HELLS ANGELS EXPAND THEIR EMPIRE IN B.C.

Puppet Clubs Are Being Set Up After Several Arrests By Police

The Hells Angels is expanding in B.C. by setting up new puppet clubs
in an attempt to counter law-enforcement efforts that have led to
several high-profile arrests and convictions in recent months, The
Vancouver Sun has learned.

The Vancouver Hells Angels chapter has set up the Outcasts support
club in the last year, which is now operational and ready to expand
into Surrey, RCMP Chief Supt. Bob Paulson, a biker gang expert based
in Ottawa, said Thursday.

And the White Rock chapter has put together a proposal for its own
puppet club called the Jesters. Details of the proposal were
uncovered when White Rock sergeant-at-arms Villy Roy Lynnerup was
arrested late last month with a gun at Vancouver International
Airport, Paulson said.

He said the Hells Angels' "West Coast board of governors" gave its
approval for the Outcasts some time ago, but the process was still
underway for the Jesters when Lynnerup was arrested attempting to
board a flight for Edmonton with a fully loaded Bryco .38-calibre pistol.

"The Outcasts have been around for about a year now and they are just
firming up and they are not far from the White Rock chapter and the
idea there is that the Outcasts are going to be looking at Surrey in
a big way," Paulson said.

"And White Rock is seeking approval for the Jesters."

Lynnerup, 41, now faces a series of charges and is out on bail.

Richmond RCMP said after his arrest that Hells Angels documents were
found in his luggage, including minutes of "officers' meetings."

Lynnerup is not the only full patch member of the club to run into
legal trouble in the past year.

Vancouver chapter president Norman Edward Krogstad and Cedric Baxter
Smith were sentenced to four years in jail last November for 11
counts of cocaine trafficking. And David Patrick O'Hara, who was
affiliated with the Angels puppet club, The Renegades, pleaded guilty
to trafficking and weapons possession.

A Hells Angels member and two alleged associates are due to go to
trial in September on a series of charges related to production and
trafficking of crystal meth.

As well, a new book on the bikers, called Angels of Death, says
federal income tax investigators have launched an offensive against
the Hells Angels in B.C., who are among the wealthiest bikers in Canada.

Paulson said the new support clubs are an attempt by the Hells Angels
to distance themselves from illegal activity by allowing the other
biker groups to do the work.

"We actually have full patches hands-on so that is a very bad
practice in their world. So this is a response to our enforcement
practices is to build up the support clubs and have them do the
work," Paulson said.

"They are really in a bad way, the Hells Angels on the west coast,
and they are really disturbed by what we have done. So these support
clubs are a way of distancing themselves. And that is their solution
to get these support clubs to assume the risk. That is what they have
done everywhere else in the world and that's what they have done in
eastern Canada."

The challenge for police is to make the link between the two
organizations in criminal cases and to prove criminal conspiracy
under Canada's new anti-gang laws, he said.

"That is the challenge for us is to put that proof forward," Paulson said.

When Lynnerup was arrested last month, Hells Angels' spokesman Rick
Ciarniello said he was stunned.

"I'm absolutely flabbergasted that this has happened," he told The
Vancouver Sun. "This is so absurd it almost sounds like a setup."