Hell To Pay
Hells Angels vs. The Million-Dollar Rat
By Neal Hall
John Wiley & Sons
Copyright © 2011
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-470-68096-4
Chapter One
The Cops Snare a Rat
The RCMP were excited about the prospect of having an
informer with insider knowledge of the Hells Angels in Vancouver.
Police had repeatedly publicly stated that the Hells
Angels were the number one organized crime target in B.C.,
and the East End chapter, as a gang, had to date been able to
avoid prosecution, earning a reputation for being untouchable.
Once he was released on bail, Plante called a pager number
and arranged to meet with the RCMP to discuss the details of
his work as an informant. The Mounties, who code-named the
operation Project E-Pandora, initially offered Plante $2,000 a
month for any information he could provide about the bikers.
The amount was soon increased to $3,000 a month.
Plante agreed, perhaps underestimating the stress that lay
ahead. "I was trying to make up for things I had done," he
would later recall when discussing why he agreed to infiltrate the
Hells Angels.
Plante was to prove instrumental in aiding police to
accomplish what they had largely failed to do to date. In 2004,
the Hells Angels had been operating in B.C. for more than 20
years, earning a notorious reputation for drug dealing and the use
of violence to enforce control over their territory. The police had
little to show the public in terms of successful prosecutions, which
undermined public confidence in their ability to enforce the law
against the Hells Angels.
An investigation in 2004 by the
Vancouver Sun found that
more than 60 percent of cases against the Hells Angels, including
serious charges of drug trafficking, extortion and assault, ended
in acquittals or with the Crown dropping the charges—known
officially as a stay of proceedings.
A prime example of a glaring failure was the case of the
Western Wind, a fishing boat loaded with cocaine that had been
tracked from Colombia. According to police intelligence, its destination
was Vancouver Island. The captain, Philip John Stirling,
had offered the cops information about a large-scale cocaine smuggling
operation linked to the Nanaimo and East End chapters of
the Hells Angels. Stirling wanted $1 million in reward money
as well as witness protection for himself and his family. Police
initially agreed to Stirling's requests, then backed off, deciding he
wasn't trustworthy.
As the boat headed toward Canadian waters—with Hells
Angels members caught on police surveillance waiting on a dock
in Nanaimo for its arrival—the Mounties took their decision
about Stirling and asked U.S. authorities to intercept the boat
before it reached its destination.
Accordingly, on February 21, 2001, the U.S. Coast Guard
intercepted the
Western Wind and arrested the crew. Found hidden
in a secret compartment was 2.5 tons of pure cocaine valued at
$250 million. The incredible outcome of the story was that no
one was ever charged because U.S. prosecutors reportedly could
not prove the drugs were destined for the United States.
For a time, Stirling fought to have the seized boat returned
to him, but he eventually abandoned his efforts, especially after
his negotiations with the RCMP became public in U.S. court
documents.
Five years later, police would catch Stirling again with another
ship, the
MV Baku, off the coast of Vancouver Island. The
ship, which had been tracked from Halifax and through the
Panama Canal, was found to have bales of marijuana worth $6.5
million. But Stirling was lucky again—the Crown dropped all
charges just before Christmas 2006 against Stirling and four other
men, including two who had been aboard the
Western Wind.
The charges were reportedly dropped because of problems with
the search, initially conducted by the Department of Fisheries
and Oceans.
Police would later allege that one of those suspected of being
involved in the
Western Wind shipment was long-time Hells Angels
member David Francis (Gyrator) Giles, a former Sherbrooke,
Quebec Hells Angel before moving to B.C. and joining the East
End chapter. Giles was never charged in the
Western Wind case,
however. Police also alleged that the masterminds behind the
shipment were members of the Montreal Mafia, with the Hells
Angels in B.C. tasked to transport the drugs to Quebec.
Although fingers were later pointed at a senior RCMP officer
in B.C. as a prime example of the Mounties' failure to step up
to the plate and properly pay the money needed to crack the
case, others admitted that the Mountie in charge of the operation
suffered from a failure to trust a source.
The case of the
Western Wind also became a sore point among
other police agencies frustrated by the lack of coordination of the
various police forces involved that could have led to a successful
prosecution.
Another of the failed cases led to a 2006 wrongful dismissal
lawsuit by a former senior anti-biker gang police officer, Allen
Dalstrom. According to court documents filed by Dalstrom, the
case promised to expose long-standing jealousies, infighting and
evidence of a "turf war" between the Vancouver police and the
RCMP during an attempted crackdown on the Hells Angels.
Dalstrom had been working for the Organized Crime Agency
of B.C. (OCABC), a joint forces agency tasked with targeting
organized crime groups, when he was fired by the agency's commanding
officer, David Douglas, in 2004. Concerns were raised
about Dalstrom's alleged mishandling of the multimillion-dollar
Hells Angels investigation code-named Project Phoenix. The case
involved members of the Hells Angels who were never prosecuted.
His superiors were also upset over comments Dalstrom allegedly
made to a Montreal journalist, Julian Sher, about a botched case.
In documents filed in court to support his legal action, Dalstrom
claimed he had done nothing wrong and the case against
the Hells Angels could have been prosecuted, but in fact had
been derailed by infighting caused by the RCMP.
"Certain members of the senior management of the RCMP
in British Columbia were opposed to the creation of the OCABC
from its inception because the OCABC was given the mandate
to carry out investigations that had previously been within the
mandate of the RCMP," Dalstrom alleged in his statement of
claim. "The RCMP in British Columbia sought to persuade the
province to disband the OCABC and return the mandate for
investigating organized crime to the RCMP."
The witness list for his trial included some of the RCMP's
top provincial officers, among them deputy commissioner Gary
Bass, then the highest-ranking Mountie in B.C., former deputy
commissioner Bev Busson and former Vancouver police chief
Jamie Graham.
But just as the trial began, it was abruptly adjourned to
allow lawyers for both sides to work out a deal, quashing the
possibility of potentially explosive testimony about the alleged
long-simmering rivalry between the Mounties and Vancouver
police. Dalstrom received an out-of-court settlement, reportedly
exceeding $2 million.
* * *
About a month after the
Western Wind was intercepted—and days
after Stirling and his crew were released without charge by the
United States—police in B.C. celebrated the first significant prosecution
of Hells Angels members in B.C. Two full-patch members
of the East End chapter of the Hells Angels, Ronaldo "Ronnie"
Lising and Francisco Batista "Chico" Pires, were convicted in
2001 of cocaine trafficking.
The case, known as Project Nova, involved Robert Molsberry,
a drug dealer and petty criminal who had been a doorman at a
Vancouver strip club, the No. 5 Orange, located at the corner of
Main Street and Powell on the edge of the Gastown district—and
a block from the Vancouver police station at 312 Main.
Molsberry had initially complained in 1996 to members of
the Vancouver police that he feared for his safety because Ronnie
Lising, Chico Pires and others were after him over unpaid drug
debts. Molsberry agreed to wear a "wire"—a transmitting listening
device that allows police to record conversations—and act as a
police agent. In return for his cooperation, he was given $1,000
by Vancouver police to pay off his drug debts and promised
a monthly payment throughout the investigation, plus a cash
payment at the conclusion of the court proceedings.
The total amount he received was $25,000. He was also
promised entry into the witness protection program when
the investigation wrapped up. Based on their agreement with
Molsberry, the police successfully applied for a consent wiretap
authorization under section 184.2 of the Criminal Code. The
wiretap was approved by then-B.C. Supreme Court justice Wally
Oppal, who would later become an appeal court judge and the
attorney general of B.C.
A group of trusted officers were selected to work on the
covert case, which was run out of the offices of the OCABC to try
to limit the number of police who knew about the investigation.
Police targeted two strip clubs: the No. 5 Orange and the
Marble Arch. Drug transactions took place outside the Hells
Angels clubhouse in East Vancouver, in gas stations, restaurants
and gyms. The cocaine was referred to in pager messages and over
cell phones in code as "lunch," "dinner" and "beer."
At trial, Lising and Pires were found to be joint operators of a
"wholesale" cocaine business that supplied the No. 5 Orange and
Marble Arch strip bars; police recorded 36 deliveries of cocaine to
"retail salesmen" in 1996 and 1997. The transactions were worth
$47,000 at the "wholesale" level—a term used by police to describe
the sale of larger quantities of drugs destined to be sold later at the
"street" level.
With Lising and Pires sentenced to four and a half years
in prison, the case was hailed by police as the first significant
prosecution against the Hells Angels in B.C. Police cited the
case an as an example of their ability to protect witnesses who
work with police and testify against the Hells Angels, hoping to
encourage others to come forward.
"It sends a message: We're here for your protection if you
want to work with the police. It sends a message to other people
in this group," the late sergeant Larry Butler of the Outlaw
Motorcycle Gang Unit told the
Vancouver Sun at the time. Another
lead investigator in the case, inspector Andy Richards, then with
the OCABC, said of the Lising–Pires convictions: "It's a clear
indication that law enforcement can effectively target the Hells
Angels. The system can work."
As a footnote to the case, there was an act of intimidation
against one of the federal Crowns, Ernie Froess, whose life was
threatened by aspiring Hells Angel John Virgil Punko, then 34,
at the Pacific Centre food court in downtown Vancouver, two
blocks from the courthouse. Punko was later convicted of uttering
threats, which obviously impressed his Hells Angels colleagues,
who eventually made him a full-patch member of the East End
chapter. He would go on to have many dealings with the newest
police infiltrator, Michael Plante.
* * *
Michael Plante grew up in Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver, and
attended Cariboo Hill High School. After completing grade 12,
he took university courses at nearby Douglas College. To make
money, he entered competitive weightlifting and body building:
at one time, he was about 250 pounds and could bench-press 400
pounds. Initial background checks by police found that Plante had
only been in minor trouble with the law; once he had got into an
argument at a local gym and ended up charged with assault.
He first worked as a bouncer at the North Burnaby Inn's bar,
which at one time was managed by Hells Angels member Bob
Green, who is now a Nomad. Plante then moved to Alberta for a
year, working as a bouncer in a bar in Medicine Hat. On his return
to B.C., Plante got a job at Costco for five years, loading trucks and
living a straight life. During that time, Plante claimed he didn't
associate with the Hells Angels because he didn't work in a bar.
But he eventually did obtain a job as a bouncer. He had
met many Hells Angels over the years, working as a bouncer at
Coconuts nightclub in Burnaby and the Dell Hotel in Surrey, a
hotel frequented by bikers where Angels would stash cocaine in
the ceiling of one of the hotel rooms upstairs. Plante recalled being
asked one night to sit in that hotel room to make sure nothing
happened to the hidden cache of drugs, until someone came to
collect it. He did this a couple of times a month for a year for
the bikers.
Eventually, another aspiring Hells Angel, Randy Potts, got
him a job at the Marble Arch strip club in downtown Vancouver,
another biker bar. When the Marble Arch closed, then-Hells
Angels member Louie Robinson got Plante a job as a bouncer at
the Cecil Hotel strip club, where he worked weekends, 15 hours a
day, making about $10 an hour.
At the time, Robinson ran an agency that booked strippers
into bars and nightclubs in Vancouver and across British Columbia.
The Cecil was known as a bar where Hells Angels and other gang
members would socialize over beer with friends and business
associates.
"It was very gang friendly," Plante said of the Cecil in those
days. "Not just to biker groups, but all gangs."
While working at the Cecil, his long-time buddy Potts began
using Plante as a middleman in drug deals, getting him to pick
up drugs and deliver them, or to pick up the cash and bring it to
Potts. At the time, Potts had applied to become a Hells Angel and
had reached hangaround status, meaning he could wear a leather
vest with an insignia on the front indicating he was in a Hells
Angels "program."
In 2003, Potts was beaten up by somebody who then stole his
vest. He returned to the East End clubhouse with a black eye and
informed Louie Robinson, who was at the time a senior member,
of the incident. Plante recalled hearing Potts being slapped by
Robinson and Potts falling to the floor. Potts was told to "get rid
of" the thief, named Audey Hanson, who had beaten him up, so
Potts and Plante went to stake out his Surrey home; the stakeout
continued over a two-month period.
Potts eventually gave Plante two guns—an Uzi sub-machine
gun and a .38 handgun—and dropped him off at Hanson's house
with orders to kill him. Plante recalled he purposefully jammed
the Uzi and pointed it at Hanson when he came out of the house.
Wearing a balaclava, Plante fired the .38 three times in the air to
scare the man, who ran inside the house.
Plante told Potts the Uzi had jammed. "He didn't believe me,"
Plante recalled. Potts later gave the guns to another friend, who
did shoot Hanson, who fortunately survived the murder attempt.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Hell To Pay
by Neal Hall
Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Excerpted by permission of John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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