Police have confirmed Menace To Society tags were sprayed inside an Altona holiday rental trashed last month and there were “commonalities” with an out-of-control party also involving African youth at Werribee before Christmas.
The double-storey house on Altona’s Esplanade, rented out on Booking.com for $473 a night, sustained about $150,000 of damage with walls ripped out, windows broken and fittings smashed.
Detective Sergeant Robert Briz, of the Hobsons Bay crime investigation unit, said the house had been rented for three nights using a Visa card possibly bought on the dark web.
“We believe we’ve identified who had made contact with the victim and arranged the hiring of the place,” he said.
“It was leased over three nights from Thursday [November 30] through to the Sunday.
“With Booking.com, it has been difficult for us to obtain full information from them because … it’s convoluted, but the actual company that owns them is an international company so it’s a different request process for information, so that often draws things out. A Visa number was given but the name might not necessarily match the number.
“Sometimes these Visa card details are obtained via the dark web … I’ve nothing to suggest that that card is recorded as stolen.”
Detective Sergeant Briz said there were “a number of commonalities” with a riot at an Airbnb-listed house in Werribee’s Attunga Grove on December 20.
“There’s certainly Africans implicated in ours and there’s clearly African persons of interest related to the others,” he said. “Clearly there has been a push to booking Airbnbs and holding parties there.”
He said there were also MTS tags at the Werribee property. “But again, people can tag MTS, but they might not necessarily be part of any particular gang or association,” he said.
“I think that a lot of it is drummed up, even with Apex. Whilst there were persons that were referencing being part of that gang, all that crime wasn’t related back to Apex … it’s just that everyone references Apex because that’s what was out in the media.”
