Hells Angels MC Member Gets 10 Years

Vancouver, B.C.(October 12, 2022) - Hells Angels Motorcycle Club remember Jason Arkinstall was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years for smuggling large amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine worth millions into Canada two years ago. Surrey Provincial Court Judge Mark Jetté said that Arkinstall was entitled to extra credit for time in pretrial jail during the pandemic, meaning his remaining term is six years and three months.

Crown prosecutor Maggie Loda told a sentencing hearing last month that the 48-year-old only motivation was profit when he attempted to bring 90 kilograms of meth and 118 kilograms of cocaine into B.C. from Idaho on October 23, 2020. United States border agents spotted Arkinstall and a friend near the border with five duffel bags full of drugs. The two men fled but were later arrested on the Canadian side of the border.

Arkinstall, a member of the Hells Angels Mission City chapter, pleaded guilty in September 2021 to importing the illicit substances. Loda argued that Arkinstall should get a 12-year prison term based on the quantity of drugs and his criminal history. His defence lawyer Ken Westlake said a seven-year sentence would be more appropriate.

Jetté said Wednesday “that the sentence of seven years jail suggested by defence counsel would not be fit, given Mr. Arkinstall’s criminal record — in particular his prior conviction for drug trafficking, the quantity of drugs involved, and the fact that two schedule-one drugs were imported into Canada.”

“On the other side of the ledger, I find that Mr. Arkinstall’s early guilty plea justifies the sentence itself fall somewhere below the 12 years sought by Crown Counsel,” Jetté said. “I have concluded that a fit sentence in this case is 10 years jail.”

Source: Yahoo News  

Former Grim Reapers MC Prez Sentenced

Evansville, Indiana, USA (October 10, 2022) - A federal judge handed down a long prison sentence this week to the former president of the Grim Reapers Motorcycle Club chapter in Evansville, Indiana. On Wednesday, U.S. Southern District of Indiana Judge Richard Young sentenced Gary Forston to serve 16-and-a-half years in federal prison for his role in an alleged drug trafficking scheme.

The former GRMC president pleaded guilty to four out of the 12 counts originally listed in his indictment back in July.

 

According to the agreement, Forston admitted he conspired to distribute more than 550 grams of methamphetamine and used a firearm to further a drug trafficking operation.Forston was arrested in November 2019 after local and federal law enforcement officers swarmed the Grim Reapers' club house in the former SheLounge strip club off Diamond Avenue.

RELATED | Grim Reapers MC Members Busted In Drug Raid

At the time of the raid, Forston, a convicted felon, allegedly had in his possession a 0.40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun and Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun, leading a grand jury to indict him on weapons charges. Ten pounds of meth, 23 guns and $35,000 in cash were seized during the raid, according to then U.S. Attorney Josh Minkler. The drugs reportedly had an estimated street value of more than $250,000.

In February 2020, a federal grand jury indicted 17 people from Indiana and Kentucky, including Forston, for allegedly operating the methamphetamine trafficking ring affiliated with the motorcycle club. Of the 17 people indicted, 13 were from Evansville. When those indictments were announced, Minkler called the Grim Reapers Motorcycle club a "criminal organization."

Central Holman IV, of Owensboro Kentucky, is alleged in federal court documents to have been the club's main supplier of methamphetamine. Besides Holman and Forston, the other 15 people indicted were believed by law enforcement to be "mid-level distributors," records show.

Some of their cases are still ongoing. In September, Holman pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and was sentenced to serve 18 years in federal prison. He has since appealed his conviction, according to court records.

Source: WTVW  

Mongols MC member faces murder charge

Largo, Florida, USA - (August 29, 2022) - A Pinellas grand jury has indicted a member of the Mongols motorcycle club who is accused of killing another motorcycle club member he believed to be a police informant. Paul Mogilevsky, 48, faces a first-degree murder charge in the April shooting death of Dominick Paternoster, 46, in Palm Harbor. 

Paternoster was a member of the Raiders MC, a feeder group for the Mongols MC. The two share a clubhouse in Tampa, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said at a news conference Monday. “Paternoster was not just killed. He was executed,” Gualtieri said. 

He declined to say, however, whether Paternoster was an informant. Mogilevsky and Paternoster were at the Mongols clubhouse in Tampa together on April 27, the night Paternoster was killed, Gualtieri said. They then went to Paternoster’s Palm Harbor home with another person.

 

Video evidence and witnesses placed the suspects at Paternoster’s home on the night of the shooting, Gualtieri said. Mogilevsky initially said he and another person left Paternoster asleep in a recliner at home, according to court documents. However, investigators said Mogilevsky lied about the timeline of events that night.



A confidential witness also told authorities that Mogilevsky had planned the shooting and admitted to killing Paternoster, court documents say, and authorities were able to verify some of the information the witness provided. Mogilevsky and the other suspect got rid of some evidence in Tampa Bay, Gualtieri said. Members of the sheriff’s office dive team helped recover the evidence.

Gualtieri said multiple guns were used to shoot Paternoster in his home, where he was found dead about 4:30 p.m. on April 28, according to court documents. Law enforcement is still investigating the death and plans to make other arrests, the sheriff said.

Hells Angels Money Launder to Serve Time in Prison

Quebec, Canada (August 22, 2022) - Four people who were convicted six years ago on charges alleging they helped members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club in Quebec launder money have been ordered to report to penitentiaries within 48 hours to begin serving their sentences. The order was issued Monday as part of a decision made by the Quebec Court of Appeal.

 

All four were first charged in 2009 in Operation Diligence, an investigation led by the Sûreté du Québec, into how members of the Hells Angels MC based in Quebec had infiltrated specific segments of the province’s construction industry. As part of the same investigation, they were found to have helped full-patch members of the motorcycle club's charter in Trois-Rivières hide their money.

They managed to avoid having to serve time behind bars because they appealed the convictions. Their appeals went through a very lengthy and complicated process. Initially, the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled it took too long for the Crown to prosecute the case and ordered a stay of proceedings on all charges.

The Quebec Court of Appeal ruled Monday on the other issues raised by the appellants, including arguments that there was insufficient evidence of a conspiracy was involved in what what happened. The appellate court disagreed and ordered that the four accused begin serving their sentences in two days.

SOURCE: Montreal Gazette