HELLS ANGELS EXPOSED

Gang Runs Coke Trade: Cops

It's Feb. 19, 4:25 p.m. Martin Dufresne is on the move, heading west on
Highway 401 near Cornwall. For months, the eyes and ears of the law have
been fixed on the 39-year-old suspected drug runner for the Hells Angels.

He's not the only one under surveillance.

Using tracking devices hidden in cars, taps on cellphones and a bug in a
Moy Avenue auto shop, police have stalked the key players in an alleged
cocaine distribution network led by Windsor's Hells Angels and fed by
Dufresne's regular deliveries from Sherbrooke, Que., say court documents
obtained by The Star.

After a year-long investigation dubbed Project Provider, Windsor police and
their OPP and RCMP colleagues are primed to pounce. On Jan. 28, police had
obtained a general warrant to search any place Dufresne is suspected to
stash drugs. His next trip, the one that begins Feb. 19, will be the
trigger to smash the operation.

After following Dufresne, a barrel-chested man with thinning grey hair,
through Toronto and London, through Essex County meetings with alleged
Hells Angels Jose Poulin and Thomas Thibert, police finally nab him in his
1998 Chevrolet Cavalier as he heads out of the city on the 401 near Tilbury
at 2:22 p.m. Feb. 21.

A sweeping countywide bust follows.

More than 100 officers from Windsor police, RCMP, OPP and other local
forces participate.

Three businesses and a dozen mainly middle-class homes in peaceful
neighbourhoods are raided.

Fifteen people are arrested and charged. Nearly $400,000 in cocaine and
cash is seized -- including $63,000 stashed in a secret compartment beneath
Dufresne's passenger-side dash.

Most significantly, an alleged full-patch Angel is arrested. Poulin, a
tall, olive-skinned Quebecer with a football linebacker's build is charged
with conspiracy to traffic narcotics.

The busts mark the first significant crackdown on cocaine dealing police
say is linked to the Hells Angels since the notorious biker gang gained a
foothold in Windsor in early 2001.

Nearly 400 pages of search warrant documents weave a fascinating tale of
how the Hells Angels gained a stranglehold on the city's cocaine market and
co-opted a pair of local alleged Erie Street drug dealers and their
underlings, including the sister and nephew of one of the ring's top dealers.

But the search warrant documents contain only the police version of the
story. Defence lawyer Robert DiPietro, who represents most of the accused
nabbed in the Feb. 21 bust, says his clients are innocent. And none,
including Poulin, are Hells Angels or work for the notorious gang of outlaw
bikers, said DiPietro.

"I'm sure that's their theory," he said of police. "But as far as I know,
none of them are involved in the Hells Angels."

Craig McIlquham, a member of the club, declined comment when reached Friday.

Kirk Munroe, a lawyer representing Dufresne and some of the other
defendants, said police have a self-interest in touting the "great
significance" of their latest arrest.

"Although I have not yet seen the evidence police claim to have, I do know
after more than 30 years of practice that police departments everywhere
tend to exaggerate the nature and strength of their case," Munroe said.

"Too many times, police crow about their case on arrest only to eat crow
later on. We'll see just how significant this case is when tested in a
courtroom."

What follows is an account of the investigation based on court documents
accessible to the public and prepared by the police to obtain search warrants.

The world's largest and most notorious outlaw motorcycle gang began its
push into Windsor in the late 1990s. At the time the city was home to at
least two "one-percenter" motorcycle clubs -- so-called because they
consider themselves among the one per cent of bikers who eschew society's
rules. The Lobos and the Outlaws each boasted a handful of local members.
In reach and potency, they paled in comparison to the Angels.

In September of 1999, four Quebec-based Angels paid a visit to a weekend
biker party hosted by the Windsor Lobos at their old Provincial Road
clubhouse. Among the visitors was Richard Ouellette, a high-ranking Angel
the court documents and police sources say sponsored the Windsor chapter.

Rubbing shoulders with existing biker gangs was key to the Angels' strategy
in Ontario. Their protracted war with rival Quebec outlaws, a bloody feud
that left more than 100 people dead, taught them to co-opt existing gangs,
not battle them, wherever they could.

The Angels' Ontario recruiting drive culminated in an unprecedented
"patch-over" ceremony at their Sorel, Que., bunker on Dec. 29, 2000.
Normally, earning full-patch status takes a minimum of four years, said
RCMP Sgt. Jean-Pierre Levesque, the national co-ordinator on outlaw
motorcycle gangs for Criminal Intelligence Service Canada.

"It's not just an overnight promotion that you get," he said in an
interview. "You have to be sponsored by an actual member of the Hells
Angels who has known you for many years." Then wannabe members must spend
at least a year at each of three preliminary levels -- first "friend," then
"hangaround" and finally "prospect" before earning full-patch status.

But the 179 Ontario members of the Lobos, Para-Dice Riders, Satan's Choice
and Last Chance biker gangs who switched allegiances at the December 2000
patch-over bypassed the normally rigorous entry process. In an instant,
they became full-patch Angels.

Seven Windsor Lobos were reportedly among them. Less than two months later
the Angels hung their winged and grinning death-head insignia outside the
old Lobos compound on Provincial Road at the Sixth Concession. It was a
smooth and bloodless transition barely noticed by anyone but police.

A Windsor police source said at least three long-time local Lobos who
patched over in 2000 -- 50-year-old John Muzzatti, 50-year-old Serge Cattai
and 54-year-old Thomas Thibert -- remain full members of the Windsor
chapter. Three other locals and Quebecer Poulin, whom court documents say
Ouellette dispatched to Windsor to found the local chapter, round out the
club. In 2003, Windsor's Angels moved to a new fenced compound at 7893/7895
Howard Ave. in Amherstburg.

When the Angels settled in Essex County, it was expected they would try to
monopolize the sale of cocaine.

As one Windsor officer alleges in an application to obtain a warrant to
search the home of alleged mid-level dealer Salvatore Briguglio: "I know
from my involvement in the Biker Enforcement Unit and through discussions
with informants that the Hell's (sic) Angels want to be the only "business"
in town. Once the Hell's (sic) Angels learn that someone is selling cocaine
other that (sic) theirs, they approach that person and give them several
options. The options being they begin to sell Hell's (sic) Angels cocaine,
they get taxed on selling cocaine supplied by someone else or they
completely stop selling cocaine. Assaults on persons are known to happen if
they don't comply."

That's part of what makes the Hells Angels worse for Windsor than
run-of-the-mill drug dealers, said Julian Sher, who along with co-author
William Marsden is researching a second book on the outlaw gang due this
spring.

"The Hells Angels ... bring a level of intimidation and violence," he said.
"There have been drive-by shootings in Manitoba. We had the huge biker war
in Quebec. So the Hells Angels are much more vicious (than other dealers.)"

Among the Windsorites who agreed to deal for the Angels, police allege,
were 38-year-old Carmen Amante and 27-year-old Attilio Montaleone.

Amante doesn't work, yet lives "well beyond his means," the documents say.
His South Windsor home boasts an inground pool and handsome landscaping.
Expensive hangings drape his walls and a pool table, bar and big screen TV
fill his basement, say the documents. According to the documents, Amante,
Montaleone and others cut, pressed and packaged the cocaine they received
from Dufresne at Prestia Automotive, a Moy Avenue auto shop the court
documents say is little more than a front for a drug-processing operation.
The court documents say Amante owns a 50 per cent stake in Prestia Automotive.

On June 30, 2004, armed with a warrant to search Prestia without its
owners' knowledge, Windsor police found a suspected cocaine press, boxes of
multi-purpose bags, zip-lock plastic bags, an automatic money counter, an
American currency counterfeit detector, and a large bundle of $100 bills.
They didn't find any drugs. But an officer swabbed samples from 20
locations around the shop, 18 of which later tested positive for cocaine
residue.

After readying the illicit narcotics for sale, the court documents allege,
Amante paid his 36-year-old sister Rita Payne and her 38-year-old husband,
Wilf, a former Windsor Spitfire, $800 a month to store the illicit
narcotics in their upscale home on South Windsor's Maguire Street. Filippo
Polifroni, 62, served as the operation's bookkeeper, tracking what it
collected and what it was owed by its army of dealers, the court documents say.

All were charged with conspiracy to traffic narcotics after the Feb. 21
raids. Police seized more than four pounds of cocaine worth $327,000 at the
Paynes' house.

Intertwined with their cocaine dealing, Montaleone and Amante ran a
lucrative sports betting operation, police allege. They're facing
bookmaking charges, along with 24-year-old Jason Giorgi, who turned himself
in the day after the big bust.

"Interceptions have shown that, on a regular basis, Montaleone accepted
wagers from his customers on major sporting events such as NFL football,
college football, college basketball, NBA basketball, and horse racing from
several horse race tracks in the Province of Ontario," reads one court
document.

Montaleone and Amante use their gaming profits to prop up the cocaine
dealing operation, say the documents.

Four of the others arrested Feb. 21 and charged with conspiracy to traffic
cocaine, including Amante's nephew, Randy Darocy, 26, of LaSalle, Kevin
Jovetic, 31, Antonio Desantis, 53, and Briguglio, 59, all of Windsor, are
"mid-level dealers," said the police source.

Guiseppe Manzoni, 37, of Essex, Robert Petley, 40 and his brother
Christopher Petley, 43, of Windsor were charged the day of the bust with
weapons offences related to their joint ownership of a single gun seized in
the raid on Prestia Automotive.

The documents show some of the network's main players suspected police were
watching. They conducted their deals in code, often shrouding them in
auto-shop jargon to try to fool police. Orders and debts recorded in a
Prestia log book were listed as gallons of paint, for example.

Beginning Nov. 5, 2004, police eavesdropped on Amante, Montaleone and
Poulin by tapping their cellphones and installing a voice probe inside
Prestia Automotive. They picked up exchanges like this one in Italian on
Dec. 14 at 1:44 p.m, after Amante asked Briguglio to swing by the auto shop.

Amante: "I got to look at that bumper again we got to re-paint it."

Briguglio: "Oh you gotta paint?"

A police transcriber then offered his interpretation of what was really
going on.

"I believe that Amante is telling Briguglio that he has cocaine for him,"
the officer wrote. "Drug traffickers will often use coded terminology in an
attempt to avoid detection by the police. In this case I believe Amante is
using terms such as 'paint' and 'bumper' in an attempt to mask the
conversation."

After the conversation, Briguglio visited Prestia. When he returned to his
apartment at 1400 Ouellette Ave., an officer parked in the underground lot
spied his 2003 Jeep Grand Cherokee. There was no damage or fresh paint on
its bumpers, the court documents say.

Armed with reams of wiretap transcripts like these, surveillance records
and informant statements, police and prosecutors will now try to win their
court case against the ring and establish its connection to the Hells Angels.

That may not be easy.

"It's rare that a full-patch member gets his hands dirty directly," said
Sher. "Even once you have the evidence, it can be difficult and painstaking
to get convictions."

Sher cited cases like that of Francisco (Chico) Pires and Ronaldo Lising, a
pair of Vancouver Hells Angels found guilty of conspiring to traffic in
cocaine, trafficking in cocaine and possession of proceeds of crime valued
at more than $1,000. Police began investigating the pair in 1996 and
arrested them in 1998. Their conviction in January 2001 marked the first
victory for B.C. prosecutors against members of the motorcycle gang, but
Pires and Lising have since appealed.

For larger biker busts, the sheer volume of evidence and arrests poses a
challenges for the courts. Still, Canada's police and prosecutors are,
slowly, making some headway against the Angels.

According to RCMP figures as of July 2004, Quebec has proved the most
successful with roughly 65 per cent of the gang's 132 Quebec full-patch
members, prospects and hangarounds behind bars or before the courts. In
Ontario, where the Angels are strongest, 38 of 244 members, prospects and
hangarounds are either incarcerated or charged. From Manitoba west 24 of
the club's 185 members, prospects and hangarounds were either jailed or
awaiting court appearances.

Everyone charged in the Feb. 21 busts has been released on bail. Their bail
hearings last week made headlines when former Detroit Red Wings enforcer
Bob Probert showed up in the courtroom.

Windsor police Sgt. John St. Louis said he couldn't comment on the ongoing
investigation. "However, we do expect to lay further charges against other
individuals."

THE HELLS ANGELS IN CANADA

"The Hell's Angels remain the largest and most powerful outlaw motorcycle
gang in Canada with 34 (of which two in Quebec are currently inactive)
chapters across the country comprising approximately 500 members."

Alberta: three chapters

Saskatchewan: two chapters

Manitoba: one chapter

Quebec: five chapters

Ontario: sixteen chapters, including one in Windsor and one opened recently
in Hamilton.

British Columbia: seven chapters

- - Source: Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada, 2004 annual report on
Organized Crime in Canada