Bikie extradited from US to face Qld court

Mongol bikie member Wade Yates-Taui is being extradited from the US to face a Gold Coast court over a 2013 stabbing death.

Mongol bikie Wade Yates-Taui

Mongols bikie Wade Yates-Taui has begun the long journey from a LA jail to a Gold Coast courtroom. (AAP)

The stabbing death of a Gold Coast bikie associate is not being regarded as bikie related as Mongol member and cage fighter Wade Yates-Taui is extradited from the United States.

The 22-year-old tattooed fugitive was taken from a Los Angeles jail on Wednesday and put on a plane for Australia under guard, to face a manslaughter charge over the June 2013 stabbing death of rival bikie associate Max Waller.

Yates-Taui was removed from his cell in the fortress-like LA Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), where he had been held since April.

Detective Superintendent David Hutchinson said that while the extradited man had contact with Mongols in the US, Waller's death was not bikie related.

"We will not be alleging the actual incident occurred as a result of a bikie-related matter," he told reporters on the Gold Coast on Thursday.

But he said the bikie code of silence was hampering the investigation.

"Many of his (Waller's) friends and associates were reluctant to talk to the police," Supt Hutchinson said.

Yates-Taui is due to appear in Southport Magistrates Court on Friday.

Two other males, aged 20 and 27, are also due to appear in the same court charged with murdering the 28-year-old man.

The 27-year-old was a member of 66 Street Crew, a Finks-linked group, who later became a patched member of the Mongols, Supt Hutchinson said.

The other man, 20, was an merely an associate of a number of bikie groups when Waller died, he added.

It is alleged Waller had been visiting friends at Carmel by the Sea Apartments on Old Burleigh Road at Broadbeach when he left the premises in the early hours of that morning to attend a meeting with other people.

It is alleged he returned a short time later having suffered a number of stab wounds.

Yates-Taui has been held in the MDC, which houses more than 900 inmates, since US marshals swooped on him and his bikini model girlfriend Raquel Petit in the Californian mountain resort of Big Bear in April.

Instead of using the US court system to fight his return to Queensland, Yates-Taui consented during an appearance in the US District Court in July to "expedited extradition". Yates-Taui became a fugitive when he failed to appear before Queensland's former Crime and Misconduct Commission on December 11 for his alleged involvement in the fatal stabbing of Waller.

US court documents say Yates-Taui departed Australia to Indonesia on December 10, then went to Singapore before arriving in Los Angeles in March, 2014.

US marshals were alerted and allegedly monitored Yates-Taui and Petit via their Facebook postings as they travelled around California.


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