How executed gangster wife rose from public housing to luxury life with $20k of designer jewellery

Gangster mum Lametta Fadlallah was living a life of designer luxury when her life abruptly ended in a hail of bullets.

But her style and passion for top-end labels and brands – including wearing more than $20,000 of jewellery – belied her humble beginnings growing up in a fibro house in western Sydney with her immigrant Lebanese family.

The 48-year-old, who worked for Thrifty car rental company at Caringbah then Revesby before quitting her job a year ago, drove a black Mercedes and a white Range Rover.

She wore Chanel and Van Cleef and Arpels jewellery worth tens of thousands of dollars and carried a Chanel handbag, all of which a celebrity designer expert confirmed to Daily Mail Australia ‘are probably real’.

Ms Fadlallah was married to two different well-known Sydney crime gangsters before becoming engaged to legitimate businessman, Adel Dayoub.

At the restaurant run by his sons, Taleb and Ali, she was often pictured adorned in glamorous clothing and jewellery.

Ms Fadlallah still visited the shabby green house where her mother stood on the verandah smoking in the days after her daughter’s brutal murder, but she and her privately educated son had moved away into a stylish modern duplex with high-end fittings.

It was outside that duplex last Saturday evening that Ms Fadlallah was ruthlessly executed alongside her hairdresser Amneh ‘Amy’ al-Hazouri when a gunman pumped 15 rounds injto them from a semi-automatic weapon. 

Ms Fadlallah (right) wearing Chanel gold Strass CC stud earrings worth around $950 for a night out at Massaya  to hear Lebanese singing superstar Wafeek Habib seven weeks before her death, on May 22

Four men including the assassin who executed Ms Fadlallah with a semi-automatic weapon fled the scene in cars which were later found burnt out including this vehicle (above) found in a  Revesby street

The shabby fibro house (above) where Lametta Fadlallah moved into at Revesby in western Sydney after her family emigrated from Lebanon is still occupied by her mother Nadia.

In the front of the silver Toyota four-wheel drive, a 16-year-old Tik Tok influencer was seated beside her 20-year-old boyfriend who was behind the wheel pulling into Ms Fadlallah’s street when they were ambushed.

Reports says four men walked up to the vehicle and told the teenage girl to wind down her window before shoving her head out of the way as an assassin fired into Ms Fadlallah and Ms Hazouri in the back seat.

The men fled in cars which were later found burnt out at nearby locations. 

A beautifully groomed Ms Fadlallah appears in photos posted on July 25 with her music promoter fiance Adel Dayoub, among many images on Massaya’s Facebook page of what appears to be a large function.

Lametta Fadlallah was immaculately made up and wearing a pink Alice McCall Little Journey Blazer Dress, her hair perfectly coiffed, with what is believed to be a Chanel handbag at Massaya on July 25

Ms Fadlallah’s mother Nadia (above) at the old fibro house in Revesby which she left behind to move into a stylish duplex in nearby Panania where she was executed out the front last weekend

Lamettas Fadlallah’s former mother-in-law Zam Zam Derbas, mother of ex-gangster Shadi Derbas at home in Telopea Street with Lametta’s son, Abraham Derbas visiting after the murders

She is immaculately dressed and made up, wearing a pink Alice McCall Little Journey Blazer Dress, her hair perfectly coiffed, with neatly arched eyebrows and thick false eyelashes or lash extensions.

On March 6 this year, she was photographed at the venue with Mr Dayoub, who is in a white Ralph Lauren shirt, with Ms Fadlallah wearing a white shirt and a green malachite and gold Van Cleef & Arpels Alhambra ‘four leaf clover’ necklace with matching earrings.

The Alhambra range is touted by Van Cleef & Arpels to represent ‘a timeless symbol of luck’ for its wearers. 

If the jewellery was genuine, as it is believed to be, it would be worth around $20,000.

On May 22, when Lebanese singing superstar Wafeek Habib performed at Massaya,  Ms Fadlallah wore Chanel gold Strass CC stud earrings worth $950 as she was photographed alongside a blonde female friend.

The woman pictured with Ms Fadlallah in the photo is believed to be the same woman seen last week at the old fibro house at Revesby where she grew up, where her mother, Nadia, sister, Sandra, brother Charlie, and sister-in-law were grieving.

The blonde woman later visited another of Ms Fadlallah’s relatives and the Lebanese Maronite church where the slain woman will be laid to rest next week.

Ms Fadlallah wore a cross around her neck, but is not believed to have been a regular at the Christian masses faithfully attended by her mother.

The black Mercedes parked in the driveway of the stylish duplex she rented for $680 a week around five years ago is believed to be a 2016 model worth around $30,000 and 

Lametta Fadlallah was married to ex-gangster and Telopea Street gang leader Shadi Derbas and then to the so-called 200kg gangster, Helal Safi (above) with whom she had a son now aged 16

Lametta Fadlallah always looked stylish when photographed at Massaya (above left with fiance Adel Dayoub) and her hair was done by Amy Hazouri (above right) who was tragically caught in the shooting

She was previously married to former gangster Shadi Derbas, who led the infamous Telopea Street gang, and they had a son who is now an adult.  

Ms Fadlallah’s former mother-in-law, Zam Zam Derbas, still lives in the street where a member of Shadi’s gang killed innocent Korean schoolboy Edward Lee in a year of bloody violence which erupted in southwestern Sydney.

The 1998 death of 14-year-old Lee, who was knifed while attending a birthday party a few doors away by Telopea Street gang member Mustapha Dib, sparked a police crackdown which incited even more gang violence.

In the same year, Telopea Street gang members were involved in their own double shooting, when Shadi Derbas and other gang members were present while infamous gangster Michael Kanaan shot two men outside the Five Dock Hotel.

Shadi Derbas was convicted of hindering investigations into the Five Dock murders of Adam Wright and Michael Hurle.

Lametta’s mother Nadia (right), sister-in-law (centre) and sister Sandra (left) will lay her to rest next week at a Lebanese Christian Maronite ceremony in western Sydney

The sons of Lametta ‘s fiance, Taleb and Ali Dayoub (above) said they had only got to know her socially in the last year as their father brought her to nights at their restaurant

Telopea Street gang members later shot up the Lakemba police station and were allegedly involved in drive-by shootings.

The gang folded in 2000, in the wake of Shadi Derbas’ conviction, and he is understood to have long since turned his back on a life of crime and has not been in a relationship with Ms Fadlallah for many years.

Ms Fadlallah then married the so-called 200kg gangster, Helal Safi, with whom she had a son. 

But it is believed she had broken up with him some time before he was found dead from a heart attack in a Pendle Hill apartment in January last year, just weeks after being released from jail on gun and drug charges.

Around five years ago, Ms Fadlallah began renting a stylish $680 a week three-bedroom duplex in Panania, a three minute drive from her family’s old fibro house.

One of the cameras installed by Lametta around four months before her murder  which is trained on the street where she was fatefully killed execution style last weekend

Inside Lametta’s stylish duplex she was able to live in comfortable conditions far different from the humble housing department home a few streets away where she had lived with her family

She gave up her long time job in in August 2021 at Thrifty – now rebadged as SIXt car rentals – where she was popular with customers.

About four months ago, Ms Fadlallah installed a hefty security system at the Panania house, which included three cameras at the front trained on the street in which she was murdered around 9pm last Saturday.

Before her murder, her now 16-year-old son was attending a private Catholic boys school in Revesby and was regularly collected at the house by his doting grandmother. 

Ms Fadlallah’s fiance at the time of her death had been dating her for more than a year, her sons Ali and Taleb told Daily Mail Australia. 

Ms Fadlallah’s adult son, Abraham Derbas, told Daily Mail Australia on Monday evening that his mother should be remembered as a ‘very nice lady’, while his grandmother, Zam Zam Derbas, described what had happened as an unprecedented ‘tragedy’.

Ms Fadlallah’s family will take communion at the funeral mass for their daughter and sister next week.