Under and Alone (21 page)

I had been a full patch for just over a month when the word came from Mother that the secretary-treasurer position was mine. It was unbelievable; not only was I a full patch, but now I was a club officer, which brought a level of prestige and privilege not afforded rank-and-file members. They trusted me with the chapter books—which, of course, would later turn out to be a crucial piece of evidence establishing that the club was an ongoing criminal enterprise.

As secretary-treasurer, I now had access to all the national officers and got a chance to look at Mother’s records. I was responsible for taking notes at Church and any other official meetings. I handled all the club’s money issues, and when the chapter came into property—usually by extortion or robbery—the secretary-treasurer was responsible for its disposition.

I met with Leno Luna down in Commerce once a week. Luna was a dark-skinned Mexican in his mid-forties who stood about five foot ten and weighed somewhere around 220. An original Mongol who was around during the first war with the Hells Angels, he was a fairly laid-back guy, and I enjoyed being around him. But I could never lose sight of the fact that he was a hard-core Mongol who rode with Red Dog and Diablo, two of the most violent members in the gang.

It didn’t take me long to get the SFV Chapter back on good terms with Mother. I made Domingo happy. I made the bosses in ATF happy with the unprecedented access I was getting to the club’s inner workings and its most important financial documents, even the gang’s official constitution.

But the greatest evidentiary value of the club’s books was that it put the gang’s hierarchical structure on paper, from the rank-and-file patches to the national president. It wasn’t just my word anymore; the books showed the Mongols Motorcycle Club was, as John Ciccone later wrote in his 167-page affidavit in support of our search warrants, a “highly organized criminal enterprise, with a defined, multi-level chain of command.” The books showed that the club had between 150 and 200 members in Southern California and some twenty-one chapters across the country, each with a president, vice president, sergeant at arms, and secretary-treasurer, and that the chapters answered and paid a percentage of all income to the Mother Chapter, which was built on the same structure and represented the Mongol Nation as a whole.

This was the hard evidence we needed to prove that the club was a form of organized crime for a prosecution under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

I made a clear record of the collection of dues from the various chapters, money acquired through gun trafficking, drug dealing, and extortion. I made a record of all money paid out for legal funds and to bail bondsmen. I compiled a list of post office boxes and storage facilities that members of the gang had rented, which would be essential when it came time for us to start preparing search warrants.

Through the national books, I also learned about the war plans for the state of Colorado. There had recently been a showdown between the Mongols and the Sons of Silence Motorcycle Club in Denver. I saw that the Colorado Chapter hadn’t been paying its dues recently, and I asked Luna why. He told me that the Colorado Chapter was allowed to keep its dues money in order to purchase firearms for the upcoming war. I also learned that the Mongols were looking to send reinforcements to Colorado to back the Mongols’ play against the Sons of Silence.

The Mongols were always looking for ways to make money without anybody going to jail. During Church, I suggested numerous times that the club incorporate, copyright the Mongols name, and trademark the colors. Everyone knew that the Hells Angels were making a fortune legitimately, marketing their famous winged death’s head and suing anyone who used the name and logo without permission. Leno Luna and Little Dave, the national president, shot me down whenever I suggested it. Their argument was that if the club did incorporate, we would be inviting government scrutiny.

“We’ll have the fuckin’ FBI and ATF on our asses,” they always said. They wanted nothing to do with anything legitimate. I suggested that we make some aboveboard money selling T-shirts. We could print up a few thousand Mongols shirts, then go to every T-shirt outlet in the L.A. area and leave them there on a consignment basis, tell the shop owners that we’d be back in a week to pick up the money for the shirts. Again, this was too goody-goody for the Mongols. They always needed some other angle, usually one employing their well-developed extortion skill. They suggested that we simply walk in the shops and, just short of armed robbery, demand money for the T-shirts. If the store owner paid up, we’d leave with the money
and
the shirts. My marketing plans never went anywhere after that. Any kind of legitimate business, as far as the gang was concerned, was too much work. It was a lot less complicated to live as a gangster.

During Church one day, Domingo announced that Evel would be transferring from the West Side Chapter to the SFV Chapter. As the secretary-treasurer, I realized that this was good news for the SFV coffers; as an ATF special agent, I recognized it was even better news for our investigation. Evel wielded a lot of influence in the club, and he was a good earner. Unlike guys like Rocky and Rancid, who basically scratched together income from meth deals and extortion jobs, Evel was a professional motorcycle thief. He was one of the Mongols’ key players in a massive, multimillion-dollar stolen-vehicle ring that had spread from California throughout the Southwest.

I’d first met Evel back when I was prospecting. He was in his late twenties, with long black hair that he wore in a braided ponytail, a clean-shaven, boyish face, and an array of tattoos on both arms. But he’d been in the club long enough that his colors were attached to a denim vest; only a few Mongols were permitted to sport denim instead of black leather, a kind of grandfather clause among the outlaws. Evel worked as a mechanic and rode the fastest street-legal Harley-Davidson I’ve ever seen.

We were hauling ass one night on the 210 north of L.A. I was running better than 130 miles per hour when to my astonishment Evel flew past me doing a good 20 miles per hour better. And he had Carrena hanging on the back! He later told me that he still had throttle left when he passed me but had started having visions of teeth, hair, and eyeballs spread all over the concrete.

The first time I saw Evel’s bike-thieving skills in action we were in Pasadena, on a sunny afternoon, and the sidewalks were packed with eyewitnesses. There were some sixty Mongols partying that afternoon at a trendy restaurant and bar called Moose McGillycuddy’s. There were also four preppy, good-time Harley riders in the restaurant, and they’d left their machines in the parking lot, at the mercy of the Mongol Nation.

I watched as Evel and a few other Mongols walked straight to the chromed-out Harleys in the lot. In a matter of seconds, wires were ripped out from under tanks, engines were roaring, and the four bikes were speeding out of Pasadena, closely followed by a carload of Mongols carrying guns. (John Ciccone, parked a hundred yards away on surveillance duty, managed to capture the whole bike-theft operation with his telephoto lens.)

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had very little experience doing stolen-motorcycle investigations, and Ciccone initially wanted me to stick to guns, drugs, and violence. But assistant United States attorneys Sally Meloch and Jerry Friedberg expressed a strong interest in prosecuting the Mongols in the stolen-bike trade.

Through the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office (LASO), we quickly enlisted the help of Rick Angel from the Progressive Insurance Agency. Progressive Insurance had its own investigative arm, made up largely of retired police detectives, and they said they’d provide us with their intelligence on stolen bikes; more crucially, given the administrative hurdles that Ciccone and I were often running into in the corridors of ATF, Progressive agreed to provide us with the front money with which to purchase stolen motorcycles.

I jumped into the deep end of the business. I started buying stolen Harleys from Evel and his connections. All the while, I was learning how to tear Harleys down, learning which parts had to be destroyed and replaced so the cops would never know that a machine was stolen.

Evel called me to say his connection had a brand-new Softail Springer ready to be delivered whenever I wanted. Our plan with Progressive Insurance was to buy a bike and put it through the complete strip-down and changeover. The intelligence gained from the conversion of my stolen Springer would be a template with which to prosecute all the people involved in the stolen-bike business.

I wanted the bike delivered to my UC place in Diamond Bar. Ciccone and the other backup guys were scurrying around to get people in place who could ID and photograph the bad guys. The deal was set; the guys were supposed to deliver the bike to me at four o’clock that afternoon. I planned to be at my pad waiting with Ciccone and everybody in place. Four rolled around, then four-thirty, and before long it was getting dark outside and I still had no bike. I had given directions to my place, so there shouldn’t have been any problem.

I put in a call to Evel. “Yo, brother, I’ve been waiting for your guys to show up now for going on two hours and ain’t nobody showed up yet. What’s going on?”

“The guys are still here in the shop,” he said. “They’re too stupid. They got lost trying to find your place.”

“Yo, brother, just how stupid are they? Straight out the 10 to the 57, then take the second exit after they pass the 91?”

Evel said that he’d threaten to beat their asses if they didn’t get the bike over to me pretty damn quick. I told Evel that I would meet them right at the off ramp from the 57. I’d be in my Mustang. Everything was set again.

I was sitting at the Diamond Bar exit off the 57 freeway when a blue van pulled up followed by a guy riding a new Harley-Davidson Softail Springer. I had $2,500 in my pocket to pay for that beautiful $20,000 bike. We rolled into the parking lot of my complex, and I met the main player, a heavyset Hispanic male in his mid-twenties. Once upstairs in my UC pad, I talked with him about supplying more motorcycles. I’d need him to transport them to Las Vegas, I told him, to my stolen-motorcycle partner there. “No problem,” he said. I told him I needed to cut Evel out of the business because I needed to make as much as I could and another middleman might just kill my cut. He said he was ready to do business directly with me. I pulled the $2,500 from my pocket and handed it over. He counted the money, then shook my hand. It was now completely dark outside. On the way outside to the van, I made a couple of incriminating statements in front of everyone in the van about what had just happened. I asked about the cops, and two guys spoke up from inside saying not to worry. They were savvy enough to drive home using a different route just in case the cops had been tailing them.

Now I had the evidence—taped evidence, no less—that everyone in the van was acting in concert with the criminal act that had just gone down. I said adios to my newfound partners and waved as they pulled out into the darkness.

Ciccone was waiting nearby with a team of feds and L.A. County backup. They surveilled the van until it had driven more than ten miles from my place, far enough that a stop by a black-and-white wouldn’t look too suspicious. They had the cops in the black-and-white do a standard field interrogation and identified all the participants in the van. While they were making the IDs, I was back at my place locking up my newly acquired Softail Springer, then hitting the computer to type up the details of the transaction in an ROI.

With IDs in hand, Ciccone returned to the scene of the crime. He took down the numbers of the motorcycle and confirmed that it had been recently stolen from an individual south of L.A. The first part of our plan—to show the courts just what was going on in the world of stolen motorcycles—had been accomplished.

Next we went into the “special construction” aspect of the investigation.*
 
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My plan was that the SFV guys would help me tear the bike down and get rid of the frame and cases. Buddy from South Pacific Motorcycle would order me a replacement frame and cases. The only thing I didn’t account for was how unreliable the Mongols could be.

I rented a storage unit in La Verne, just north of Pomona and about halfway between my real home in Upland and my UC pad in Diamond Bar. We were going to break the bike down there, and I would get rid of the incriminating pieces. ATF would wire the storage unit so that we could get the operation on sound and video. But during the process of wiring the unit, the manager of the storage facility noticed the mysterious-looking ATF van and came down to investigate. The whole operation was compromised in a casual one-minute visit. We couldn’t risk staying and attempting a UC operation; we would have to find another place.

Ciccone and I decided that we’d take the bike back to my UC pad and do the operation right there. The only problem was, my apartment was on the second floor. I’d have to get my Mongol brothers to help me haul the Softail Springer up the stairs. With three or four big guys, it wouldn’t be a problem. I went by South Pacific to hook up with Evel and a new SFV prospect named J.R. Buddy was standing at the door and greeted me. I told him that I had just picked up my new Softail Springer and that I’d have it apart and back together in a week or so. Buddy said that he’d help me as much as he could. Evel asked how everything was going on the new bike.

“I’m gonna have to take my bike to your place and tear it down or get some help hauling it up to my apartment.”

Evel said that he would get some help for hauling the bike the next day. I talked with Buddy about ordering a new frame. I told him that I didn’t have a lot of money and I wanted to get as far as I could with what little I did have. Since the bike had cost me $2,500, I would need some time to come up with the money for a frame and cases.

“We’ll buy a frame with a six-inch stretch and a thirty-six-degree rake on the front,” Buddy suggested. “This’ll kick out the Springer front and give it a sleeker look. The stretch will set the bike closer to the ground. Yo, Billy, it’ll be one badass-lookin’ machine.”