There was a time when you’d have to beat up a rival biker or burn down a business to join a biker gang
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There was a time when you’d have to beat up a rival biker or burn down a business to join a biker gang.
Today, you’re better off having cybercrime chops or a relative working for a government ministry, at a port or as a 911 dispatcher.
Contacts in a foreign organized crime group? Bonus.
Bikers “are recruiting a person that not necessarily is willing to kill . . . (but) has an extensive network of people that can help bring in money,” said one participant at a recent gathering of biker experts. “They’re an enterprise.
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“Their focus is not so much on the violence and lifestyle – it’s more on the income.”
That was one takeaway when two dozen experts – police, academics and policy makers – gathered in Toronto to discuss new research about how bikers operate in southern Ontario.
A Free Press reporter, one of two journalists interviewed by study researchers, was invited to the meeting held under Chatham House rules, a system that allows participants to use the information presented without attribution.
The practice, named after the headquarters of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the United Kingdom, where the rule originated in 1927, is designed to increase openness on controversial or sensitive topics. Neither where the event was held nor who commissioned the research can be revealed.
But experts spoke bluntly, specifically about the Hells Angels, and its shift to recruiting skills in money laundering, cybercrime and networks of both criminals and professionals working in banking, law enforcement and government.
All direct quotes that follow are from that session.
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Money, money, money (laundering)
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated bikers’ shift toward digital operations, such as online gambling and cybercrime, fuelling the need for new members with modern skill sets to try to stay one step ahead of evolving police tactics.
“Recruitment now prioritizes individuals with technological skills and extensive networks, enhancing the clubs’ efficiency and adaptability,” said one expert
So where do they look for new recruits to teach necessary skills? Somewhere with a captive audience eager to expand skills.
“Prisons are . . . pivotal in recruitment as . . . both a learning ground and operational base,” a participant said.
The new expertise includes ways to clean cash.
Bikers always have used a range of tactics to launder their money to avoid detection by the police and government.
Strip clubs and other cash-only businesses were the preferred methods to launder money, but the need for more sophisticated techniques has grown as the money coming from illegal activities grew.
“Real estate, cars, jewelry, along with investments into legitimate businesses, and also the use of online gambling and crypto currencies are key money-laundering strategies for organized crime actors,” one expert said.
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It all means it gets complicated to trace money made the criminal way.
Bikers also are taking a page out of the Mafia’s playbook by laundering proceeds of crime through lawyer-based trusts and offshore banking.
“That’s a necessity,” a session participant said. “When their profits start reaching millions and hundreds of millions over years, they have to move to that next level of money laundering.”
Exhibit A: Hobart
Some of those money-laundering tactics were revealed in court documents filed as part of a case to keep assets seized during Project Hobart, a two-year probe into an illegal gambling ring police contend was run by Hells Angels bikers and a Toronto crime family.
Police said the operation controlled at least 14 sports-betting websites and took in more than $160 million in revenue over six years before investigators shut it down and seized $40 million in assets, including luxury homes, high-end cars, gold, silver, cash and other valuables.
Alleged Hells Angels Robert Barletta, 54, and Craig McIlquham, 53, were among the more than 30 people charged.
The case fizzled in court and most charges were withdrawn, but court documents detail how the two alleged bikers tried to hide millions generated from the gambling ring. The existence of the alleged gambling ring hasn’t been proven in court, nor have the seized assets been proven to be linked to the proceeds of crime.
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Barletta used and controlled a trust fund, held by a Toronto law firm, to receive and release millions of dollars for property purchases, and seven properties worth millions were bought in Barletta’s name or by him, despite having no legitimate source of income, the Crown alleges.
McIlquham stashed away some of his loot in secret compartments in his Toronto condo, where police found more than $40,000 in cash and fake IDs. He and his wife bought four properties for a total of about $5.1 million between June 2004 and December 2018 and operated a payday loan business that took in nearly $2 million in deposits over five years, the Crown alleges.
“If you can’t move your money as a criminal group, you’re screwed. . . . The nature of bringing in people who are capable of doing that with them or for them, I think is another testament to the way that they’re evolving,” one participant said.
Collaboration over conflict
Bikers have a history of working with street gangs to traffic drugs and weapons and target rivals, but now they’re embracing broader collaboration – locally, nationally and internationally – as key to their success.
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“This network of collaboration enhances (outlaw motorcycle clubs’) operational capacity, allowing for more extensive reach and diversification of their criminal profit potential,” the participant said.
The Hells Angels and British Columbia street gangs work with Mexican and Mideast drug cartels to smuggle methamphetamine and fentanyl to Australia and New Zealand, where they fetch significantly more than in North America.
How? Transnational organized crime groups have infiltrated supply chains and recruited insiders at sea, in airports and within shipping companies in Canada and aboard.
Drugs produced in Mexico are shipped through the Port of Vancouver with the assistance of the Hells Angels and the Australian Comanchero biker gangs. Despite violent clashes between rival clubs in Australia, they work together when it comes to profiting from the drug trade.
Another recent example of the Hells Angels’ involvement in transnational crime came this year when alleged member Damion Ryan, 43, and associate Adam Pearson, 29, where charged in a murder-for-hire plot targeting Iranian dissidents living in the U.S.
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The indictment alleges Ryan was working for Iranian drug lord Naji Zindashti – on orders from the Iranian regime – when he was recorded on an encrypted device agreeing to put together a team to do the hit for US$350,000.
Ryan, a former member of a Hells Angels-tied chapter in Ottawa who joined another chapter after moving to Greece, was already in custody in Manitoba awaiting trial on drug trafficking and smuggling charges.
The business model: diversify and adapt
A decade ago, one chapter might focus on one or two criminal activities.
“Very seldom do we see that now,” as bikers respond to police tactics, an expert said. “They realize that if their entire chapter is locked into one drug importation and trafficking criminal network, (police) can take them down with one investigation.”
Now, bikers diversify – and learn from their mistakes.
Investigative techniques used by police to target bikers and their operations are often revealed in court. Documents in the Hobart asset battle, for example, outlined how police used physical surveillance, digital tracking and forensic accounting to build their case.
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“Now they know what they did wrong and what we did right,” one expert said. “It actually goes out worldwide, saying this is what the Canadian cops are using to arrest us, don’t do it.”
Police also are constantly adapting and forging new partnerships to combat biker activity.
In the Hobart investigation, charges against the alleged ring leaders were withdrawn because it was estimated it would have taken nearly 42 months for the case to make its way through the courts, significantly longer than the 30-month maximum laid out in a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2016.
Now, investigators on big biker busts make sure they have everything they need ready before going to court to avoid unnecessary delays.
The OPP’s biker enforcement unit, made up of officers from 21 Ontario law-enforcement agencies, works with the Canada Border Services Agency and Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), the independent government agency that provides financial intelligence to police and security agencies.
But it’s time for regulatory bodies and financial institutions to step into the battle against bikers, and for beefed-up border security and more co-operation with American law-enforcement, experts say.
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“You can’t look at them as static organizations, as stable groups . . . They’re collections that are networking and re-networking, evolving, adapting to the situation,” a session participant said.
dcarruthers@postmedia.com
Hells Angels tops among Ontario’s 10 outlaw biker clubs
Though 10 outlaw motorcycle clubs operate in Ontario, where there are 73 chapters with 1,000 members, there’s no questions about which one is at the top.
The Hells Angels solidified their position of power by absorbing independent clubs in the early 2000s.
“Despite the presence of . . . the Outlaws and the Bandidos, the Hells Angels dominance continues to be unchallenged, restricting the territorial expansion of others,” a session expert said.
The recent rise of support-club membership across Ontario is mostly also tied to the Hells Angels. Some support clubs started as independent, but were taken over by larger clubs.
Their job? Take orders from the big club to carry out crimes such as arson and homicide. Puppet clubs don’t make independent decisions.
The Hells Angels have more than two dozen support clubs in Canada – including the Gatekeepers, Red Devils and One Order in Southwestern Ontario – and often use these clubs to have a presence in areas where they’re not ready to control with a full-patch chapter.
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The Outlaws, the world’s oldest biker club and the Hells Angels’ bitter rivals, are supported by the Black Pistons.
But “they are a distinct danger in Ontario because they use violence more indiscriminately than the Hells Angels and the Loners,” an expert said.
In July, when Outlaws and Loners members brawled in a Cornwall parking lot, one biker was shot and two stabbed. The Outlaws’ Cornwall clubhouse was set ablaze less than 48 hours later, said police, who responded to the violence with a series of raids that led to a gun haul and charges against nine people.
Skills help, but becoming a full-patch biker takes time
Having in-demand skills can fast-track the process to becoming a full-patch biker, but it’s still not a quick undertaking.
Anyone aspiring to join the Hells Angels, for example, must know a full-patch member for five years before they can go to the clubhouse as a friend.
Next, they’ll be granted hang-around status before being considered a prospect, the last step before become a full-patch member.
“You have to have minimum of 12 months in each of those categories, but after your 12 months as a prospect, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get in,” a session expert said.
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Some get stuck in the prospect stage for years or booted out before becoming a full-patch member, a title that requires a vote from the entire Ontario membership.
But “once you have that, you have instant street credibility,” the expert said.
The demographics of bikers clubs also are changing as older members, most of them white, age out and new ones join.
“The inclusion of younger and tech-savvy members and a gradual shift toward diversity within the clubs” give biker clubs the best chance of sticking around for a long time, another expert said.
And making lots of money.
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