The fortress-style home of former bikie and convicted stand-over man Terrence Tognolini has been put up for sale for $300,000 nearly six years after authorities moved to confiscate it.
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The Glenroy townhouse is one of several properties now for sale after they were seized following the 2007 arrest of the one-time president of the Thomastown chapter of the Nomads, an outlaw motorcycle gang affiliated with the Hells Angels.
Tognolini was sentenced to a minimum of eight years' jail in 2010 after being convicted of multiple counts of blackmail, arson, fraud, threatening to damage property and indecent assault. He was already in prison for drug dealing and indecent assault. Police have also named Tognolini as a suspect in three murders.
Allegations of sexual misconduct with underage girls precipitated Tognolini's now-infamous expulsion from the motorcycle club, with members bashing and forceably inking over his Hells Angels tattoo before using a wheelbarrow to dump him in the street.
The double-storey, metal-clad property on Rowan Street has been billed by the selling agents as "Glenroy's most distinctive townhouse" and features "security unlike you have previously seen".
The main point of access to the four-bedroom townhouse is through a steel roller door that opens onto a ground-floor space, next to the kitchen and dining room, that is large enough to park a car.
All the windows have security shutters or bars – the few ground-floor windows are also set high up on the walls – and the first-floor balcony is encircled in a steel fence.
A video tour of the property posted on YouTube states "Complete Privacy & Security is Assured".
AE Gibson & Co agent Peter Gibson declined to comment.
Consent to sell the Glenroy property, as well as another in the suburb and one in Jacana, was granted nearly two years ago by the Supreme Court. None has yet been sold.
At the time, the Department of Justice Asset Confiscation Operations (ACO) and a legal representative for Tognolini agreed to set the selling price at $350,000. It is believed the Rowan Street property was first listed for sale more than a year ago but was then taken off the market.
A vacant block in Jacana is also now for sale at $260,000 after its reserve was originally set at $350,000.
The Supreme Court ordered that any proceeds of the sale after costs were to be paid to ACO to be held in trust "pending final determination" of the matter.
Between 1996 and 2004, Tognolini, owner of a Thomastown hydroponics business located next to the clubhouse of the Nomads chapter of the Hells Angels, used his underworld status to intimidate five competitors who failed to comply with his demands.
Tognolini told one rival he would "cut his eyes out" if he approached police and rammed his motorcycle into the shopfront of a pharmacy he claimed was encroaching on his land.
A third victim changed his name by deed poll in an attempt to escape the terror.
Judge Lance Pilgrim said Tognolini’s position was parallel to the biblical story of Samson and Delilah.
Just as Samson was weakened when Delilah cut his hair, so had Tognolini’s power been diminished when he was expelled from his gang, Judge Pilgrim said.
"You no longer had your henchmen ... your goons, to support you in your nefarious activities," he said.
Tognolini is a suspect in the unsolved 1999 murder of Bendigo mother Vicki Jacobs.
With Adrian Lowe
cvedelago@theage.com.au Twitter: @chrisvedelago
