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The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) is designated an outlaw motorcycle gang by the Department of Justice. There are an estimated 92 Hells Angels chapters in 27 U.S. states, with a membership of over 800. Due to the club's designation as a "known criminal organization" by the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, the United States has a federal policy prohibiting its foreign members from entering the country. The Hells Angels partake in drug trafficking, gunrunning, extortion, money laundering, insurance fraud, kidnapping, robbery, theft, counterfeiting, contraband smuggling, loan sharking, prostitution, trafficking in stolen goods, motorcycle and motorcycle parts theft, assault, murder, bombings, arson, intimidation and contract killing. The club's role in the narcotics trade involves the production, transportation and distribution of marijuana and methamphetamine, in addition to the transportation and distribution of cocaine, hashish, heroin, LSD, MDMA, PCP and diverted pharmaceuticals. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the HAMC may earn up to $1 billion in drug sales annually. The Hells Angels are allied with numerous smaller motorcycle gangs – such as the Devils Diciples, the Diablos, El Forastero, the Galloping Goose, the Hessians, the Iron Horsemen, the Red Devils, the Sons of Silence, and the Warlocks – and have associated in criminal ventures with the Buffalo, Cleveland, Gambino, Genovese, Los Angeles, Patriarca, and San Jose crime families, as well as the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia, and the Nazi Lowriders. Rival motorcycle gangs include the Bandidos, the Breed, the Mongols, the Outlaws, the Pagans, the Sons of Satan, and the Vagos. Alaska HAMC chapters were established in Anchorage and Fairbanks in December 1982 following a merger with the Brothers MC. The Brothers were formed in 1967, and established an association with the Hells Angels in California's San Francisco Bay Area by 1977. The club "patched over" to the HAMC during a ceremony in California attended by members of the Brothers' Fairbanks chapter. The Alaskan Hells Angels are involved in methamphetamine trafficking. Operation CACUS Anchorage Hells Angels chapter sergeant-at-arms Anthony John Tait volunteered to become a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1985, and he provided the government with detailed information on the club's organization and criminal activities – such as drugs and explosives trafficking – for two years. During this period, Tait travelled the country at government expense to meet with various Hells Angels members, and he covertly recorded some of these meetings by wearing a wire. As part of the investigation, the informant and undercover agents purchased approximately $1.6 million of cocaine and methamphetamine from the Hells Angels, in addition to more than twenty pounds of explosives, three automatic weapons and two silencers. The Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) Operation CACUS culminated with 38 HAMC members in Alaska and four other states being arrested on narcotics, weapons, explosives and conspiracy charges on November 10, 1987. Anchorage chapter president Edward Floyd Hubert and Fairbanks chapter president Dennis E. Pailing were among fourteen people taken into custody during raids by FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents on homes in Anchorage and a compound in Fairbanks. Ten Hells Angels from California and Alaska, including Hubert and Pailing, were extradited to Louisville, Kentucky to face charges of conspiring to transport firearms and explosives across state lines in order to kill members of the Outlaws in retaliation for the death of John Cleave Webb, the previous Anchorage Hells Angels president who was fatally shot by two Outlaws outside a saloon in Jefferson County, Kentucky on August 12, 1986. On October 28, 1988, Anchorage chapter members Hubert, Lawrence Russell Hagel and Gerald G. Protzman were convicted of the misdemeanor charge of converting a government intelligence manual for their use, while Pailing and four other Alaskan Angels were acquitted. Other members of the Alaska and California chapters were convicted on state drug and firearm charges either side of the federal trial. The Hells Angels allegedly put a $1 million bounty on Tait's life. Federal racketeering case Four Alaskan Hells Angels – Montgomery David Elliott, Michael Hurn, Dale Leedom and William Spearman – were arrested by ATF agents on federal racketeering and firearms charges during raids at three homes in Anchorage and one in Two Rivers on December 3, 2003. HAMC clubhouses in Anchorage and North Pole were also searched. The charges, filed at the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, stemmed from the River Run riot – a conflict between the Hells Angels and the Mongols on April 27, 2002, which left three bikers dead in Laughlin, Nevada – and followed a twenty-month ATF investigation of the club. The operation resulted in the arrests of a total of fifty-eight Hells Angels members and associates by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in Alaska and four other Western states for narcotics trafficking, firearms violations, possessing stolen explosives and various other crimes. Leedom, the Fairbanks chapter president, was one of six Hells Angels convicted in the case after being extradited to Las Vegas, Nevada to face charges; he pleaded no contest to committing a violent crime in the aid of racketeering in October 2006 and was sentenced to two years in prison on February 13, 2007. Thirty-six others had charges against them dismissed. Violent incidents Hells Angels member James William Leffel was convicted of first-degree assault for stabbing a man named Jens Schurig in the thigh, opening his femoral artery, outside a bar in Anchorage after Schurig allegedly denigrated Leffel's motorcycle. On August 3, 2017, Michael "Steak Knife" Staton was kidnapped and taken to a duplex in Wasilla where he was tortured, beaten and killed by members of the 1488s – a white supremacist prison gang to which he belonged – after he was accused of stealing drugs and "colors" from Craig "Oakie" King, a Hells Angels member and 1488s associate. King and five 1488s members were arrested on March 27, 2019, and charged with murder, kidnapping and racketeering crimes including drug trafficking. On May 2, 2022, King was convicted of racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy in aid of racketeering, murder in aid of racketeering, kidnapping resulting in death, and kidnapping conspiracy. King and four others were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in January 2023. Methamphetamine trafficking Hells Angels member Charles Denver "Pup" Phillips and his wife Lois Latrilla Phillips were arrested after an FBI drug task force discovered twelve pounds of methamphetamine and almost $25,000 in cash at their apartment and in a nearby shipping container.... Discover the Adam Gamble Joe Veno popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Adam Gamble Joe Veno books.