Mongols MC headquarters subject to searches

Santa Ana, California, USA (June 29, 2019) BTN — A federal judge on Friday, June 28, made clear that his decision to place the Mongols motorcycle club on probation means the headquarters for the organizations mother chapter is fair game for random search by probation officers, not individual bikers themselves.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter in May ordered the Mongols organization to pay a $500,000 fine, and to serve five years on supervised probation, after a Santa Ana jury found that the Southern California-based club itself — rather than specific members — was guilty of racketeering.

The first-of-its-kind legal battle was part of a decade-plus effort by federal law enforcement to seize control of the Mongols patches, which depict an illustration of a smiling, ponytailed, Ghengis Khan-type motorcycle rider. The Santa Ana jury agreed that the government should be able to take control of the patches and trademark, but Judge Carter overrode that portion of the verdict, ruling it would be unconstitutional.

Since Carter’s decision, law enforcement agencies from across the country have reached out to federal probation officials to ask what the terms of the Mongols organizations probation means for their efforts to police individual riders, prosecutors told the judge.

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“I have no problem searching the mother chapter, that is where you found the guns,” Carter told prosecutors. “But this isn’t a wholesale warrant without probable cause to search anyone on the street.”

But before the government can search the Mongols’ headquarters, they are going to have to come back to the court and tell the judge where it actually is. Court filings have referred to a location in West Covina, but prosecutors on Friday noted that is a reference to the former home of Ruben “Doc” Cavazos, a former president of the Mongols who was kicked out of the club.

Prosecutors didn’t immediately provide the judge with a new address for the club’s current headquarters, just telling him it is not in West Covina. The Mongols was originally formed in Montebello in the 1970s.

The legal battle over the Mongols patch is almost certain to make its way before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and likely the U.S. Supreme Court. Carter is allowing the club to pay their $500,000 fine in monthly installments, so that they can still afford to fund the expected appeals.


The case stemmed from Operation Black Rain, an undercover investigation in which law enforcement agents infiltrated the Mongols. A separate, earlier court case against specific Mongols members led to 77 people pleading guilty to racketeering-related charges.

In the most recent trial, the Mongols as an organization were found to have taken part in drug trafficking, vicious assaults and even murder. Much of the violence was tied to a long-running rivalry between the Mongols and the Hells Angels motorcycle club, and led to attacks, some fatal, in bars and restaurants in Pasadena, Hollywood, Merced, La Mirada, Wilmington and Riverside.

Attorneys representing the current leadership of the Mongols have blamed the violence on Cavazos and his crew, who they note are no longer involved in the organization.

SOURCE: The Orange County Register 

Modesto Hells Angels President Arrested

Modesto, California, USA (June 26, 2019) BTN — The president of the Modesto Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, his wife, and two others will appear in federal court on Wednesday in Fresno, where they’ll face methamphetamine trafficking charges.

Charged in a criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday were Modesto residents Randy Picchi, 61, president of the club; his wife Tina Picchi, 51; Michael Mize, 61; and Michael Pack, 32, a prospect with the club.

Randy Picchi, Tina Picci, and Mize were arrested Tuesday and placed into custody, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

Search Warrants Executed at Seven Locations

Officers executed search warrants at seven locations Tuesday in Stanislaus County, including the Hells Angeles clubhouse in Modesto.

Court documents allege that Randy Picchi led a drug conspiracy and directed his wife to regularly deliver drugs to Mize and others in Ceres. Randy Pichi also enlisted Pack to help obtain methamphetamine on at least one occasion. Pack was stopped by law enforcement officers and was found with 499 grams of meth on him.

In addition, the court documents allege that Randy Picchi directed Tina Picchi to drive from Modesto to Redding to deliver meth to a customer. On the way, Tina Picchi was stopped by law enforcement and found with approximately 4 ounces of meth, which she had wrapped in a plastic glove and hidden in a cup of soda.

Defendants Face 10-Year Minimum Sentences

This case involved the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the IRS Criminal Investigation, the Central Valley Gang Impact Task Force, the Modesto and Turlock police departments, the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and the California Highway Patrol.


Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ross Pearson and Laurel Montoya are prosecuting the case.

If convicted, each defendant faces a maximum statutory penalty of life in prison, a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and a $10 million fine.

Hells Angels attend funeral surrounded by cops

Montreal, Canada (June 22, 2019) BTN — Hundreds of Hells Angels from across Canada showed at an Urgel Bourgie funeral home on Beaubien St. E. in Mercier—Hochelaga—Maisonneuve to mourn the loss of André (Frisé) Sauvageau. Hundreds of local and provincial police officers were also on the scene, while a helicopter flew overhead.

André (Frisé) Sauvageau defected from the Rock Machine in 2000 and remained a member of the Hells Angels in Montreal until his death last month.While he was involved in a war between the Hells Angels and Rock Machine, André (Frisé) Sauvageau received a phone call he probably hadn’t thought possible.

It was Dec. 19, 2000, and Sauvageau, a founding member of the Rock Machine, had spent the previous six years looking over his shoulder as the two groups fought over turf in Montreal. Police never identified the person on the other end of the line, but the call came from a cellphone owned by Richard (Dick) Mayrand, who was at the time one of the most powerful Hells Angels in Quebec.

During the call, Sauvageau was told that, as far as the Hells Angels were concerned, “the door (was) always open” to him. He defected to the Hells Angels soon after and remained a member of the club till his death May 26.

Under a cloudy sky Thursday morning, hundreds of Hells Angels from across Canada showed up in force at an Urgel Bourgie funeral home on Beaubien St. E. in Mercier—Hochelaga—Maisonneuve to mourn the loss of Sauvageau.

Club members arrived in groups, many of them on Harley-Davidson motorcycles, between 10:30 a.m. and noon. By the time the funeral was slated to begin, there were about 100 motorcycles in the parking lot, and an equal number of cars, pickup trucks, SUVs and minivans.

Most of those going into the funeral home were wearing leather jackets that had Hells Angels patches or names of other supporting clubs, like the Red Devils and the Reapers with names of cities and regions: Halifax, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Regina, Richelieu Outaouais, Laurentides and Lanaudière. The majority were from Montreal.

All were men and white, and most were middle-aged with long beards. About a dozen milled around at the building’s rear door, while several stood at the front door, apparently acting as security agents.

“You’re not getting in here; don’t make me have to tell you again,” one of them told a reporter.

Hundreds of Montreal Police and Sûreté du Québec police officers were also on the scene, arriving on motorcycles, vans and unmarked cars. A helicopter flew overhead. A mobile command post was set up a block away, and three officers were posted at the entrance of the parking lot, with one officer taking photographs of the licence plates of the cars that entered and another writing them down.

About 10 other agents were posted in several spots in the parking lot and around the funeral home.

The sight of so many Hells Angels paying tribute to Sauvageau would have been inconceivable during the 1990s while the Rock Machine clashed with their rivals. As a founding member of the Rock Machine, Sauvageau was a high-priority target for the Hells Angels during Quebec’s biker war, a conflict than began in 1994 and resulted in the deaths of more than 160 people before it came to an end in 2002.

On Oct. 18, 1997, Sauvageau and two other men were almost killed when someone tried to shoot them while they were standing outside a duplex on Pierre Blanchet Ave. in Rivière-des-Prairies. No one was injured in the attempted hit, but the police believed the Hells Angels were behind it because the shots were fired from a passing minivan, the type of vehicle Hells Angels were using for hits at the time.

Sauvageau was also involved in the violence of the biker war. On May 8, 1997, just months before someone tried to kill him, a powerful bomb was set off in front of a club the Hells Angels controlled on St-Laurent Blvd. No one was killed in the early-morning blast, but Peter Paradis, a Rock Machine member who became a prosecution witness during the biker war, later testified in at least two trials that he set off the bomb on orders from Sauvageau.


Weeks before the call to Saveaugeau was made in 2000, the Hells Angels had offered their rivals a brief truce and then sought to recruit members of the Rock Machine they considered worthy of becoming Hells Angels.

The truce was agreed to in 2000 because, at the time, Rock Machine members had just become probationary members of the Bandidos, another international motorcycle club. The Hells Angels in Quebec hoped to prevent the Bandidos from breaking ground in Canada and saw the truce as an opportunity to steal away as many experienced drug traffickers from the probationary Bandidos as they could.

SOURCE: Montreal Gazette 

Hells Angels Prez arrested for assault

Providence, RI, USA (June 13, 2019) BTN — The scene on a West End street Wednesday evening looked dangerous: state police SUVs blocked Messer Street in front of the Hells Angels Clubhouse around 5:30 p.m., and more were arriving.

The raid took place in a densely populated area, an odd pairing of the benignly curious and the menacingly armed. Onlookers and residents trying to get home were told to stay behind the SUVs. State police wore bulletproof vests.

A line of troopers in full protective gear, some with breathing apparatus over their faces, filed from Ford Street toward the motorcycle club’s three-story building, followed by a Humvee-type vehicle, which pulled up breach across Messer Street, facing the club. A white van stopped and troopers poured out. [emphasis added]

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The Humvee, its battering ram pointed straight at the clubhouse’s red steel door, plowed ahead. The door crumpled. The crowd exclaimed “woo!”

Using a bullhorn, one officer called out for anyone inside 161 Messer St. to come out with their hands up. This was repeated four or five times before a man came out, his hands over his head. He was immediately tackled, his hands cuffed behind him, and kept on the ground.

A woman came out with her hands up. She was also handcuffed. Several dogs ran out, one with an immediate need for the curb. One of the dogs licked the face of the man on the ground. An onlooker yelled to police not to hurt the dogs.


As the man was escorted past some senior state police officers, he paused to answer a question by saying he didn’t know. The woman who had come out of the clubhouse, wearing shorts and a black-and-red jersey with a big 81, seemed relaxed as she waited with several officers on a Ford Street sidewalk. She was taken to a cruiser after nearly everyone had left.

Before police entered the clubhouse, the battering-ram truck let out an explosive noise. Then troopers and K-9s disappeared beyond the crumpled door. Occasionally a loud boom, sounding like someone had hit a 55-gallon steel drum with a sledgehammer, issued from inside, raising questions from the crowd about whether it was gunfire.

By 6 p.m., detectives were still gathering evidence inside the clubhouse, but the street had been reopened.

A news release from the state police said they arrested the president of the Rhode Island Hells Angels chapter at the clubhouse at 1:40 p.m. Wednesday. Joseph M. Lancia, 28, of 40 Fanning Lane, Greenville, was taken into custody without incident on a charge of felony assault. The news release said his arrest was part of an investigation into reports of shots fired near the West Side clubhouse.


The events that started just before 6 p.m. were members of the Intelligence Unit and the Tactical Unit securing the clubhouse and conducting a search, state police said.

Lancia was taken to state police headquarters in Scituate, where he was processed and held overnight for arraignment Thursday at District Court, Providence, the news release said.

More charges may be filed as the investigation continues, the release said. State police spokeswoman Laura Kirk said no information would be released Wednesday about anyone else, such as the man and woman who came out of the club, saying a news conference is planned for Thursday.


Kids on bicycles, youths on bright red rental Jump bikes, and one young man on a motorized bicycle were among the onlookers, but no one showed up on a Harley.

SOURCE: Providence Journal