Biker Trials, The

by Paul Cherry

  By December 7, 2000, investigators had grown very interested in Matticks and his dealings with the Hells Angels. They followed a car he was in to an Italian restaurant on Taschereau Blvd. in La Prairie. Matticks and Louis Elias Lekkas, a man the police knew very little about, were seen going into the restaurant together. Minutes later, a Jeep Cherokee driven by Kenny Bedard, a member of the Rockers, pulled up to the restaurant. Normand Robitaille, who was by then a full-patch member of the Nomads chapter, climbed out of the Jeep carrying a briefcase. He walked into the restaurant and sat down with Lekkas and Matticks. After the meeting, Lekkas and Matticks drove back to Matticks’ butcher shop.

  On January 10, 2001, the police were tailing Lekkas as he left Viandes 3-1 in a BMW and headed to a pizza restaurant in St-Hubert where he grabbed a table. Again, Kenny Bedard and Normand Robitaille showed up minutes later in a Ford Expedition. After the meeting, Lekkas went back to the butcher shop where he met with Matticks. On January 11, 2001, Lekkas went to the same restaurant to meet with Robitaille and Marc-André Hotte, an important member of the Hells Angels’ Trois Rivières chapter and the godfather of their puppet gang, the Jokers.

  The police eventually established that Matticks and Lekkas were friends as well as business partners.

  “On several occasions they worked in the same location, almost every day at Viandes 3-1,” said Michel Girard, a Sûreté du Québec organized crime investigator, during a bail hearing. “They would go to get haircuts together. They’d go to sex boutiques together, do errands together, go to the casino. They were like two good friends.”

  Girard had been called as a reinforcement to help in Project Ocean as the police tried to determine who were the mysterious figures behind the coded entries that camouflaged who was supplying the Hells Angels’ drug network in such large quantities. Girard’s task was to find out whose names belonged to the codes “Beef” and “Beef 2” on the Nomads chapter’s accounting ledger. As they began seeing Lekkas leave the Nomads Bank with huge sums of money, they would soon learn the codes were for Matticks and Lekkas.

  Lekkas had been working at Viandes 3-1 since 1995.On October 10, 2000, before they knew who Matticks was, the police tailed Lekkas as he drove away from one of the Nomads Bank apartment buildings with Donald Driver, a man who had long-established ties to the Matticks brothers. Lekkas picked up two large cardboard boxes full of money and headed to the Longueuil courthouse where he was facing a possible trial for stealing a truckload of chicken breasts. The pair went to the small, dingy snack bar inside the courthouse. Lekkas and Driver left the courthouse around 4:30 p.m. and headed for Viandes 3-1, presumably with the money. After a while, a man Girard described as elderly walked out of the butcher’s shop. He headed for a Chevrolet and Lekkas accompanied him. The man got into the car, which was registered in Matticks’ name. On that day, the surveillance team was not able to identify Matticks. But now the police realized there was a chance that the smuggler who had escaped prosecution in their most embarrassing moment was involved in drug deals with the Nomads chapter. The police followed the car as it traveled to a farm in La Prairie, another town in the South Shore. The police were already familiar with the farm, as Matticks had lived there for a while with a woman named Katherine Harris and his 12-year-old son. The farmhouse on the land was far off the access road. The police also noticed Matticks had installed surveillance cameras everywhere.

  On November 16,2000, the police followed Lekkas again after he left one of the Montreal apartment buildings used for the Nomads Bank. He was carrying a grey Brooks sports bag with him, which he placed in the trunk of his BMW. Just moments before, Sûreté investigator Pierre Boucher had sneaked briefly into the apartment to try to determine who it was for. He spotted a note in the grey bag that read, “For Young Italian $500,000, Beef.” Lekkas was handed the bag by Robert Gauthier, the man running the day-to-day operations of the Nomads Bank. Lekkas drove to Matticks’ farm in La Prairie. Matticks’ black Chevrolet was there, too. After leaving the farm, Lekkas headed for a house in Carignan. It was owned by Matticks and, he would later tell the police, it was where his mistress, Cindy Wade, lived.

  On December 12,2000, the police watched as Lekkas again left one of the apartments. They tried to follow him but there was a severe blizzard that day and he disappeared into the snowstorm. But by then the police had a good idea of what was going on. Lekkas would often be seen using a pizza restaurant in St-Hubert for his meetings. It was close to Viandes 3-1 and close to a bar named Miss St-Hubert which the police believed was run by some of Matticks’ associates and his son Donald.

  “Through wiretaps we heard several conversations that showed that Mr. Matticks has a control over things like repairs at Miss St-Hubert,” Girard said during the bail hearing.

  On paper, Donald Matticks seemed to be a mere employee of the bar. In tax declarations, he claimed to have worked there between 1994 and 1999, making a mere $14,000 annually. Girard said the building that housed Viandes 3-1 was owned by Gerald Matticks and Donald Matticks through a numbered company. Through wiretaps, the police learned that Gerald Matticks ran and controlled Viandes 3-1. The police overheard him complaining about an order of chickens. They also overheard him authorizing orders for a children’s party. But the clincher was when they overheard Katherine Harris call and ask for “Gerry.” She was passed on to the wrong person and to make herself clear she said that she wanted to speak to “the president.” It would become significant information when one of Matticks’ lawyers would later claim he was just an employee there.

  Other evidence came up suggesting that Matticks had his drug money tied up in other legitimate businesses. When the police raided Matticks’ office on March 28, 2001, they found a lease signed by Matticks and Lekkas for a tanning salon on Grande Allée in St-Hubert. They also found a security video monitor that had four screens in one showing what was going on in each room in Viandes 3-1. In his office, Matticks kept police scanners and a list of all the principal channels of the municipal police forces in the area. The scanners were the same ones the police had seized from him in 1994, after the large hashish seizure. They were returned to Matticks after the case was tossed out of court — they even still had the Sûreté’s old evidence tags on them. There were also two money-counting machines. Inside a refrigerator the police found a small piece of paper. On it were the words “Guy” and “Mom” with two phone numbers. One was the cell number of Guy Lepage, Mom Boucher’s chauffeur; the other number was for a pager in Guy Lepage’s name. The police also found an electronic scale that could weigh up to 1,200 grams, and they found about six grams of hashish in one of Matticks’ desks.

  But during his bail hearing, the police acknowledged that it had been tough gathering evidence on Matticks. They described him as a cautious man who seemed to assume he was under constant police surveillance.

  An example of how cautious Matticks and Lekkas were came from a bug that had been placed in Lekkas’ car. Over one three-and-a-half-month period, the pair had only one conversation that was of any interest to the investigation. Lekkas and Matticks often talked on walkie-talkies instead of using cellular phones, which thwarted any attempts to pick up their conversations through wiretaps. One time, as the police listened in through a telephone wiretap, they overheard Katherine Harris complain about hearing the phone make a strange sound. Matticks, who was on the other end, immediately figured correctly that the phone was bugged. He told her to hang up and call back again. He asked if she heard a delay on the line. She said she did. He said that meant the police were listening in.

  On Lekkas’ car bug, the police overheard him constantly saying that he felt he was being followed. He once asked Matticks if there was something they could buy that could detect if they were being followed. It appeared that Matticks was successful in that search. When they searched his house, the police found a device that could detect radio frequencies. It would vibrate if it picked up frequencies coming from police surveillance equipment.

  While the
police did not have a mountain of evidence, they did have enough to link Matticks to the Nomads Bank. If they could prove Matticks and Lekkas were behind the Beef and Beef 2 accounts, the men would likely face a sentence of anywhere between four and eight years. But as Matticks was preparing to be freed on bail, months after his arrest, a surprise announcement was made. “Mr. Lekkas is not present your honor, the reason being that Mr. Lekkas, for the second time, has tried to commit suicide,” defense lawyer Loris Cavaliere told Justice Morier on July 16, 2001.

  Louis Elias Lekkas

  The following day, the defense revealed another shocker. “The minister’s office has informed me this morning that my former client Elias Lekkas has decided to become an [informant],” Matticks’ lawyer said.

  A Crown prosecutor then informed Judge Morier that Lekkas had indeed met with the police the night before, while he was recovering from a suicide attempt. The Crown said she could add new evidence to the bail hearing because of what Lekkas was leaking to the police. It would later be revealed that by agreeing to testify against Matticks, Lekkas would get a sentencing recommendation of seven years on top of what he had already served. But Lekkas didn’t end up testifying against Matticks. Faced with the prospect of having his business partner testify against him, Matticks pleaded guilty in what would be his most serious conviction in a criminal career that had spanned three decades.

  More than two years after he agreed to become an informant, Lekkas found himself on the witness stand anyway, testifying against members of the Hells Angels and Rockers being tried in the megatrial heard before Justice Pierre Beliveau. Lekkas’ day in court began with him watching a video. He was asked by a prosecutor if he recognized himself. He said he did. The video was of Lekkas taking money from the apartment building on Beaubien Street. Lekkas said he normally took $500,000 from the apartment at a time.

  “I was a drug importer and wholesaler with my partner Gerald Matticks. We had sold several hundred kilos of hash to Norm Robitaille and 65 kilos of cocaine. That is where we would pick up the money,” he said. “We imported seven different importations.” When asked about Gerald Matticks, Lekkas said they were equal partners in a business that saw them smuggle in drugs through the Port of Montreal and take a percentage of the cargo as payment. “I had met Gerry in 1995 after he got out of jail [in the Matticks Affair]. And he owned the building that had a meat wholesale company underneath. I was working downstairs in the meat wholesale plant. Gerry had an office upstairs in the building and working every day together, we got close. At that time we had stolen a container, a container of Tommy Hilfiger clothing. After that we had bought a load of stolen chicken and during that time business for Gerry wasn’t ...Gerry controlled...” Lekkas said with some hesitation before blurting out what the police had known about Matticks for years. “He was the door of the Port of Montreal for containers to come in ...Some people had approached him to bring in some product. From those meetings I went down to Colombia to establish contact with the owner of the merchandise. From that trip [came] the first importation that we did of 2,000 plus kilos of hashish.”

  “When you’re talking about product you’re not talking about coconuts,” the prosecutor asked.

  “No.”

  During his sentencing hearing, Matticks’ own lawyer would acknowledge his client had the ability to get drugs through the Port of Montreal, most times without hassle. His influence in the Port of Montreal, in particular with the people responsible for unloading the cargo ships, was crucial in getting drugs through. That influence allowed him to demand a cut of the product being brought in.

  “From the different series of importations, we would ...take a percentage of the product. The first one was 33 percent. That is what we would charge to bring in the merchandise for either ourselves or the people who owned it,” Lekkas said, adding he and Matticks would go on to sell the drugs for profit. What they did not have was a distribution network. So Matticks and Lekkas moved their product in bulk. “We had different people that we sold to. Namely, one was Norm Robitaille,” he said. “He was a Hells Angel.”

  Lekkas was then shown a series of surveillance photos. He was able to identify Kenny Bedard, whom he said was always working as Robitaille’s bodyguard when they met. Lekkas was then asked if the sales were limited to hashish.

  “No, we had sold several hundred kilos of hashish but we sold 65 kilos of cocaine as well. But actually, two of those kilos were wood, so it turn out to be 63 kilos. . . . We were paid in cash. We would give the product and then after that we would have a meeting. Soon after [Matticks] would say ’okay, go to Beaubien, apartment 504,’ and we would pick up the cash.” Lekkas said the Hells Angels would only pay for the drugs they bought in $500,000 installments. He believed he visited the Nomads Bank about five times to pick up money, and he acknowledged that Donald Driver went with him once. “We would take the money back to Gerry’s house in La Prairie and that is where we would count it and see if everything was okay.” Lekkas described the transactions as careful business ventures. He said that before they dipped into the cash, he and Matticks would make sure their expenses for a shipment were covered.

  Dealing with the Hells Angels had been so profitable for Matticks and Lekkas they were ultimately able to purchase their own drugs and smuggle them into the port. Lekkas said that, through their partnership, he and Matticks accumulated $22 million in merchandise, after expenses. Lekkas described how even though they sometimes had spectacular failures, the profit margin was still good. In December 1999, Matticks and Lekkas managed to bring in 2,363 kilos of hashish through the Port of Montreal. A month later, they tried to bring in 10,000 kilos of hashish but it was seized by the police. In April 2000, they helped to import 260 kilos of cocaine from Panama. Matticks and Lekkas sold their 25 percent cut, 65 kilos, to the Nomads chapter. This transaction was found in the spreadsheets the police had been handed by Dany Kane.

  Later that same year, the partners brought in 4,037 kilos of hashish. Matticks was given a percentage of the drugs but was also paid in cash. Several people were arrested in connection with this shipment, so Matticks was not paid in full. Instead, he was given half of a 3,000 kilogram shipment of hashish that came through the port later. He sold the 1,500 kilos to the Nomads chapter.

  Their sixth smuggling operation, in October 2000, brought in 5,000 kilos of hash. Matticks was to get 25 percent of the drugs, but it was seized by the Montreal Urban Community Police. This time, the police made a big deal out of the seizure by calling a press conference to announce it. At the time, they had arrested no one, but they attributed the smuggling effort to the West End Gang and accused port employees of helping to get drugs through. In turn, the Montreal longshoremen’s union called a press conference of their own and threatened to sue the Montreal Urban Community Police. Lekkas and Matticks’ last smuggling operation was in February 2001, a shipment of 9,000 kilos of hashish. They had done seven major smuggling operations together.

  Their success appeared to intrigue Maurice (Mom) Boucher. Lekkas said that after he and Matticks worked out the deal to take a 65 kilogram cut from the cocaine shipment they helped smuggle in from Panama, Boucher paid a visit to Viandes 3-1. He was intent on finding out who the owner of the rest of the cocaine was. Lekkas said Boucher often referred to Matticks as “Beef” in their conversations. The meeting was a chilling detail considering Boucher’s lust for a monopoly over Montreal’s cocaine market and how the Nomads chapter was going about obtaining that monopoly. The Crown prosecutor did not miss the opportunity to highlight this to the jury. He asked Lekkas if he was there for that meeting, and Lekkas replied yes but that Boucher was told they didn’t know who the actual owner of the cocaine was.

  During his six-year partnership with Matticks, Lekkas had come to learn much about the world of narcotics. He had flown to Colombia to meet with members of the powerful Cali Cartel. These contacts would later help in smuggling other shipments and, ultimately, the deal he and Matticks financed on their own.

/>   In a relatively short period of time, Lekkas had gone from making roughly $24,000 at Viandes 3-1 to living the life of a millionaire. In 1997 and 1998, he reported making $24,000 annually and then getting a significant raise in 1999 to $30,ooo.In 1992, Lekkas had purchased a modest house for $120,000. But he was later able to renovate it to the tune of $70,000, including a $10,000 renovation to his kitchen. He also held stocks worth between $20,000 and $40,000 and was able to rent a BMW for $12,000 a year. In February 2001, he took a trip to Cancun worth more than $4,000. He also sent his family to Florida, purchased a boat and was looking into buying a BMW M5.

  Turning Informant

  But that all came crashing down on March 28, 2001. “I was arrested for drug trafficking, conspiracy and gangsterism. I was arrested in La Prairie,” Lekkas said when describing how his life took a serious turn for the worse. He told the jury that while he was awaiting trial in the Montreal detention center he initially thought that the proof the Crown had against himself and Matticks was weak. He said he decided to become an informant “under some unfortunate circumstances.” He was asked what those circumstances were and the defense lawyers objected strenuously to this. Lekkas was instructed to explain his decision to turn informant in very general terms.

  “I had problems with my partner Gerry. And that was the only way ... I tried to take my life at one time. So, in that game I was finished,” Lekkas said, adding Matticks apparently believed he was an informant before he actually became one.