You can’t see the mansion – or its pool – from the road. But locals in this leafy corner of Melbourne’s north-east have seen the man who lives here in town.
Some will yell at him; a few want to shake his hand. The face of the bald, mustachioed leader of Australia’s largest neo-Nazi group is known not just here but around the world, after all.
What locals don’t know is that, since being released on bail last year on assault charges, neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell has been secretly living among them at this sprawling $2.5 million estate.
Sewell’s name doesn’t appear on the official paperwork – it was bought using a shell company by the heir of a Melbourne trucking empire.
It’s just one in a web of assets this masthead has discovered held by rich associates and less prominent members of Sewell’s now-outlawed neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Network (NSN).
For the first time, an investigation by this masthead can unmask the wealthy backers behind Australia’s neo-Nazis as they mount a costly High Court challenge to new hate speech laws – and plot their next move into politics.
Among Sewell’s rich associates are a race-car driver turned failed political candidate who owns a fleet of planes; the son of a gun dealer and inventor in regional Victoria; a jet-setting “manfluencer” friend of Andrew Tate who sells penis supplements to teenagers; a property development heir turned provocateur, and a stockbroker mixing with MAGA influencers overseas.
Sewell has recently bragged to followers on livestreams of his plans to build a function centre on the property he said “an investor” had “gifted” his group last year – which this masthead has now tracked down through open-source intelligence and property records.
International extremism expert Matt Kriner, who recently assessed the NSN for the Albanese government, says the assets and connections uncovered by this masthead suggest Australia’s neo-Nazis have entered a dangerous new phase. “Historically, when fascist movements start to sequester themselves in compounds, particularly those that have already shown a fascination with violence, terrorists and weapons like the NSN, that makes them very dangerous,” Kriner said.
He and other far-right researchers say authorities should now target the group the same way they had organised crime syndicates: “By following the money.”
Sewell’s new home – described by one gushing realtor as a mountain chalet – boasts more than 10 bedrooms, as well as a gym and pool on a 19-acre block. Up a long snaking drive, the main house is screened from the road by thick bush and security fences, but enjoys soaring hilltop views of Melbourne.
The NSN has long been trying to acquire land to build “white homestead” compounds from which to grow a racist ethno-state. Two sources close to the group, speaking anonymously for safety reasons, said other neo-Nazis were living at the estate with Sewell and his family. This masthead separately connected several men associated with the NSN to the address.
While on bail, Sewell is barred from associating with about a dozen neo-Nazis charged over a violent attack that Sewell allegedly led on an Indigenous camp last year. But his living arrangements with others in the group do not appear to have drawn scrutiny from authorities.
In outlawing the NSN as a hate group on May 15, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke noted that they had continued to operate in the shadows, “phoenixing” under new names and forms rather than disbanding as they claimed.
Documents recently filed in the High Court by Sewell in his fight to overturn the new laws confirm that the NSN never dissolved its political party wing, “White Australia”, of which Sewell remains president.
And records filed by White Australia list the mansion – Sewell’s home – as their new headquarters.
The mansion and the mystery investor
In late January, when Sewell told the public his NSN was disbanding, more than 100 of his followers descended on a Melbourne oval for their last official training session.
Among the sea of swastika tattoos and mullets gathered around Sewell that afternoon, this masthead identified a scattering of millionaires.
One of them, photographed wearing the distinctive white wristband denoting long-term membership of the NSN, was Sewell’s mystery “investor”: Martin Featherstone.
Featherstone, 45, has inherited his family’s trucking company wealth and owns millions of dollars in property in the state’s north-east, including another $3.5 million mansion just minutes down the road from the compound where Sewell is living.
The private school-educated Featherstone describes himself as a “white nationalist” and “racist” online, and has been pictured marching alongside neo-Nazis at recent rallies.
For more than a decade he helped manage his family’s multimillion-dollar logistics company. But Featherstone no longer appears to be working. “I’m in a privileged position,” he wrote in April on X of his decision to continue “speaking out” for the NSN when other neo-Nazis had lost their jobs after being unmasked. “I can’t be fired or ‘cancelled’. I choose not to be anonymous to (hopefully) lend some weight of authenticity.”
The hunt for Sewell’s compound began late last year, when NSN leadership announced to the group that “someone has bought us a place in Victoria”, according to two sources familiar with the discussion. “It’s a momentous moment for the org,” neo-Nazis Joel Davis and Jack Eltis told recruits.
Soon after, Sewell spoke on a livestream about a property “the org had been gifted” where he was now living, about 40 minutes from the city, as well as his plans to acquire a pub through another cleanskin “investor”.
Real estate sales, and a recent tip-off, pointed to a mansion acquired by a shell company in 2025. That company is jointly owned by Featherstone and his elderly mother. Sewell and his associates have since been spotted in the neighbourhood. Some left a digital trail too, even reviewing nearby restaurants. Documents obtained last month confirmed the address as White Australia’s HQ.
This masthead does not suggest Featherstone’s mother is aware of how the property is being used or holds neo-Nazi views herself. Featherstone did not respond to questions before deadline.
The mansion, with its separate living quarters, is intended to operate as a central hub for the neo-Nazi group, according to insiders, with fight training and education. It will be modelled on American “white homestead” enclaves, including those run by the fascist group Patriot Front, whose members the NSN have hosted in Australia.
Priority boarding has been given to men with families, as younger recruits are placed in sharehouses rented by the group elsewhere through “friends of the org”. One member has even been allowed to bring his dog to the compound “for security”, though Sewell dislikes pets.
“Our first investment has been housing,” Sewell said in December of the NSN and the “significant money” from “big investors” he claimed it had begun to attract, laughing at media theories that he had “been living out of a caravan”. ”We’re being looked after,” he said. ”I’m sure there’ll be a different type of smear coming out in the next couple [of] months [or] years about where I’m living now.”
Soon, Sewell promised, the group would have even more “protected rentals” like this, owned by members and associates, to house its “warriors”.
Featherstone is certainly a sympathetic landlord. He frequently espouses extreme views online – from nuking Israel and “stomping out” people of colour to executing “traitors” and “putting parliaments to the sword”. In secret NSN chats leaked to this masthead, Featherstone also joined in the neo-Nazi group’s violent discussions, including about running over Indian people with cars.
When asked for a response to this story, Sewell did not deny his plans for the compound but reiterated claims that the media and government were behaving “immorally” ahead of his High Court showdown.
“It is obvious your network of traitors are nervous about the potential fallout from a High Court decision to challenge the hate speech legislation and are therefore engaging in a smear campaign to cover your tracks.”
Former AFP counter-terrorism detective John Coyne, who once infiltrated white supremacist compounds himself, says that Sewell’s new headquarters calls to mind the strongholds of American neo-Nazis. That includes terror cell The Order as well as the Ku Klux Klan at its height – two groups openly lionised by the NSN.
“Of course, one man’s secret military compound is another’s house in the ’burbs,” Coyne said. But the possibility of guns on the Melbourne property was particularly worthy of investigation, he added.
Sewell has previously spoken online of needing to put guns “in other people’s names” and the difficulties of being unable to own many assets, given he is blacklisted by most banks for his neo-Nazi activity.
The government’s crackdown on the NSN was designed to “choke the fire of oxygen”, Coyne said. But instead, beneath all that smoke, the group has been revealed to have “a far bigger ecosystem than we’d have expected”. “What you’ve found shows there’s a network of people with dirty secrets.”
Wealthy associates
Indeed, Featherstone is not the only wealthy figure this masthead has identified in the orbit of the country’s most notorious neo-Nazi.
In August, when Sewell led the March for Australia anti-immigration rally in Melbourne and addressed a crowd of thousands from the steps of Parliament House, many of his rich friends were there with him.
To one side, in an oversized peacoat and sunglasses, was Hugo Lennon, the Scotch College graduate and scion of one of Australia’s wealthiest property development families turned far-right influencer. Lennon had helped Sewell organise the rallies around the country, playing the “concerned centrist” publicly while taking part in secret NSN chats and planning online, as revealed last year.
Beside him was another key March organiser, who can now be unmasked as wealthy race car driver and pilot Yassin Albarri.
The 26-year-old owns a cargo airline which claims to have its own fleet of planes, and in 2022 ran as a Victorian candidate for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP).
Corporate records reveal Albarri has now started a company with one of the NSN’s most ardent members, Jake Crockett. Crockett is himself facing charges for the NSN attack on an Indigenous camp that followed that August march, as the rally descended into violence across Melbourne.
Albarri has been frequently identified and photographed mixing with neo-Nazis at rallies the NSN has helped organise since, including a former member of the terrorist group Combat 18. He has served as the rallies’ police liaison and, behind the scenes, pictures place him at meetings hosted by senior NSN figures.
During Albarri’s federal election campaign he worked with neo-Nazi associates Daniel Jones and Stu von Moger, who were then helping run security for the UAP.
But he’s also close with members of the Liberal Party, frequently pictured with party organisers and volunteers on social media, dining in members’ rooms and VIP boxes.
Albarri started a company called Rosetta Entertainment in September last year with the NSN’s Crockett as a co-founder and part-owner. Albarri did not respond to questions about the nature of the business or his dealings with the NSN before deadline. But it is not suggested he was a member of the group himself.
Then there is the man in the white hat.
Introducing Sewell to the rally crowd that day in August, from a podium built by the neo-Nazis especially for the occasion, was a red-haired figure with a striking hat –and moustache.
The same man, who was later filmed helping Sewell coordinate the March, also appeared in pictures released by the neo-Nazi group months earlier of its hiking trips, and would be seen with march organisers such as Albarri at other NSN-organised rallies. In footage of a neo-Nazi protest on Australia Day 2025 the same man appears, in the same white hat, shaking hands with white supremacists such as Blair Cottrell. A year on, he was also photographed at the NSN’s final training – only this time he was clad all in black.
This masthead, along with researchers at the anti-fascist White Rose Society, have now identified him as David Roberts, the son of a gun dealer, pilot and inventor. His family hold considerable property and wealth in regional Victoria, including their own airplanes and a 300-acre estate, and have obtained hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal government grants in recent years as they expand their aviation business. It is not suggested his family hold neo-Nazi views themselves.
Neo-Nazis, such as the former dentist Ian Lomax, have also appeared alongside Roberts in recent pictures from the axe-throwing association where he serves as secretary. Roberts has been contacted for comment.
Ferraris for the Fuhrer
Sewell’s rich associates bring more than just money. Among his entourage at the marches in August were an array of far-right influencers – all streaming to their hundreds of thousands of followers.
Concealed behind racing sunglasses was “Sir Doug” as he is known online – Lennon’s long-time collaborator – who has now been identified as Melbourne stockbroker Mitchell Hobbs.
Hobbs was also photographed at the neo-Nazis’ training session in January.
He and Lennon recently toured the US together for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas, mixing with everyone from Trump MAGA acolytes to a former leader of extremist group The Proud Boys.
Instagram reels show the young Australians driving flash cars, partying on rooftops and holding guns. Pictured alongside them is North American “looksmaxxer” Jack Gordon, who runs his own neo-Nazi bookstore advocating “accelerationism” – the neo-Nazi goal of speeding up societal collapse to start a race war.
This masthead recently revealed the extent of the NSN’s entanglement with terrorists and accelerationist groups overseas, some of whom have trained its members and given it money. The investigation also uncovered a secret chatroom run by neo-Nazis and March for Australia organisers – including Lennon – where an alleged $10,000 plot to kidnap Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had led to multiple police raids.
Lennon has always said he does not advocate violence nor take part in threats online but has refused to distance himself from the NSN. Hobbs has been contacted for comment.
In Lennon’s recent travels across the US, the 20-something influencer has been spruiking Sewell to America’s conservative establishment, speaking at conferences of the NSN leader as “a household name … at the forefront” of Australian politics.
International far-right groups, in part, helped Sewell raise a war chest of more than $150,000 in just a few days this year to fund his High Court challenge to Australia’s extremism crackdown. They also contributed to earlier fundraisers set up by Sewell for his “community land project” to “create a home for white people in Australia”.
But Sewell has been drawing on the connections of another wealthy recruit too: the “manfluencer” – and former porn star – Stirling Cooper.
Cooper, an Australian pharmacy graduate turned sex coach and penis supplement salesman, is a close associate of misogynist provocateur and accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate. You can find Cooper splashed across the internet on Tate’s private jets and at his parties around the world, or else driving his Ferraris through Marbella, Miami or Melbourne.
But within the secretive ranks of the NSN, Cooper is known as “Nige” – for his real name Nigel Clifford – regularly spotted at neo-Nazi training in his home of Perth as well as at key national events, including the group’s “final training” in Melbourne this year.
Records obtained by this masthead reveal Cooper is also the owner of website domains set up by the NSN. Cooper registered the group’s original White Australia political site in 2025 using his real name, through one of two companies he owns that are associated with the NSN called “Antipodes Associates”. Two sources within the neo-Nazi group say Cooper has gifted significant sums of money to its members and has helped it set up apparent shell companies like Antipodes.
Cooper ignored repeated requests for comment.
Last year, this masthead revealed how he was helping the NSN artificially inflate its reach online using a Tate-style legion of unbranded accounts to post propaganda. While the NSN has since disbanded officially, those “hype edits” continue to circulate on social media, drawing in young men.
And, as Sewell’s own star power in the “manosphere” rises, the neo-Nazi leader has been appearing on the podcasts of other influencer friends of Cooper’s such as Elijah Schaffer and Jake Shields.
For Kriner, it’s a familiar collision. “The early influencers of the manosphere also created their own white supremacist compounds, like Wolves Of Vinland, and its feeder org Operation Werewolf,” he says.
Several Australians associated with the NSN were themselves part of international militant group Operation Werewolf, leaked chat logs reveal.
On their CPAC pilgrimage in March, Lennon and Hobbs heard from former Trump strategist Steve Bannon – who has been trying to set up white training compounds across Europe himself, including a “gladiator school” in an 800-year-old Italian monastery.
“Sewell is positioning himself on the global stage to be such a critical linchpin for rage against the Left that the moment any setback happens to him, he can use that to ignite a global audience – for fundraising, for access, maybe even egress out of Australia,” says Kriner.
“The people they’ve been trying to reach in the US [could] even be in the ear of this Trump administration convincing them that Sewell’s being persecuted unfairly.”
White enclaves, politics – and welfare
Of course, unlike his jet-setting mates, Sewell insists that he “doesn’t care about money”. He encourages his followers to claim welfare support from the government – as his own family does. Last year, while arguing in court to be bailed to a “sharehouse”, he claimed that he collected only about $1000 a month from the membership dues of his 300-odd neo-Nazi recruits.
Yet, there was already enough cash flowing through the NSN in 2024 that nearly $50,000 stolen over the course of that year went unnoticed for many months (before the member accused of skimming was discovered and excommunicated).
Of late, Sewell has begun boasting of those with serious wealth and connections joining his group – including “sleeper agents” he claims are also members of the Liberal Party attending its meetings. On livestreams, Sewell has said a well-connected barrister is giving him cheap legal advice, and that a political powerbroker is advising his continued efforts to form a neo-Nazi party. He says he is “constantly networking”, including in his new neighbourhood, and speaks of a contact book of sympathetic bosses and businesses offering his neo-Nazis jobs.
Sewell is now being represented by former federal Liberal MP Peter King in his High Court fight, though it is understood King was obliged to accept the case under a rule that stops barristers from refusing a brief they are in a position to take up.
In a livestream on X in May, a former Victorian state Liberal Party organiser openly bragged of getting “jobs for those boys” in the NSN, as she joined in discussion with neo-Nazis about how best to achieve their “accelerationist” and “revolutionary” goals and run their “parallel societies”.
Experts like Coyne call the collection of influential people now quietly helping Sewell, both at home and overseas, “alarming”.
But he expects it will be difficult for Australian authorities to seize the NSN’s assets, even under the new hate speech regime. “They’d just say it’s theirs personally,” Coyne says. “It’s another grey zone, awful but lawful. And, in all this, we still have to protect freedom of thought.”
At the compound, White Rose fear Sewell will now be able to exert even more control over his followers and their families under the NSN’s cult-like model.
Sewell advocates for men to rule “large, white families”, homeschooling their kids and strictly managing their women – down to their makeup and clothes. (“Incidences of female infidelity, we’ve dealt with it in house,” he said on a recent stream. “Just 100 per cent cull, excommunicated. If we were in the wild, you’d starve to death.” )
The neo-Nazi leader now has plans to expand his property portfolio in the east.
“It’s not unfathomable to me that Sewell might be setting up his own Waco in Australia,” says Kriner. “Particularly if he feels protected by rich benefactors.”
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