “You Tattoo through us or you don’t Tattoo at all”