For more than two decades, federal law enforcement has been pursuing the Mongols, a well-known motorcycle club whose members have a long history of murder, assault, drug trafficking and robbery.
In 2018, the government achieved some victory. Prosecutors convinced the California jury that these crimes were not just the result of misconduct by individual motorcyclists, but the work of an organized crime company that was involved in a campaign of chaos. The club was sentenced to pay a $ 500,000 fine, which prosecutors hoped would be an advance payment upon termination.
But the group, once the most powerful biker organization in the West, with the exception of its rivals, Hells Angels, is returning to court next week, hoping to overturn racketeering and conspiracy sentences based on what it says is new. proof of his previous leader David Santilan. Now the Mongols claim that during their attempt to defend the club in a long-running criminal case, their leader secretly talked to the government.
A petition for a new trial and the reversal of the half-million-dollar fine, scheduled for an initial hearing Monday in the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, claims that 52-year-old Santilan has secretly collaborated for years with a special an agent with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In return, the club said in a request, the agent appears to have spared Mr Santilan serious legal consequences for several violations since 2011.
The unusual legal contradiction gives a rare look at the hidden and unstable policy of the motorcycle club outside the law and the extent to which law enforcement and its objectives can engage in limited cooperation when considered mutually beneficial.
The ATF and other law enforcement agencies have long persecuted biker organizations, co-opting members as informants and infiltrating groups with their own undercover agents.
The Mongols are counting on an explosive video shared by Mr Santilan’s wife, Ani Santilan, who, during a period when she was angry with her husband over his infidelity, forced her daughter to record a conversation in which he appeared to be calling for protection. which he had received from the ATF agent.
She also said in a text message to other Mongols, which is now being filed in court, that her husband had acted as a confidential government informant for some time. “In other words,” she writes, “he is a rat.”
Both Mr. Santilan, a member of the Mongols for nearly 25 years who was expelled from the club in July, and agent John Chicone, who retired in December after 32 years at the ATF, deny that Mr. Santilan acted as an informant on during the trial, although Mr Chicone’s oath did not apply to whether Mr Santilan had acted as a confidential informant in the past. Both men also dismissed the allegation that Mr Santilan had disclosed privileged information about the government’s defense while his motorcycle club was on trial.
The current national leaders of the Mongols said they were convinced that the former president of the club, who controlled the Mongol defensive team, had acted incorrectly. “It has become clear that Dave has betrayed the club, his oath and everything we consider sacred,” the club said in a statement.
Mr Santilan admitted that he had spoken frequently with Mr Chicone over a period of years, usually in the presence of other Mongol members. He said they had discussed issues such as public safety when Mongols or other clubs planned parties or motorcycle rallies to ensure that members remained in line and that rival groups kept their distance.
“I have never in my life involved anyone in the club for any wicked activity. If you are a rat, you are the scum of the earth, “he said in an interview.
In the video, Ms. Santilan spoke to her husband over a loudspeaker when he told her that Mr. Chicone was retiring. “He can’t protect me,” he told me, so we need to have a exit strategy, he told me, “an obviously excited Mr. Santilan told her.
Ms Santilan said she now felt “horrified” by the revelations and that her husband was not really an informant.
“The only thing he’s guilty of is talking to John a lot and having something to do with him,” she said in an interview.
Mr Santilan said he had spoken to the ATF agent over the years because it had helped prevent problems. “John took care not only of me but of the club,” said Mr Santilan. “That’s what I meant by ‘protection’ in the video.”
The Mongols have been a constant place on the biker scene since 1969, when the club was founded in Montebello, California. The group has about 1,200 members in the United States, most of them Spaniards, and numerous sections around the world.
In the nearly 13 years he led the Mongols, Mr. Santilan seems to have steered the organization away from the past recruitment of members of Mexican criminal gangs and a culture of “total underworld activity that the federals enjoyed in terms of prosecution.” said William Dulaney, an expert on motorcycle groups who previously served as an associate professor of national security at the Air Force College and US Air Force Headquarters.
Mr Duleney said Mr Santilan “introduced new policies, no longer run by drug clubs, and made it mandatory for members to have a motorcycle and things like a valid driver’s license and registration and work”.
As for Mr Chicone, he has mastered the craft of conducting complex investigations, “using everything from undercover to informants to wiretapping to summonses and surveillance,” said Frank D’Alesio, a retired ATF agent who broke into three biker clubs. .
“And he was tireless,” said Mr D’Alesio. “He was the man outside all the time, providing cover-up support in case something went wrong with the cover-up.”
In the case that led to the conviction for racketeering against the Mongols, Mr. Chicone acted as an agent in the case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office had previously tried and failed to force the Mongols to lose their rights to the club’s trademark, a drawing of a muscular figure similar to Genghis Khan riding a helicopter while brandishing a sword, a landmark case prosecutors believed would help the club lose weight by undermining its visual identity. A judicial jury sided with the prosecution in 2019 and ordered the group to drop the emblem, but Judge David O. Carter rejected the verdict as a violation of the club’s constitutional rights.
The attempt to seize the Mongols’ sticker was part of a criminal case filed by the US Attorney’s Office in 2013 under the Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act. The indictment is not aimed at individuals, but it is alleged that the club itself was involved in an organized conspiracy for crimes such as murder, attempted murder and drug trafficking. This is the conviction and fine that the Mongols are now trying to abolish.
“In my opinion, the only reason the government filed this RICO case was to make another attempt at the patch, as it has failed each time in the past,” said George L. Steele, a Mongolian lawyer who is considering a separate complaint in the case. Federal prosecutors have been focusing on the Mongol logo since 2008.
The government, in its own appeal, is striking another blow against the Mongol logo, renewing an earlier demand for a narrower confiscation order that would take away the club’s right to have brand exclusivity on the logo. Such an order would allow anyone to use the image.
The lawyer in charge of the review request, Joseph A. Yani, said the Mongols were hoping to prove that the incorrect relationship between Mr Santilan and Mr Chicone during the 2018 trial allowed the government to hear things. which should not be for the Mongols. defensive strategy – and even adversely affected the performance of their case by the Mongols.
During the trial, Judge Carter once expressed his displeasure with lawyers on both sides after he was told by a U.S. marshal that Mr. Santilan and Mr. Chicone had been seen chatting at Starbucks near the courthouse.
In their petition, the Mongols claim that Mr. Santilan may have been pressured to leak strategy and other information to the government as a result of the condescending treatment the defense claims he received during his clashes with the law.
In one of them, according to their court documents, Mr. Santilan crashed his Mercedes in 2017 while driving with a disability, damaging many cars parked on the street. In another case, in 2014, Mr. Santilan and his wife got into a fight with other people on a racetrack, according to the Mongol dossier.
“There is no way he could have gotten away with these incidents without significant legal consequences, unless one of the law enforcement agencies is in the background, smearing the slides instead,” Mr Yani said.
Mr Santilan said it was “ridiculous” to think that Mr Chicone had ironed things out for him. Mr Santilan provided records of the cases to show that he had been convicted of crimes, including drunk driving, leaving the scene and disturbing the peace, and that he had been arrested, fined and subjected to probation.
Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University, said that if a federal agent sought confidential information about criminal protection, it would be a “gross transgression.”
“There may be particular concern that the defense attorney is inadvertently receiving instructions from someone associated with the government,” he said.
Both Mr. Chicone and the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the out-of-government request to the court, which said the petition for a new trial was “full of false and unsubstantiated allegations and speculation.”
The judge is likely to consider a series of procedural issues on Monday, lawyers said, with further hearings pending before any final decision.
Susan …
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