by Paul Cherry
A Rush of Plea Bargains
One of the Rockers to accept a plea bargain before Justice Réjean Paul was Sylvain Laplante. Before joining the Rockers, Laplante had been vice-president of a gang called the Pirates based in Valleyfield, a small city west of Montreal, near the Ontario border. The Pirates were run by Gilles (Trooper) Mathieu who jumped from the Hells Angels’ Montreal chapter to the Nomads chapter in 1995. Laplante followed Mathieu and became a Rocker on August 25,1995. Before joining the Rockers, Laplante already had several arrests under his belt for selling drugs out of bars in Valleyfield.
From left to right: Andre Couture, Normand Robitaille, Pierre Provencher and Bruno Lefebvre.
Pierre Provencher, was in his late forties by the time he joined the Rockers in 1994. His age seemed to give him a fatherly influence among the twenty-somethings in the Rockers. He was once recorded telling someone aspiring to graduate to the Hells Angels that doing so required a 24-hour commitment for three years. He was the one they called from prison when they wanted updates on what was going on with the gang. During those conversations, Provencher seemed friendly and supportive, a contrast to the smoking skull he had tattooed on his left arm.
Before joining the Rockers, Provencher had already been involved in drug trafficking. In 1982, he had been sentenced to six years in prison for drug possession. Provencher’s family was well aware of the life he was living. Through wiretaps, the police listened as Provencher’s wife discussed biker gang hits with the wives or girlfriends of other Rockers. On one wiretap, recorded on March 29, 2000, Provencher’s wife could be heard discussing the preparations being made for their son for his first communion. She said the priest asked their 11-year-old boy if he believed in the word of God and he responded by saying that he believed in the word of the Rockers. Provencher’s wife also mentioned that her son planned to set up a Rockers chapter in his school. When the man on the other end of the line jokingly asked if the boy had a Rockers jacket, Provencher’s wife said her plan was to not raise him to be a criminal.
Based on information from one informant in the Project Rush investigation, Provencher was making about $60,000 a year selling drugs for the Hells Angels in Verdun. He remained a Rocker throughout the biker war as several other younger men passed him by on the hierarchy. In wiretap conversations, the police could hear other members of the Rockers wonder why Provencher never moved higher than a Rocker. But Provencher seemed content with his lot in life. He purchased a maple syrup farm near Montreal and used it to host parties for the gang. He also seemed to have Boucher’s respect.
Another person who had Boucher’s respect was Guillaume (Mimo) Serra. Informants said his membership was imposed on the Rockers in July 1995. Two months earlier, Serra had beaten the rap on a cocaine trafficking charge despite being caught red-handed dealing on Saint-Laurent Blvd. A patrol officer was looking into why Serra was double-parked on the busy street and saw Serra and the man to whom he was selling freeze up. When the police searched the car they found 42 grams of cocaine. Serra was described as a key cocaine supplier to the Hells Angels and was suspected of establishing international drug routes for them. Shortly after Serra was imposed on the Rockers, Dany Kane told the RCMP that Serra appeared to have close ties to the Mafia and had purchased, in the Laurentians, the luxury house of a very influential member of the Rizzuto family.
According to Dany Kane, Serra once asked Maurice (Mom) Boucher about the possibility of selling heroin for the Rockers. Kane told his police handlers that Boucher pointed out that the Hells Angels have a strict rule that states, “All contact with or use of heroin is forbidden.” But Boucher also advised Serra that he didn’t have to know everything he did.
Even though Serra had been a prospect in the Nomads chapter for only a few months before his 2001 arrest, Crown Prosecutor Vincent wanted him to serve 18 years.
“The principal motive of the [Minister of Justice’s] position is not at all the time Mr. Serra was part of the Hells Angels under the title of prospect but how he came to acquire that title. It is not a vocation, to become a member of this organization. You are chosen for the qualities a person possesses to be part of the organization.” Vincent noted that one informant claimed that Serra could move 80 kilos of cocaine per month for the Hells Angels. He was considered a model for other Rockers to follow.
Serra’s lawyer, Gerald Souliere, felt his client was getting a raw deal, in particular because he had only been a prospect for a few months and during that time the Hells Angels had agreed to a truce with the Bandidos.
“He is an individual who was born in 1965. He is today 38 years old. He was 30 years old when he joined the Rockers. He is not the youngest person being sentenced but he is among the youngest,” the defense lawyer said. Serra’s lawyer said that if his client received a sentence of more than ten years, he would likely have to serve it in Donnacona, a maximum-security penitentiary near Quebec City, which would cut him off from his family. Paul agreed with some of Souliere’s arguments and sentenced Serra to 15 years, the same sentence members of the Rockers received. Meanwhile Paul agreed that full-patch members of the Nomads chapter should be punished more harshly. He sentenced Hells Angels like Robitaille, Charlebois, Houle and Mathieu to 20 years.
But the authorities weren’t done with some of the bikers who pleaded guilty that day. For a few there was still the question of the assets seized after their arrest.
Trial Far from Over
In Normand Robitaille’s case, the province was especially interested in his plans to become a real estate mogul with his drug money. Evidence of his plans fell into police hands on June 27, 1998, when they recovered a suitcase belonging to Robitaille at a brasserie in Greenfield Park. Inside the suitcase, police found three documents titled Real Estate Action Plan. The documents contained details on the potential construction of buildings and the purchase of buildings through Cogesma, a company Robitaille was using to launder his money. Through the documents, the police learned Robitaille planned to buy $1.5 million worth of real estate with equity totaling between $200,000 and $300,000.
Before he was murdered by the Hells Angels, informant Claude De Serres told his police handlers that Robitaille was gathering real estate using other people as fronts for the purchases. De Serres said he himself was used to buy an apartment building in Longueuil and a commercial building on Sainte-Catherine Street East in Montreal. Robitaille was also suspected of using the mother of Patrick Pepin, a hangaround in the Rockers, as a front to buy property worth nearly $200,000. Pepin had been a member of the Scorpions before Maurice (Mom) Boucher’s son, Francis, personally vouched for him to become a Rocker. The police also had evidence Pepin worked as a runner for Robitaille. But unlike most of the other Hells Angels and Rockers who had assets seized in Project Rush, Robitaille wasn’t about to give up his mini-empire without a fight. Most of the gangsters agreed to out-of-court settlements, but Robitaille challenged the government’s claims in a court battle that dragged on for months.
In the end, Judge Paul decided the government had a fair claim to $500,000 worth of Robitaille’s assets. In a judgement he rendered on March 24,2005, the Superior Court judge said it was obvious Cogesma Inc. was used as a front to pay Robitaille a salary, so he could file his taxes, and as a way to launder his dirty money. Paul ordered the confiscation of $199,980 which police had found in a blue sports bag in one of Robitaille’s residences, as well as money found in various bank accounts.
But Paul also ordered that the government could not touch a house in La Prairie where Robitaille had lived with his wife Annie-Sophie Bedard, who was also a defense lawyer. Paul said that while the intentions behind the 1995 transfer of the house from Robitaille’s name to his wife’s were dubious, there was not enough evidence to justify taking it from Bedard.
The government also could not confiscate some of the properties Robitaille was suspected of purchasing through underlings like De Serres. On top of what was confiscated, Robitaille was ordered to pay a $49,000 fine for the
more than $200,000 in assets the government could not locate, including Robitaille’s Harley-Davidson, estimated to be worth more than $26,000. Paul also tacked on an additional year to Robitaille’s 20-year sentence. When Paul finished reading his decision, Robitaille had a smile on his face that nearly stretched from ear to ear. Losing half a million while behind bars seemed to be no skin off his nose. From the prisoners’ dock, he raised his handcuffed hands and congratulated his lawyers for their work.
8
Stéphane Sirois: A Man Inside
“The war was always about expanding the drug network. That is why there were murders and settling of accounts. They had to show that they weren’t going to let things be. A Hells Angel can never lose face.”
— Stéphane Sirois in a statement he gave to the police after turning informant.
On June 15,1998, Stéphane Sirois was approached by the police out of the blue. They had done their homework on Sirois and knew he had made a tough choice. He had been told by the Rockers he couldn’t be a member if he stayed with his girlfriend — whose previous lover had been an informant. He chose the woman. The cops thought there was a chance Sirois would turn on the gang because his departure from the Rockers had not been a smooth one. If he did decide to turn, he would be a valuable part of the investigation because he knew intimate details regarding how the Rockers functioned overall as a gang. Sirois told the cops he wasn’t interested in their offer. But for some reason, he kept the business card that had been handed to him by officer Robert Pigeon, an investigator with the elite Wolverine squad.
Sirois married the woman and they went on a honeymoon, but the relationship was doomed. Just minutes before he headed for the church to get married, the Rockers were hassling him for $5,000 they felt he owed them. Within months of the marriage, Sirois and his wife were planning their divorce. Sirois fell into a depression and became hopeless. He wasn’t sure what to do to rectify the situation when he remembered detective Pigeon’s business card. Only months after their first meeting, on March 12,1999, Sirois called Pigeon and told him he was now interested in becoming an informant.
The Rockers’ Godfather
For starters, Sirois gave the police a series of statements about what he knew of the biker war. He confirmed what other informants had said about the starting point of the war being Maurice Lavoie’s murder. Lavoie had decided to buy drugs from the Hells Angels instead of the Pelletier Clan. Soon after, he was dead, and the Hells Angels took the murder as a direct threat to their authority.
“Anyway, it seemed to me that the war was inevitable. The Rock Machine and the Alliance would have had to join the Hells Angels [to avoid a war],” Sirois told the police.
Nonetheless, it was the information Sirois had concerning the day-to-day operations of the Rockers, plus his relative good standing in the gang, that would be invaluable to the Project Rush investigation. The police were trying to build a gangsterism case against the Hells Angels and the Rockers. Now they had a former secretary of the Rockers on their side. The position Sirois had held in the gang meant he had recorded all the minutes of Rockers’ meetings. Because of this, he knew what each member contributed to the ten percent fund, which, in turn, meant he could estimate how much each Rocker had made in drug sales.
Sirois said the ten percent was paid on good faith, but members were expected to pay a minimum of $300. He said part of the money was reinvested in the gang while, during the early years of the biker war, another chunk went directly to Maurice (Mom) Boucher. At one point in Sirois’ stint with the Rockers, Boucher was making $500 on every kilo of cocaine the Rockers sold. If Sirois’ figures were right, Guillaume (Mimo) Serra was by far the Rockers’ best drug dealer. On a monthly basis Serra led the pack by paying $3,000 to the ten percent fund. Longtime Rockers like Richard (Sugar) Lock, Paul (Fon Fon) Fontaine and Robert Johnson were paying $2,000, while Sirois’ drug dealing allowed him to contribute $1,000.
Sirois also said the Hells Angels supplied the Rockers with the services of two accountants who provided the gang members with bogus income statements to create the illusion, on paper at least, that they held down steady jobs.
Sirois told his police handlers that in their earlier days the Rockers had to be unanimous on who could become a striker in the gang. But he also noted that Boucher eventually started imposing decisions on his underling gang. He said that was the case when Serra and Stephan (Sandman) Falls joined the gang.
“Every affiliated group has a godfather,” Sirois told the cops in describing how Hells Angels’ puppet gangs like the Rockers, the Jokers and the Rowdy Crew worked.
“With the Rockers it is Maurice (Mom) Boucher. They were created so the Hells Angels would have a presence in Montreal. What’s more, the Rockers are the groupe de frappe for the Nomads. The Rockers are different from affiliated groups. It is the Rockers that do most of the work and we are respected, even in western Canada. If you were to say what the Rockers represented, it would be the image that Maurice Mom Boucher projected. We are the pride of Mom.”
To display that pride, Boucher selected a patch for the Rockers that featured a logo just as menacing as the Hells Angels’ winged skull. It was the front profile of a skull with the barrels of two guns pointing out from behind it.
“I don’t know why the Rockers or the Hells Angels used that symbol on their patches. But then a drawing or an acronym of death represents fear. It’s more threatening for the public to see a symbol of a Death Head than to have two doves on a bikers patch. That is a bit why you’ve chosen to have a Wolverine for your squad,” Sirois told his police handlers, adding that both gangs had a rule that, if anyone outside their membership wore the patch on their backs, it had to be burned.
After taking several of his statements, the next step for the police was to get Sirois to infiltrate the Rockers by joining the group again. It would be no easy task.
A Foot in the Rockers’ Door
While Sirois would be vague later on the details when testifying in the megatrials, his decision to marry was not supported at all by the Rockers. The woman in question had previously been with a man the Hells Angels believed to be an informant. The man was eventually murdered, but the Hells Angels still didn’t like the idea of someone in the Rockers marrying a woman who was once so close to a suspected snitch. Sirois said ultimately the choice of whether to marry her or stay with the Rockers was imposed on him by Boucher. Sirois quit and turned over his drug business to the Rockers.
The Rockers celebrate a key moment for them in the biker war in 1999. Normand Robitaille (top left) welcomes in the new underlings.
Now he had to get back in, but he had very little credibility among the gang’s members. His contract with the police called on him to take notes and gather information on specific members of the Rockers and the Hells Angels. Sirois signed on with the police on June 23,1999. In exchange for his life-threatening work, he was promised police protection after he testified. Crown Prosecutor Madeleine Giauque at one point revealed that Sirois was paid about $100,000 for his work. That included a $50,000 payment when the arrests in Operation Springtime 2001 were carried out. Sirois’ contract also called for him to be paid an additional $20,000 at the end of the preliminary inquiry and another $30,000 after he was done testifying in the trials.
To ensure his security, the Sûreté du Québec agreed to shell out $6,500 so he could pay off some debts with utility companies and a credit union. The police promised to change his identity and supply him with anything he needed after working for them. According to Sirois’ contract, that included housing, moving expenses, psychological assistance and financial planning. To continue receiving this help after testifying, Sirois agreed to “change his lifestyle and live like a person who was prudent, reasonable and respectful of the law.” But first, he had to be bad enough to get back into the Hells Angels.
Initially, infiltrating the gang would appear to be easy because Sirois’ former business partner Marc Sigman actually called on him, looking to see i
f they could start doing business together again. His police handlers told Sirois to ignore Sigman because he wasn’t among the people targeted in the investigation at that point. The investigators in Project Rush wanted the heads of the network — the members of the Nomads chapter were their priority. The lowest ranking gangsters targeted in Project Rush were full-patch members of the Rockers. Pursuing anyone below that mark threatened to widen the focus of the investigation too much. So Sirois started calling his closest connections in the Rockers.
He started with Stephen (Sandman) Falls, but Falls wouldn’t return Sirois’ calls. Sirois tried André Chouinard, who was, by then, a full-patch member of the Nomads chapter. Chouinard returned Sirois’ calls and suddenly the new double agent found a crack in the door that might get him back in.
He began by inquiring about getting his patch back. Slowly, Sirois infiltrated the Rockers in a way only Dany Kane had done before. He began taking notes on his every interaction with the Rockers and agreed to wear a wire from time to time. Within weeks, he had already gathered some very damaging evidence. But he was pulled out of service when Claude De Serres, another informer, was found out and murdered. What Sirois had gathered on the Rockers did not become public information for more than two years. It came out during the trial of the 17 gang members.
In July 2002, Sirois took the stand and faced his former fellow gangsters for the first time in years.
“Mr. Sirois, you were part of the Rockers at a certain part in your life,” prosecutor Roger Carrière asked.
“That’s exactly right”
“At what moment were you associated with that club?”
“In 1994.”
“And before that period, before 1994, what where you doing?”
