Ervine also suggested that Mahood was highly unpopular with the rest of the UVF leadership, apart from Wright, due to his involvement in criminality. Ervine went on to claim that Mahood had provided the gun which was taken from the UVF Shankill Road arms dump that the Mid-Ulster Brigade used to kill Catholic taxi driver Michael McGoldrick in July 1996 at the height of the Drumcree stand-off, an act which led to Wright's expulsion from the UVF as the leadership had not sanctioned the murder. According to Ervine, the gun was procured from the arms dump to incriminate the Belfast UVF while the organisation was on ceasefire at the time. These allegations were published in Ed Moloney's book Voices From the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland in 2010 and infuriated Mahood who publicly denied Ervine's claim that he had provided the weapon used in McGoldrick's killing, maintaining that he was the victim of a UVF "smear campaign". Following the LVF's establishment, Mahood encouraged Wright to challenge the Brigade Staff and return the entire UVF to a war footing. Mahood also enjoyed a close relationship with UDA leader Jim Spence and encouraged Spence to link up with Wright. However, Spence, who had no desire for a feud with the UVF, kept his distance from the man he nicknamed "Billy Wrong". Mahood was shot by masked men as he sat in his office in Belfast's Crumlin Road on 27 November 1997. He was hit three times in the neck and jaw and left for dead, although he survived the attack. Mahood claimed that the UVF was behind the attack and also claimed to know the identity of the shooter. Mahood also became an ally of dissident former Red Hand Commando hitman Frankie Curry and, in 1999, when Curry was killed, Mahood allegedly used the cover name "Red Hand Defenders" to issue a death threat against the journalists Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack, accusing them of helping to get Curry killed by reporting on his involvement in a bombing campaign. Mahood himself was targeted a number of times in assassination attempts by the UVF and as he grew closer to the UDA on the Shankill, which maintained links with the LVF, his name appeared on one of their leaflets, accusing the UVF of being "Protestant killers" due to the killings of Curry, Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine and attempts on the lives