ABC investigates Four Corners reporter after podcast blow-up with underworld blogger

The ABC is investigating a former outlaw bikie boss turned Four Corners reporter after he launched an unauthorised podcast series on underworld crime alongside a self-styled “media cowboy”, which ended in a spectacular blow-up after just one episode.

In September, Mahmood Fazal, an ABC investigative reporter and former sergeant-at-arms of outlaw bikie gang The Mongols, launched a new podcast, Word on the Street, with Ryan Naumenko, a “rogue” reporter and controversial figure in Victoria.

The podcast was the brainchild of Naumenko, who says he once associated with “the mafia, scammers, conmen and drug dealers” before he “decided to make a change” and now operates Outlaw Media and the Infamous Entertainment Group.

On Wednesday, the 42-year-old Naumenko launched a scathing attack on his co-host, alleging Fazal did not tell the ABC about his new paid job as the show’s co-host, in a 12-minute tirade uploaded to YouTube twice, and deleted both times.

In a statement late Thursday, the ABC said that after initial endorsement of the project from Fazal’s immediate manager, the podcast appearance did not receive final approvals as part of its external work guidelines. The ABC said support was withdrawn after the first episode aired with gambling ads present within the video.

“After the interview aired, which included gambling ads, his manager withdrew endorsement of the work. ABC management is looking further into this matter,” an ABC spokesperson said in response to a series of questions.

This masthead was unable to reach Naumenko, and Fazal did not respond to a request to comment on Wednesday. Further questions were put to Fazal following the statement provided by the ABC.

In the deleted video, Naumenko also claimed that Fazal demanded Naumenko pay him thousands of dollars in cash for his appearances before recording the second episode of the podcast in a Prahran hotel.

“I didn’t realise how serious he was with only accepting cash payments. I was more than happy to transfer him the multiple thousands that he would be paid for that 30-minute episode right then and there. However, that wasn’t an option for Mahmood. He could only be paid in cash,” Numenko said in the video.

This masthead is not alleging that the events occurred as described by Naumenko, only that the allegations were made.

Three weeks earlier, the two men had featured in the inaugural podcast Word on the Street, but in Wednesday’s video, Naumenko claimed he had fired Fazal after he arrived at a Prahran penthouse Naumenko had hired to film the second episode of the podcast a fortnight ago. He claimed the ABC reporter was accompanied by Ben Aitken, an award-winning artist who has “kill all rats” tattooed across his forehead.

Aitken is understood to have designed the initial logo for the podcast.

Naumenko claimed the pair almost immediately started to demand money.

“I literally envision myself throwing both of those dogs off the balcony and then ending up in a f---ing jail cell yet again, but this time over the greed of a f---ing donkey who couldn’t mind his motherf---ing manners,” said Naumenko in the video.

“He was paid half the agreed amount in cash that night,” Naumenko said.

He also claimed that Fazal had wanted to do a forthcoming podcast episode “to earn some respect from the Alameddine crime family in Sydney” but that the “ABC wouldn’t let him, due to the stories tying him too closely with the Alameddine crime family.”

Last year, this masthead reported that the award-winning ABC reporter had passed on menacing messages from the organised crime gang to journalists, one of whom became so fearful he reported the matter to police. No action was taken against Fazal.

“These people kill people,” Fazal is alleged to have told Kristo Langker, a producer and researcher who works with popular YouTube figure Jordan Shanks, known online as FriendlyJordies.

On that occasion, Fazal denied any wrongdoing and complained of ethnic stereotyping.

Over a week in January 2024, the ABC reporter repeatedly told Langker that he’d been communicating with “very serious gang figures” who were threatening that “something bad is going to happen” if a FriendlyJordies video, which featured associates of the notorious Alameddine crime family, wasn’t deleted from YouTube, Langker told police.

A few weeks later, Shanks removed the video. “You win. We’re taking down the video.” Without naming any person or group in his statement, Shanks added, “Congratulations. You run this city.”

Last month, an associate of the Alameddine crime family, Tufi Junior Tauese-Auelia, 39, was sentenced to a maximum five-year term for the November 2022 firebombing of Shanks’ Bondi home in what a judge described as a “professional attack on a journalist”.

Following his departure from the Mongols in 2016, Fazal has parlayed his unique background into a successful media career, culminating with his reporting job at the ABC’s flagship current affairs program.

In a 2023 program on a cocaine cartel, Fazal explained on camera that underworld figures would normally never speak to the media but “before I was a journalist, I was involved in the criminal world … it allows me to forge relationships with people who are also involved in that world”.

Whatever relationship he forged with Naumenko is at an end.

“And to be very clear, Mahmood Fazal, you are fired, mate,” said his former podcast co-host on Wednesday.

Three years ago, Roberta Williams, the ex-wife of murdered gangland boss Carl Williams, narrowly avoided jail time over a plot to blackmail Naumenko, who was assaulted by her underlings after he failed to deliver on a reality TV series, Mob Wives.

Word on the Street was launched as “the ultimate insider’s guide to Australia’s underworld and gang crime scenes”, drawing on the pair’s connections and history reporting on Melbourne’s world of crime. The first episode, about the criminal underworld’s connections to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, was published on September 23 and reached 25,000 viewers on YouTube.

The first episode of Word on the Street offered viewers a bonus bet on the Vegastars website.

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