PROJECT NOVA WORKED WELL

The sentencing last week of two members of the Hells Angels East End
chapter brought to a close a saga which started five years ago.

Project Nova began in the wake of an extortion investigation into two
senior Hells Angels called Project Breakpoint, which ended without
prosecution, much to the frustration of police investigators angered by the
decision to terminate a wiretap intercept warrant just days into the
authorization.

Robert Molesberry had been a doorman at the Number 5 Orange strip bar in
the Downtown Eastside. That was the legitimate part of his life. He also
ran a marijuana grow-op for one Hells Angel and sold cocaine for two others.

He had a piece of bad luck when someone "ripped the grow," leaving him
empty-handed and trying to explain the situation to the biker he worked
for. He was "fined" $10,000 for his perceived transgression. He also owed
two other Angels $1,500 for a fronted ounce of cocaine.

When he couldn't come up with the money he got kicked around behind the
strip bar in a less than gentle reminder about his need to pay the assigned
debt. This made him mad; after all, he had worked for the bikers for over
two years and made them a ton of money. He found, much to his chagrin, that
there is a price to be paid when you sleep with the devil.

Molesberry also ran an after-hours club for the bikers in Vancouver which
was used by the Angels to move a lot of dope through. He later told police,
"F* these guys. I made them so much money over the years and they do this
to me. Well f* them."

With that, Molesberry became an agent for the Vancouver police. But, this
also presented a problem for the two officers who interviewed him. They
were concerned that the police and the Attorney General's office may be
compromised and had no confidence that a long-term project could be run.
Then-Vancouver Police department Const. Al Dalstrom, testified in court
about the situation saying there were security concerns in the police
community and "we wanted to take our investigation and work off-site
somewhere away from the police community."

Dalstrom and his partner, Andy Richards, took a proposal to then-VPD Chief
Constable Ray Canuel. They laid out what they needed and outlined their
concerns. Canuel made a decision to fund an investigation from his
contingency fund, then about $200,000. He also arranged for a team to be
detached from Strike Force to work the file on a full-time basis, assigning
Inspector Peter Ditchfield to oversee the investigation.

The last problem was the security issue and the possibility of the Hells
Angels having compromised the police community. Canuel arranged to use an
intercept room at regional CSIS headquarters as a base for the crew.
Project Nova was born.

The subsequent years were a roller-coaster ride for the police officers
involved. It only ended last week when East End chapter members Francisco
"Chico" Pires and Ronaldo "Ronnie" Lissing were sentenced to four and a
half years in federal prison for conspiracy to traffic in cocaine.

But, they weren't the only victories claimed by Project Nova. In fact, the
investigation yielded an impressive score. By the time the operation was
concluded the police had seized over $12 million in drugs, cash, property
and weapons, 57 search warrants were executed and 76 people were charged
with various offences. Most pled guilty including the last one in February,
Romano Brienza, the former president of the Regulators. His brother is
Vincenzo "Vinnie" Brienza, a senior member of the Haney chapter of the
Hells Angels. He was arrested with a kilo of cocaine, 30 pounds of
marijuana and a gun.

But the most important thing produced by Project Nova was the destruction
of the Hells Angels' ability to say the police were wrong about them being
an organized criminal group. In fact, on a radio talk show before Nova was
terminated, Vancouver Chapter member and frequent spokesman for the bikers,
Rick Ciarnello, dared Dalstrom to prove they were criminals. That's exactly
what Dalstrom and his colleagues did.

In explaining the results of Nova to me, Dalstrom, now a sergeant with the
Organized Crime Agency of B.C., said, "Nova showed the distinct networks of
the Hells Angels and how their structures worked. For the first time, we
were able to prove in court what we always said, the Angels are as much
organized crime as the Mafia."

Realistically, Nova could have gone much further, but there was no more
money. Said one of the investigators, "if the funding had been there we
could have gone up the food chain. It's a lot less intensive to run an
agent-based wire than to run a full-blown wire op. We control the agent and
the meets. It takes money to play in this game and we didn't have it."

In fact, the agent, Molesberry, now in the witness protection program, made
six hand-to-hand ounce-level cocaine purchases from the Angels. But when
the agent couldn't come up with the money to make bigger purchases, the
Angels determined he wasn't worth their time and handed him down to two
"employees" further down in their network, losing the opportunity for the
police to continue using the agent to make buys and climb the ladder of the
organization. That's when they turned it into a full-blown
wire/surveillance operation.

The officer shook his head at the irony of it. "We're the police and we
couldn't afford to do business with them."