Biker Trials, The

by Paul Cherry

  The police monitoring the accounting also noticed the Trois Rivières chapter had purchased, in a six-month period between July 5, 2000, and December 19, 2000,164 kilos of cocaine along with 105 kilos of hashish from the Nomads chapter. The Nomads chapter’s reach extended even to Quebec City.

  “The goal of the case, among other things, was to identify the client accounts. There were many who we were able to identify,” officer Despaties said, adding investigators were able to identify about ten full-patch Hells Angels who showed up to deliver money. “I just want to say to the court that they did not show up wearing their Hells Angels’ colors. During the years we’ve investigated them we’ve got to know some well,” he said.

  But most of the couriers were people the police did not recognize. Dominic Tremblay, the man whose bail hearing Despaties was testifying in, was monitored as he made frequent trips to Montreal for the Trois Rivières chapter. The first time he was seen was on November 2, 2000, at the building on Beaubien Street. He brought $40,000 to the apartment building. Three weeks later, on November 23, 2000, he brought more than $200,000.On November 30, he brought $53,655;on December 5, he brought $125,545;on December 7, he brought $22,445. Then, on December 14, 2000, Tremblay was recorded bringing a bag to Gauthier that contained $253,335.

  “Concerning the proof in your investigation, it ended on what date?” Tremblay, the prosecutor, asked.

  “You could say the first phase ended on January 30, 2001.We executed three search warrants that night.”

  On December 11, 2000, they overheard tenant Lise Gelinas telling her sister she could no longer deal with the stress of guarding millions of the Hells Angels’ money. During one conversation, Gelinas indicated that the banking system had been in place for four years. Other wiretaps suggested the couriers and the people accepting the money had known each other for as many as six years. Soon after Gelinas talked of quitting, she got her wish — investigators noticed the banking system had changed. The counting machines were moved from the apartment across from Gelinas’s to apartment 403 back on Beaubien Street. Robert Gauthier was there regularly now, so it became harder for the police to enter the room surreptitiously.

  “We decided that January 30 was a good day to hit those apartments, because we saw money going in but it didn’t go out,” Despaties said. In apartment 403, the police found $800,000 in a safe. In apartment 504, they didn’t find money but they found documentation, the coded amounts each courier had left with the money. These papers were hidden everywhere, in the fridge and in cupboards.

  Despaties said the police noticed that another apartment had been designated as a replacement for Place Montoir before they executed their search warrants. It was 3276 De la Pepiniere Street, the residence of a 77-year-old man named Richard Musselle, a man with ties to Louis (Melou) Roy and Normand (Biff) Hamel, and he had worked for Irazu, the importing company owned by Maurice (Mom) Boucher. But the Hells Angels hoped he would never draw the attention of the police. Muselle was being paid $300 a week for his troubles. Musselle had a wife and a child so there was usually someone home, which prevented the police from doing surreptitious entries into the residence.

  The order to change the money drop-off point had come directly from the Nomads chapter. On January 11,2001, the police listened in as Chagnon told Gauthier that they weren’t going to have any clients that day. Chagnon left the Beaubien Street building and drove to an Italian restaurant on a highway service road in the north end of Montreal. There he met with Jean-Richard Larivière, who by now was a prospect in the Nomads chapter. Investigators weren’t privy to their conversation, but Chagnon returned to the apartment on Beaubien Street and was overheard on a wiretap telling Gauthier: “When those people decide to shut it down, you shut it down. You don’t have a word to say.”

  What the police later learned was that the bank was ordered shut down because the Hells Angels had learned that someone associated with the Trois Rivières chapter who had been delivering money had been scrutinized by the police in that city. When the police searched Musselle’s apartment, they found more than $900,000. At Place Montoir in apartment 309, they found $3.8 million still stored in a safe, even though the gang had stopped using it as a place to count their cash. The police seized a total of $5.6 million in U.S. and Canadian funds from the three apartments.

  Closing the Bank

  Stéphane Chagnon was arrested, questioned and released. The plan was to arrest him again weeks later along with everyone else targeted in Operation Springtime 2001. Richard Musselle was arrested in January as well. When the police picked up Chagnon, he had five cellular phones and three pagers on him. One of his clear ties to the Hells Angels was that he was dating the sister of André Chouinard, a member of the Nomads chapter. While the apartments were under surveillance, he had been careful to never use the phone lines in them. Some people arrested in Project Ocean were carrying more than 20 pagers. When Despaties was asked whether the police had other evidence to support their suspicion that the accounting ledgers belonged to the Nomads chapter, he read from his notebook, “Among other things, Stéphane Chagnon was taking care of the money and was always in contact with Jean-Richard Larivière and had several meetings, or at least two dinners with Michel Rose, a member of the Nomads and the former husband of Monique Gauthier.”

  Despaties also described how Sylvain Laplante, a member of the Rockers who worked for Gilles (Trooper) Mathieu, a founding member of the Nomads chapter, had a bug in his car for several months during Project Rush, and on November 14, 2000, he was recorded bragging to his wife that the Nomads controlled everything and sold drugs to all the chapters in Quebec except for Sherbrooke, one of richest chapters in all of Canada. In fact, it appeared the Sherbrooke chapter was supplying their brothers in the Nomads chapter. One courier who was suspected of working for the Sherbrooke chapter was eventually arrested with more than $1 million stashed in a Montreal apartment. Laplante was delivering money for Mathieu’s account.

  Despaties also said that when they raided Donald (Pup) Stockford’s home in Hamilton, the police found the number and address of the apartments on Beaubien Street. When asked if it appeared the January seizures had placed a dent in the Nomads chapter’s operations, Despaties replied that it didn’t appear to make much difference. When Operation Springtime 2001 was carried out two months later, arresting officers found another set of accounting sheets at the home of Johnny Royer, a member of the Trois Rivières chapter. The ledgers indicated the money kept coming in, even though the Nomads chapter had lost more than $5 million. A factor that had frustrated the Project Ocean investigators was that there simply wasn’t enough time to fully investigate every person tied to the Nomads Bank, even though extra investigators were called in. The account labeled Usine, for example, belonged to someone who was apparently one of the Nomads chapter’s biggest drug suppliers. But who that account belonged to remained a mystery, even years after the investigation ended.

  Normand Bonin, the man who picked up boxes of money at the Nomads Bank for the Usine account, was followed to Longueuil where he would transfer the cash to a pickup truck. On November 23, 2000, he picked up $1.3 million. Six days later he picked up $1.4 million. Two days after that, Bonin left with $955,OOO. On December 6, he left with $1.2 million. The boxes were being delivered to a tool machining shop in Longueuil. Police watched as Bonin transferred the boxes to a pickup truck, then the company’s vice-president, Yvon Lacoursiere, would get into the pickup truck and drive home.

  Lacoursiere was a go-between for the mystery drug dealer who had made millions in a matter of weeks selling to the Nomads. Yet when they searched Lacoursiere’s home and company, they found nothing to tie him to the Hells Angels or any other drug dealer. Lacoursiere reported on his taxes that he made about $50,000 a year. When he was arrested, he confessed right away and insisted that his girlfriend and two daughters had nothing to do with the money. He told the police he received $2,000 per shipment of money but refused to tell the police who he worked for.
For his part, Bonin told the police he had met Chagnon at a campground and had been hired to move the boxes. He claimed he was told he was merely transferring $5,000 each time.

  At his bail hearing, Lacoursiere testified on his own behalf. He described himself as a businessman and said his company sold forestry equipment in the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario and in the U.S. He also claimed his company was suffering while he was behind bars. He described his job as vice-president, purchaser and manager. His company, which had about 18 employees, did about $400,000 worth of business in 1984, but he had helped build it to $2 million in sales per year. He went on to explain that he had had open-heart surgery two years prior to his arrest and that he was diabetic, a condition complicated by the fact he wasn’t eating well in prison while awaiting a possible trial. Judge Rolande Matte was unmoved and denied bail.

  The Nomads Bank had provided the police with a huge new target. When the bank came crumbling down it took with it a lot of people who were drawn in by the promise of easy money, people who had no criminal records, who suddenly found themselves charged with federal anti-gang legislation.

  Bankers Behind Bars

  Lise Gelinas, the woman who buzzed couriers into her apartment building, was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy, drug trafficking and gangsterism. Gelinas had been caught on wiretaps telling someone that she had worked for the Hells Angels for years. The Hells Angels had supplied her with cell phones, registered under false names like Marco Polo. She was also overheard bragging to a friend that the gang was paying her $7,000 a month for her work, and that the money had already bought her seven fur coats and a luxury camper. During the late 1990s, Gelinas only declared earning $8,000 annually off a fixed income, but when the police raided her apartment they found $30,000 in a safe.

  The enormous risks of her job obviously got to Gelinas. The police heard her tell her sister, on December 6, “I’m quitting this thing because it’s too much stress.”

  Two years after her arrest, at the age of 66, Gelinas was hoping for day parole. She told the board she initially did not know who was using the apartment across from hers but agreed to buzz in the couriers because she needed money to support her son and in-laws. But she also admitted that she agreed to keep doing the work once she realized she was employed by the Hells Angels. The gang even used her apartment for secret meetings. But the parole board found Gelinas to have a low risk of re-offending, and she was granted day parole on December 16,2003. Life in a federal penitentiary had proven to be very stressful for Gelinas and she expressed regret at losing two years of watching her granddaughter grow up.

  Richard Gemme, the accountant who designed the Hells Angels’ spreadsheets, had been granted day parole six months earlier. He told the parole board his involvement with the Nomads Bank started when he helped a friend with a software program. Now, with his life in tatters, Gemme told the board he planned to give speeches to criminology students on the dangers of organized crime. While his case was before the courts, Gemme told Judge Jean-Claude Bonin that he was just an underwriter for an insurance company looking to make some money by helping two old friends. At the time of his arrest, he had been doing risk assessments for the insurance company for three years and was taking courses at a Montreal university. His father was ill, in a palliative care unit and he weighed only eighty-five pounds; he was not expected to live. Gemme said he wanted to live with his parents so he could care for his father.

  “Mr. Gemme, we learned during the investigation, had grown up with André Chouinard and Stéphane Chagnon. They were people who knew each other for 20 years. The link of confidence between them had been established for 20 years,” said Sgt. Boucher during Gemme’s bail hearing. “The investigation also demonstrated that, concerning computers, Mr. Gemme had the responsibility to look after the computer system. Mr. Gemme had considerable talents in computers.”

  Gemme was also heard on wiretaps explaining to someone that he was not considered a member of the Hells Angels but that he was also friends with Richard Lock, one of the founding members of the Rockers and a close friend of Maurice (Mom) Boucher. From other wiretaps, the police believed he was also buying real estate for gang members using cash, a sign he was helping them launder their money. During the investigation, the police saw Gemme make deliveries, including the Nomads chapter’s payroll and a $1.2 million delivery for the Usine account. He was also described on wiretaps as the guy the Hells Angels could go to when they had a computer problem. Chagnon was once overheard telling another person how Gemme had set things up so everything was stored on the zip disk. While he was being recorded, Chagnon joked that if the police ever seized the computer they wouldn’t be able find anything. What Chagnon didn’t know at the time was that the police were secretly copying the zip disk and reading from it on a regular basis.

  After Stéphane Chagnon was first arrested on January 30, 2001, Gemme got a call from André Chouinard and they talked about “Roger,” a code name for Chagnon. Chouinard talked in strange parables saying that, sometimes when you play golf you have some bad holes. You put them aside and you try to clean them up later and you can add up your score later. Boucher, the investigator, said he understood Chouinard’s strange lecture to mean that Gemme was getting orders to erase any files they had.

  Gemme was overheard saying that if the police searched his place of work and found what he had there, his employer would be embarrassed. So when he was arrested, the police made a point of going to Assurances Gosselin on Fleury Street and seized his laptop computer. On it they found documents that had all the codes for the accounting sheets, but the information was scrambled. Investigator Boucher said it appeared to be the work of someone who really knew computers. The information could only be unscrambled with a password.

  But the police also found files on the laptop that helped shed a little more light on how the Hells Angels had discovered the identity of a particular police informant who was subsequently killed. It appeared Gemme had helped the Hells Angels sort through the files of a computer they had stolen from Rick Perrault, an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer whose hotel room had been broken into while he was working in Sherbrooke. In December 1999, the laptop and diskettes were removed from his room while he ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Besides the information that helped the Hells Angels identify the informant, there were also transcripts of wiretaps the anti-biker gang squad had done. Even after the Hells Angels were arrested and held in the Bordeaux detention center along with Gemme, it was he they asked for help with the computers they had been supplied with to prepare for their defense.

  Robert Gauthier, the caretaker of the apartment on Beaubien Street, was 58 years old when he was granted day parole on October 28,2004. He had pleaded guilty to conspiracy, drug trafficking and participating in the activities of a gang and was given a seven-year sentence, one of the longer ones handed out in Project Ocean. He told the parole board he had only taken part in helping to run the Nomads Bank for seven months before he was arrested. For his troubles, the Hells Angels paid him $100 a day. The Hells Angels had employed Gauthier because, as a retired city of Montreal employee, living on a $2,400 monthly pension, he would draw little police attention.

  While behind bars, Gauthier, who had diabetes and heart trouble, was a model inmate. He also chose not to associate at all with anyone tied to the Hells Angels. While out on day parole he lived at a halfway house and took a computer course to fill as much free time as he could. By April 11, 2005, he was granted full parole.

  Gauthier’s sister Monique, the ex-wife of Nomads member Michel Rose, also did not associate with the Hells Angels, but that was because she did her time at the women-only Joliette Institution, where Canada’s most notorious female inmate, Karla Homolka, was serving out the final years of her 12-year sentence for the sex-slayings of two Ontario teenagers. Monique Gauthier admitted to being a problem gambler and eventually agreed to take part in the institution’s rehab programs. She also took courses on dr
essmaking. She claimed to have been unaware of whose money she was counting as the millions poured in. She noted that Rose hadn’t been a Hells Angel when they were married. The parole board didn’t buy her claims of being the naïve ex-wife and turned her down for parole. She had to wait until the two-third mark of her four-and-a-half-year sentence until she was released.

  For his part, Lacoursiere received a three-year sentence. He qualified for an expedited review of his case before the National Parole Board by April 2002. At the age of 50, this was Lacoursiere’s first federal sentence. He had no criminal record and the parole board found his risk of re-offending to be “nonexistent.” He was released on the condition he supply a regular report on his finances for the duration of his sentence. “The recruitment of people with no criminal records who would not be suspected were frequently part of the strategy used by criminal organizations to launder the fruit of their illegal activities,” the parole board noted in its decision to release Lacoursiere. He told the board he had owned his company for 20 years and that he decided to help move the money because the company was in trouble. He found prison difficult because he wasn’t a hardened criminal and had been held with some of the toughest gangsters behind bars while awaiting trial.

  Bonin, who was in his early sixties, ended up sentenced to nearly four years. He claimed to have only been working as a cash mule for eight months before he was arrested. Bonin said he met some Hells Angels’ associates through a campground where he worked, and when they got to know him well enough they hired him, in part because he didn’t have a criminal record. He had spent most of his adult life living on the margins, working out of bars under the table while collecting welfare. From the beginning ofhis sentence, Bonin asked to be separated from the Hells Angels in his penitentiary because he wanted nothing more to do with them. Despite never shedding any light on who was behind the Usine account, Bonin was out on full parole by the spring of 2004.