DRUG SALES MADE MILLIONAIRES OUT OF OUTLAW BIKERS

Sentencing Hearing Offers Rare Glimpse Into Hells Angels

MONTREAL - The cavernous courtroom, so big video screens are needed at the
back to allow spectators to follow the proceedings, could be mistaken for a
university lecture hall. And yesterday it was a lesson in Organized Crime
101 that Crown prosecutor Andre Vincent delivered at the sentencing hearing
of nine Hells Angels members.

Mr. Vincent provided a rare glimpse into the workings of the criminal biker
gang, showing how they followed a meticulous, if ruthless, business plan to
establish a virtual monopoly over the Montreal drug trade and rack up sales
of $111-million a year.

"It was a very well-structured business," Mr. Vincent said, while talking
about a computer diskette seized by police that provided details of the
gang's accounts in 2000. All large-scale purchases and sales were noted,
with buyers and vendors identified by nicknames. Alongside cocaine
purchases worth millions of dollars, the gang's diligent accountants listed
expenses for stationery, hydro and rent.

Investigators found one instance where a buyer settling a $50,000 drug debt
had mistakenly included an extra $20. The next time he did business, he had
a $20 credit. The dealings provided members of the Nomads chapter $5,000 a
week base salary, and there was evidence that they could take in as much as
$1-million a year.

But while the gang functioned in some respects like a typical small
business, its leaders interpreted too literally the notion of cutthroat
competition. When the Hells Angels talked about "eliminating" their
competition, they acted with bullets.

"Drug trafficking cannot be done without violence," Mr. Vincent said. "It
is impossible to survive in this world without having people with business
sense, and other people capable of maintaining complete control."

Between 1995 and 2001, the Hells Angels maintained control in the Montreal
regions at a cost of 53 killings. Since 2001, when police rounded up the
bulk of the gang, Mr. Vincent said, the biker war has claimed just three
more victims.

The nine men before the court pleaded guilty on Sept. 11 to charges of
conspiracy to commit murder, drug trafficking and gangsterism, abruptly
ending a trial that began last Oct. 21 and was expected to last into 2004.
In exchange for the guilty pleas, the Crown agreed to drop charges of
first-degree murder. Three of their co-accused were not offered the deal
and will face new murder trials.

The conspiracy to commit murder charges relate to the killings of 13 men,
all associated with the rival Rock Machine, killed between 1996 and 2000
during a war for control of Montreal cocaine and hashish sales.

Mr. Vincent yesterday asked Quebec Superior Court Justice Rejean Paul to
impose 20-year sentences on Rene Charlebois, Denis Houle, Gilles Mathieu
and Normand Robitaille, who were members of the Nomads, the gang's
highest-ranking chapter in Quebec.

He asked for an 18-year sentence for Guillaume Serra, who was a Nomad
prospect, and he asked for 15-year sentences for Jean-Guy Bourgoin, Daniel
Lanthier, Sylvain Laplante and Pierre Provencher, all members of the
lower-ranking Rockers.

Mr. Vincent also requested that the judge order the accused to serve half
their sentences before being eligible for parole.

Yesterday, the nine men, ranging in age from 35 to 54, followed the hearing
from behind bullet-proof thick glass in a $16.5-million courthouse built
next to a north-end jail to hold the biker trials. A second trial of nine
men facing similar charges continues in another courtroom down the hall.

They were largely stonefaced as the prosecutor traced a portrait of their
misdeeds. The one point at which they appeared genuinely transfixed was
when Mr. Vincent played a video from a camera police had hidden inside an
apartment where the Hells Angels received substantial drug payments.

From an angle near the floor, the camera showed a sparsely furnished
apartment with a large TV on a stool. After punching a secret code at the
building's entrance, a man entered carrying sport bags filled with stacks
of money. The apartment's resident -- who was not identified -- set to
quickly counting the stacks. Mr. Vincent said the money was then moved to a
safe one floor down before being taken in boxes to another address where
money-counting machines ran non-stop. When police raided the first building
in 2001, they seized $5.6-million from the safe.

Business practices were at times unorthodox. When the bikers were
negotiating a huge cocaine purchase from Colombia, they did not send cash
or a bill of lading, Mr. Vincent quipped. They sent one of their senior
members to stay with the Colombians for three months as a form of deposit
and a sign of their good faith.

Despite the lengths the bikers went to to shield themselves from the
police, in the end they were done in by their own. Police succeeded in
recruiting two well-placed Hells Angels as sources.