VANCOUVER CHAPTER 'ONE OF BIGGEST, WEALTHIEST'

'Few Victories Against Bikers In The Past By Police'

The B.C. branch of the Hells Angels is one of the wealthiest in the
country, says the man who wrote a best-selling book on the club.

"They are the biggest and one of the wealthiest, and specifically the
Vancouver chapter is one of the oldest in Canada," said Julian Sher, who
co-authored, with William Marsden, "On the Road to Hell."

"They live very well. They own restaurants and stores, and I know a couple
who live in houses worth more than a million dollars in Vancouver -- and
they have no apparent jobs," he added.

Sher told The Province yesterday that police have had little success making
charges stick against top Angels.

"There have been very few victories against the bikers in the past by the
police," he said in an interview from Montreal. "The police have had very
few successes.

"The busts they were able to make [in the past] were against low-ranking
members but they have never been able to convict prominent or senior
members," Sher said.

Law-enforcement agencies in Canada and the U.S. have linked the bikers to
everything from drug trafficking to prostitution to trans-national
criminality, but there has been little solid proof.

The club, meanwhile, has tried to portray itself as a fun-loving bunch of
motorcycle enthusiasts who distribute toys to needy kids at Christmas, he said.

"This will be an important test case that deals a big blow to a very
carefully nurtured PR image," he said.

Sher, who debated Vancouver Hells Angels spokesman Rick Ciarniello on a
Vancouver radio station last summer, said the biker spokesman insisted club
members do not traffic in cocaine.

"He said any member caught trafficking would be expelled. I challenge him
to expel them if they are convicted," said Sher.

The first conviction of a Hells Angel in B.C. came after a two-year,
$800,000 investigation that ended in 1998 with the arrest of

Francisco "Chico" Pires and Ronaldo

Lising, both members of the East End Hells Angels.

Pires and Lising were each sentenced to 41/2 years in jail after a jury
convicted them of running a cocaine-trafficking operation in 1995-97.

A third suspect in the investigation, associate Dean Caine Munoz, was
sentenced to 90 days in jail for trafficking in cocaine.

But charges were stayed against six other people named by the Vancouver
police in the 1998 bust.

Pires and Lising appealed their 2001 convictions but in January 2004, the
charges were upheld in the B.C. Court of Appeal.