Ex-Hells Angels Charter President Denied Jail Release

San Francisco, California, USA (December 16, 2020) - In a court hearing that included a tense back-and-forth between the prosecution and defense attorneys, a federal judge denied a former Hells Angels charter president’s latest bid for release.

Raymond “Ray Ray” Foakes, 57, argued through his attorney that his due process rights were being violated as he’s spent 27 months in jail while still legally presumed innocent with — his attorney argued — as many as three more years to go before his cases even goes to trial. Federal prosecutors countered that courts, including the Ninth Circuit, have routinely found two years to be an acceptable amount of pretrial detention when the defendant is facing serious charges. 

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen said at a Wednesday court hearing that Foakes demonstrated a “continuing pattern” of law violations throughout his life, so he wasn’t confident Foakes would comply with pretrial release conditions if he was freed from jail.

“Mr. Foakes has not conformed, on numerous occasions, time after time, with orders from the courts. That simply cannot be ignored,” Chen said. He added, though, it was “not inconceivable” a similar motion could succeed at a future date if Foakes ends up spending a lengthier time in jail.

Foakes’ attorney, George Boisseau, said that Foakes’ jail stay has been so long that it has “become punitive” and amounted to a due process violation. He said Foakes has a job offer in Oakley and is willing to stay on house arrest with “stringent conditions.”

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Boisseau also argued that witnesses in the case haven’t been threatened or intimidated by Foakes nor his co-defendants, even though their names and locations are commonly known. When it was his turn to speak, assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Barry called that remark “a form of intimidation.”  “Mr. Boisseau’s argument that, ‘we know who the witnesses are and we know where they live’ is a form of a threat,” Barry said.

Later in the hearing, Boisseau shot back at Barry and sharply denied he’d threatened anyone.

“I take offense to that,” Boisseau said. “I’ve been an attorney for a long time with an unblemished record, probably longer than Mr. Barry has been an attorney.”  “I didn’t read Barry’s comment as saying you were a risk,” Chen said to Boisseau.

Foakes, who was once president of the Hells Angels Sonoma Charter, is accused of an “hours-long” beating of a victim that occurred in November 2016, and that prosecutors say culminated with someone forcibly tattooing the victim’s face, and Foakes declaring he would shoot the victim until fellow members of the motorcycle club dissuaded him. The charge is part of a racketeering case aimed at 11 alleged Hells Angels members.

Both pretrial services and the U.S. Probation department opposed Foakes being released. Chen said the “yardstick mark” for Foakes’ motion is how much time he’s actually spent in jail, not how much time he could potentially spend awaiting trial, and agreed that 27 months was acceptable.

The basis for Boisseau’s motion was that Foakes is set to go on trial after a number of his co-defendants — who, unlike Foakes, are accused of participating in a murder and illegal cremation of a fellow Hells Angels member in Fresno — are tried in October 2021. But Barry said that federal prosecutors are working to get Foakes into the earlier trial. “We want him in the first trial group,” Barry said. 

SOURCE: The Mercury

Dutch Court Upholds Ban on Hells Angels MC

Arnhem, Netherlands (December 15, 2020) BTN - The Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal issued an appeal in the case in which the Public Prosecution Service claimed that Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, Hells Angels Motorcycle Club Holland and Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation The Netherlands will be banned.

Activities contrary to public order in the Netherlands

The court finds that the global organization of Hells Angels should be seen as a foreign corporation and the organization of the Dutch charters as an informal association. The court finds that the Public Prosecution Service has sufficiently demonstrated that the activities of these two organizations are contrary to public order in the Netherlands and considers a prohibition of these organizations necessary.

Violent culture

There have been frequent violent incidents and possession of weapons involving members of Hells Angels, both worldwide and in the Netherlands. This is a structural situation that cannot be seen in isolation from the culture of violence that exists at Hells Angels. An important factor is the violent image, in which that violence is encouraged and glorified in various ways. 

Another factor in their decision is the rivalry with other motorcycle clubs, which regularly leads to power struggles and accompanying violent confrontations. These conflicts between different motorcycle clubs are fought more than once amidst the public on the street. Intimidation of members and former members, victims and witnesses furthermore makes action by the police and the judicial authorities much more difficult.

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The prohibition of Hells Angels and Hells Angels Holland that has been pronounced by the court therefore remains in force.

The charters

The court also finds that the charters are sub divisions of Hells Angels Holland, but also meet the characteristics of an informal association. They have the freedom to regulate the course of events at the local level, bottom-up structure. The charters are therefore legal entities themselves and therefore do not fall under the prohibition and dissolution of Hells Angels Holland. 

Nevertheless, the court finds that once the prohibition of Hells Angels and Hells Angels Holland is irrevocable, the activities of the charters and the members, as Hells Angels in the Netherlands, are prohibited. This means, for example, that Hells Angels are no longer allowed to wear their colors in public and the charters are no longer allowed to use this name.

Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation 

The organization in the US that holds the trademark rights of Hells Angels is not banned because it does not appear that those activities are also contrary to public policy.

SOURCE: Dutch News

Bandidos MC Members Rides Into Salvation Army

Spokane, Washington, U.S.A. (December 13, 2020) BTN - A Bandidos Motorcycle Club chapter in Spokane began a new holiday tradition Saturday as it unloaded hundreds of dollars in food, blankets, hygiene products and toys from a trailer and onto pallets for the Salvation Army.

“A lot of us belong to groups and we’re constantly wondering how can I or my group impact a community,” Salvation Army Maj. Ken Perine said. “It helps the group with their cohesiveness and it also helps people who they’ll never meet but who will be forever thankful.”

Bandidos MC club members said collecting donations for the Salvation Army was a spur-of-the-moment idea that grew into an organized effort. As they unloaded the donations, a few men wore sequin Santa hats with their red and gold leather or denim jackets. 

Local club leaders asked their members to bring “as much stuff as possible.” They also set up about 15 holiday-wrapped bins outside local businesses in Spokane, Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene for shoppers to drop donations.

The local Bandidos chapter organized a food drive at a Grocery Outlet in Cheney. The club spent $400 on food and the store matched it, filling giant plastic bins with nonperishable goods.

Cassandra Cram, Community Services Program Manager with the Salvation Army, said the club called her and asked to set it up. She said she expected a regular food drive, but it developed into a drive for a variety of products, plus an event in which Bandidos rode in on their bikes to unload the truck of food.

She hopes it will inspire other clubs to jump in to help their community. “All they gotta do is notify us,” Cram said . “If they want to do something, just do it.”

Perine told the group, despite all their work, they won’t get to see the people receiving their donations. “But we do,” Perine said. “One of the reasons we get to do what we do is because of people like you.”

Perine described how during a recent toy drive at Target, a woman came in with several interactive, animatronic teddy bears to donate. “We’d helped her years ago and she said it was her chance to give back,” Perine said. “She was just so happy to be able to give back.”

SOURCE: The Spokesman Review

FBI Nabs Wanted Motorcycle Club Member

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. (December 11, 2020) - Federal authorities were looking for a man who is wanted as part of an ongoing investigation into the Pagan's Motorcycle Club. Dominic Quarture was taken into custody Thursday evening, according to the FBI. Richard Lee White III was in custody earlier in the day. 

Thirty other members and associates of the Pagan's Motorcycle Club are in federal custody after they were charged with drug trafficking and firearms charges, U.S. attorney Scott Brady announced Wednesday.

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“The Pagan's have used violence to control cocaine, heroin and meth trafficking in Allegheny, Westmoreland, Erie, Fayette and Washington counties,” Brady said in a video that was released on Youtube.



Following a yearlong investigation, law enforcement executed search warrants on 11 locations, finding several firearms including an Uzi; “significant amounts” of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl; and $28,000 in cash and jewelry.

“This is the most significant motorcycle club prosecution in this office since the 1980's,” Brady said. “It is a good day for the good guys.”

R. Joseph Rothrock, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh division, said the members engaged in a “wide array of organized criminal activity, which included significant narcotics and firearms trafficking and violence.”

The investigation, which was widespread, also resulted in identifying large-scale suppliers of narcotics not only to members and associates of the Pagan's, but to drug traffickers and suppliers within the greater Pittsburgh region.