Original subtitles

-Mom Boucher, I think power got to his head.

He just lost it.

-He would do something that, as far as I know,

no Hells Angels anywhere in the world has done.

-Boucher didn't target individuals.

It's alleged he wanted anyone wearing a blue uniform dead.

-Mom Boucher becomes a terrorist.

-Suddenly they could kill anybody, anywhere.

-The Hells Angels embark on an enterprise.

It involves the bikers, the Mexican cartel,

and the Mafia, worth upwards of a billion dollars.

-♪ Gonna call down thunder ♪

♪ And shake the ground ♪

♪ When they call my number ♪

♪ I'll shut 'em down ♪

♪ You can't stop me, no ♪

♪ You can't stop me now ♪

♪ You can bury me way down under ♪

♪ I'll rise above ♪

♪ I'm gonna call down thunder ♪

♪ Shake the ground ♪

♪ I'm gonna call down ♪

♪ You can't stop me now ♪

♪♪

♪♪

-By the 1990s, the Hells Angels ruled North America.

Mom Boucher and Walter Stadnick had taken on their major rivals,

The Outlaws, and had wiped them out.

At this point, Stadnick and Boucher

were the undisputed leaders

of the criminal underworld up north.

-Walter Stadnick -- he was the restraining, sane influence

on Mom Boucher, who was considered a sociopath.

-They worked together to control Montreal.

-Stadnick was rational. Stadnick was likable.

Stadnick was the cool guy you wanted to stand beside.

-He wanted to stay away from any media mentions.

He wanted to keep everything on the down low,

and his job was dealing with gangs and other groups

outside of Quebec.

That's why he became national president.

♪♪

-Boucher was the nutcase who he didn't want to explode.

-Boucher led the Nomads,

an elite chapter of the Hells Angels.

He got the nickname "Mom" because he was apparently

like an overbearing mother.

-Boucher was the face of the Hells Angels.

-Maurice "Mom" Boucher was the character.

He loved television.

He loved being on TV.

He loved being around police.

He was a showman.

-The media make Boucher famous.

-Maurice "Mom" Boucher was the most well-known,

most influential, most feared Hells Angel in the world.

-[ Speaking native language ]

-I mean, he looked good, right?

He had that big body, but that rather handsome smile,

that famous photo of him smiling,

giving the V for victory.

And he knew the paparazzi.

So, he knew, during a trial,

how to step out in front of the cameras

and flash that smile.

-I met Maurice Boucher in the '90s.

I used to have a bike shop.

♪♪

And he used to come to the shop,

fix his bike and change the oil,

and I had a good contact with him.

-As Maurice "Mom" Boucher's intentions of dominating

and controlling the drug distribution sectors of Montreal

were increasing, the events of violence were also increasing.

-An altercation there last night ended in gunfire.

-...members or associates, shot execution style.

♪♪

-Montreal is cocaine city.

It's a party city.

But cocaine will explode in the '90s

the way no other drug has.

There is an absolute fortune to be made.

We have a port where the drugs can come in from Venezuela,

Colombia, and New York.

So, Montreal becomes a cocaine nexus.

-The bikers, if they would have put

their efforts into any other business,

I'd say they could have given Jeff Bezos a run for his money.

-They were controlling probably 90%

of all the drug activities.

♪♪

-Maurice "Mom" Boucher and Walter Stadnick

are sitting on top of this treasure trove

of cocaine and millions of dollars.

But their rivals are the dreaded Rock Machine.

♪♪

-The Rock Machine was born from a mix of bikers

and people who have interests in the underworld.

Salvatore Cazzetta was one of the names on the incorporation.

♪♪

-Salvatore Cazzetta was a biker.

He started with a group called the SS,

and they were called the SS

because they were white supremacists.

And one of their members was Mom Boucher.

-Salvatore Cazzetta had been a long-time friend

of Maurice "Mom" Boucher,

but they went their separate ways.

-In opposition to the Hells Angels,

he formed his own biker gang, the Rock Machine.

-He says this is not the way to go,

all this flashiness.

He sets up the Rock Machine deliberately low-key.

They don't have patches.

They have a little ring that identifies themselves,

but they're very powerful.

-And then the Rock Machine decided

to increase their supply on their own.

And that was seen as a bit of a power move on Boucher's part

to be like, well, if you're not going to deal with us,

then you're not going to deal with anyone.

-These are criminals fighting over the drugs

that are polluting our society.

And it was a dangerous work.

There were bodies all over the streets.

-The war actually started with a letter.

-Delivered by one of the biggest, most frightening

Hells Angels to the Rock Machine's headquarters,

and the letter legally asked them

to stop calling themselves a motorcycle club

because not all of them rode motorcycles.

The Rock Machine responded pretty much

the way you would expect them to --

with murder.

There was a Harley-Davidson dealership

and repair shop that was owned by a Hells Angels associate.

Two guys walked in and then pulled guns and killed him

and wounded another employee.

And that was the start of the war,

because those guys were from the Rock Machine

and everybody knew it.

♪♪

-The Quebec biker war in the 1990s was terrible.

You had 160 people killed.

You had all sorts of people wounded.

You had car bombs.

♪♪

You had shootings, knifings.

You had basically every kind of violence

under the sun throughout the city.

♪♪

-The streets were, like, filled with ambulances,

bombs going off.

You know, in the worst days of Al Capone

and the Chicago mobsters,

I think there was something like 30 deaths, not 162.

-There was high-powered weapons,

AK-47s, remote bombs.

It was just crazy.

Nightclubs were being burned, strip joints, you name it.

It was really out of control.

-It's either got to be the Hells Angels

or the Rock Machine.

Only one would survive,

and Mom Boucher was determined to make sure

the Rock Machine would not survive.

-And a big part of the Hells Angels power

came from an alliance

with the Italian Mafia and Vito Rizzuto.

♪♪

-In terms of the Mafia families in New York,

there are generally considered to be five that are active.

The Cadillac is the Genovese family,

named after Vito Genovese.

Then you have the Gambino, named after Carlo Gambino.

The Colombos, named after Joe Colombo,

who famously got shot down in Central Park

by an assassin's bullet.

You have Bonannos, the family named after Bill Bonanno.

The fifth family is the Lucchese family.

♪♪

In terms of a sixth family,

some say probably Vito Rizzuto and his sons.

-The notorious Rizzuto family.

-The Rizzuto organization's reach extends as far as Italy.

-The Hells Angels brass revered Vito Rizzuto.

-Vito Rizzuto. -Head of the Montreal Mafia.

-People called him the John Gotti of Canada.

-He was called the Teflon Don.

-And he was a master statesman.

-Vito Rizzuto is more powerful north of the border

than most Mafia bosses, right?

He comes from Italy, and he runs Montreal

in a very powerful, effective way.

-Vito was connected in New York.

He liked the idea to consider himself a businessman.

-The Rizzuto crime family in the '90s

had the opportunity to import narcotics.

They had no desire to distribute.

♪♪

As you get closer to distribution,

law enforcement is more attentive.

[ Siren wails ]

-And so, the Rizzuto crime family realized

that the Hells Angels had the chapters all over the country,

and so they were the best people to distribute the cocaine.

-The Rizzutos and the bikers needed each other.

There was money to be made.

They understood that they could make more money

by using each other.

♪♪

-Traditional organized crime is basically stay low,

try to mix in and blend in.

You know, the philosophy is

if you advertise you're a criminal,

something's wrong.

You walk around with a vest on your back

saying you're a Hells Angels,

you're starting back 10 steps behind.

-In the '90s, the Mafia didn't have

a lot of respect for the bikers.

They really thought that they were lower level.

-We're talking the Peewees

with the Professional Hockey League.

♪♪

-Because Boucher was charismatic

and full of himself,

he thought he was dealing equally

with the Rizzutos and other crime figures.

He wasn't really,

but they would play nice with him

because he was a great way to make money.

I think Stadnick was more aware of it

and that it was really sort of a marriage of convenience,

rather than a mutual pairing.

♪♪

-I think Vito's used the fact

that there was a war going on amongst the biker.

He used it to his advantage.

He stayed back and tried to keep a relationship

with the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine,

basically like they do with politicians.

Donate to every party equally.

♪♪

-The money that they were making through the Port of Montreal,

both for the Hells Angels and the Rizzuto crime family,

was just phenomenal.

♪♪

-There was a project named Ocean,

which was the discovery of an apartment

where we would see people arrive with large duffel bags,

which appeared to be heavy.

-Ordinary people, like elderly women

and guys who look like hockey players,

carrying in bags and bags of money

from the cocaine profits.

They had five counting machines going 24-7.

-We entered into the apartment,

found that there was a computer inside

that contained the accounting for the day.

We were seeing certain days that there was over $2 million

that was entering in one day.

-At a given moment, the Nomads' bank had like $36 million.

Walter Stadnick, he was dealing over one period

in more than $100 million in coke and hash.

So, this is the kind of fortune that these guys were making.

♪♪

-The bikers of Montreal were out of control.

Out of control.

-Inevitably, with more than 160 deaths

from bombs and bullets flying,

innocents are going to die.

[ Siren wails ]

-Stadnick and Boucher are riding high,

but soon Mom Boucher's predilection

for violence and chaos

will lead him to make a big mistake and unleash bedlam.

[ Explosion ]

-This bloody biker war has become a constant source of frustration for police.

-On one side, the Hells Angels and their associates.

On the other side, the upstart Rock Machine.

[ Explosion ]

-The Rock Machine and the Hells Angels hated each other,

and each one had control of the gangland world

and the drug scene.

And so, there would be tit-for-tat killings.

You kill me, I'll kill you.

But it became problematic

when they started making mistakes.

-Police initially are not only at a loss,

but also their attitude is

they're just picking up the garbage for us,

so they don't do much.

-At the time, the people of Montreal really thought

that it was a case of gangsters killing other gangsters,

getting rid of drug dealers.

They were kind of for it.

-[ Speaking native language ]

-I really have no problem. They don't cause trouble.

-They're always quiet.

They come in and they do their thing.

-They don't bother you if you don't bother them.

-The real turning point in public opinion

about the bikers and the biker war

changed after 11-year-old Daniel Desrochers.

♪♪

-August 1995, a hot summer day.

-There's a little boy, and he's playing on the street

on Pie-IX Boulevard in the East End.

-This is a crowded street.

The bikers want to kill one of their enemies,

and they plant a bomb inside his Jeep.

As this biker gets into the Jeep,

a remote control bomb goes off.

♪♪

[ Siren wails ]

♪♪

♪♪

-[ Speaking native language ]

-A small piece of shrapnel the size of a baby finger

gets lodged inside Danny Desrochers' head...

-[ Speaking native language ]

-...and he will die.

♪♪

♪♪

-Everybody knew

that someone had to be there to press that button.

That person would have had to have seen Desrochers

and know that he was in danger.

♪♪

-Suddenly they could kill anybody, anywhere.

-The public is outraged.

Mom Boucher actually will issue a public statement

and want to apologize.

The mother refuses.

And they would realize, oh,

this isn't Marlon Brando and "The Wild Ones."

This shit's real.

You know, these guys are dirty bastards.

Excuse my French.

It was a bad scene.

♪♪

-During the biker war,

the Hells Angels make at least two mistakes.

The first one is to kill an 11-year-old boy,

and the second mistake was Michel Auger.

-Michel Auger is probably

the most famous crime journalist in Montreal.

-He really did the research.

He walked the streets, he knew the people,

and he reported on the bikers.

♪♪

-Michel liked to say, "Not all my readers are criminals,

but all the criminals are my readers."

They would read him voraciously.

One morning, September 2000,

he drives to the parking lot of his newspaper,

gets out of his car, opens the trunk,

and suddenly he feels six bullets penetrating his back.

♪♪

By some miracle, Michel survives.

-After that, I realized that

the criminals wanted to get rid of me

because I was too efficient as a crime reporter.

-We knew damn well that the guy behind that hit

was Maurice "Mom" Boucher.

So, that gave us the willpower to, you know,

to go forward and do what we had to do

to have that guy arrested.

-So, the government will set up the Wolverine squad.

♪♪

-They're so feared by other animals

that nothing will attack them, not even bears.

-A wolverine is kind of this ferocious animal.

-That's when Canada stepped up with legislation

targeting criminal organizations.

-And so, that was the moment they reached the grand plan,

when they realized that they had to stop the war

between the Rock Machine and the Hells Angels

because the violence, the media attention,

and police investigation were hurting everyone.

And so, that was the moment when Rizzuto said,

"Enough is enough."

-Vito Rizzuto did his best to create some semblance of peace

between the Rock Machine and the Hells Angels.

That era of violence was over.

But there's only so much you can do

to keep these type of bikers in check.

♪♪

-There's only three or four countries

where cocaine is manufactured, right?

Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia.

Right? That's it.

So, therefore, you need a liaison with the cartel

to obtain that quantity of cocaine.

-The Sinaloa cartel out of Mexico,

led by El Chapo Guzman,

who at that time was the biggest and most powerful

narco kingpin on the planet,

set up shop in Vancouver.

And he realized that he could sell his wares,

his cocaine, for three times the amount

that he was getting for those same drugs in the United States.

-El Chapo and now his sons, the Chapitos,

are interested in Canada.

It's a place that's seen

as a trusted trading partner with a lot of countries.

So, they can export drugs to other parts of the world

more easily than they could using ports in Mexico,

or even on the west coast of the United States.

-The Port of Vancouver is notorious for being porous.

It's notorious for being controlled by the Hells Angels.

It's notorious for improper

or insufficient background checks, if any.

When you go to the airport, 100% of people going to Florida

get checked on a plane.

3% of containers coming into the Port of Vancouver

get checked.

-The Sinaloa Cartel,

they controlled their business up here through others

such as the Hells Angels.

Low-level drug traffickers,

they're not purchasing from the cartel.

They're purchasing from the Hells Angels.

-Some of the first people El Chapo met

and worked with up north

were the Hells Angels.

And more specifically, David Giles.

♪♪

-Who is David Giles? Wow.

He liked to be a larger-than-life figure.

-I'm a rather large person,

and I think I was probably one of the few people

that he would look at and say,

"Okay, this guy is bigger than I am."

He was the person who you would be best

to keep your wits about you.

-David Giles was a senior member of the Hells Angels,

so inevitably he was a close associate of Mr. Boucher.

-They had come up together.

They knew each other and would rely on each other

for advice and guidance and friendship.

-He was pretty proud when they showed the picture in the news,

when Mom was in court and he beat his court case.

David was out there hanging on to his shoulder

and patting his back and everything.

-Mom Boucher dispatched David Giles to the west coast.

It was David Giles' responsibility to keep

both the money and drugs flowing coast to coast,

and at the same time, make sure things were running smoothly

between the cartel and the Hells Angels.

And at this point, Walter Stadnick and Mom Boucher

feel completely untouchable.

-Mom Boucher, I think power got to his head.

He just lost it.

-He's already killed dozens of his enemies.

He's killed innocents.

But then he will do something that, as far as I know,

no Hells Angels anywhere in the world has done.

-He was not satisfied just to be a gangster.

He modeled his actions after Pablo Escobar.

And like Escobar, what he wanted to do

was get rid of anyone who could stand in the way.

-He had aspirations that went far beyond being a Hells Angels.

He wanted to overthrow something, the government.

-Mom Boucher becomes a terrorist, really.

The definition of terror.

He wants to strike terror in the justice system.

He will send out his men to kill, at random,

prison guards.

-He thought that the part of law enforcement

that nobody liked were the prison guards.

♪♪

-Dianne Lavigne had been a prison guard for 11 years.

She worked in the front office and was finishing her shift

one late afternoon.

Got into her minivan to go home.

♪♪

-They came up beside her van on a bridge,

and they shot her.

♪♪

-A bullet goes through her left forearm.

Another one goes through her left arm,

pierces her lung, lodges in her back.

She's dead.

♪♪

-[ Speaking native language ]

-"Safety? We don't feel safety anymore," this guard says.

"We live in fear all the time."

-The second time they killed a prison guard

was when they went to a prison bus.

-[ Speaking native language ]

-A Hells Angel jumps on the hood of the prison bus,

fires a gun through the windshield,

and Rondeau is dead.

-[ Speaking native language ]

-Boucher didn't target individuals.

It's alleged he wanted anyone wearing a blue uniform dead.

-It was just a show of force, a message to the government,

to the elected officials

that we're much more powerful than you think.

♪♪

-I was in uniform.

We had to be careful where we would park our cars.

Should I be carrying my weapon when I go home?

You'd go to the gym with your gun.

Should I have my bulletproof vest when I go for a run?

We all felt like we had a target on our backs.

♪♪

-Mom Boucher was arrested for and charged with

the murders of the two prison guards.

-Boucher was put on trial for ordering

the murder of two prison guards.

The goal was to destabilize the justice system.

♪♪

-In many ways, this is seen as the trial of the century.

The most infamous public leader of the Hells Angels,

really, in North America, next to Sonny Barger,

is on trial for orchestrating

the brazen murder of two prison guards.

-Maurice Boucher's first trial in 1997

was a fiasco from the start.

There was no security in the courtroom.

I remember sitting beside

one of Maurice "Mom" Boucher's best friends,

who would sit there beside me,

perched in his chair,

with these knuckle duster rings on his fingers

that everyone could see,

and just concentrating on looking at the jury,

intimidating them.

-He was the big catch for the police anti-biker squad,

but Maurice "Mom" Boucher got away.

-And Maurice "Mom" Boucher is acquitted.

-We had been led to believe that it was a solid, ironclad case,

and he was walking out, and the same evening.

-He told his supporters that not only would he beat the beef,

but he would make it to a boxing match coming up

after the jury had spoken.

-It's over! -It's over!

-And he actually did go to that boxing match

and take it a step further --

got a standing ovation once he arrived.

-[ Speaking native language ]

-We are all bewildered.

How is society adulating a murderer?

It was like a sense of loss and a sense of mistrust

and mis-confidence in the system.

-Here's this well-known killer who's treated as a hero.

Mom Boucher is riding high.

[ Cash register dings ]

-It feels and seems

like the Hells Angels can do no wrong.

Law enforcement appears powerless to do anything

to combat the issue,

and they keep finding and innovating new ways

to make money hand over fist.

♪♪

-Marijuana exportation was extremely profitable

for many criminal organizations.

Also, the Hells Angels.

-The Hells Angels embark on an enterprise

the scope and scale of that had never been seen before.

It involves the bikers, the Mexican cartel,

and the Mafia, and at the end of the day,

it will end up being worth upwards of a billion dollars.

The linchpin would end up being Jimmy Cournoyer.

♪♪

-Jimmy Cournoyer was probably one of the most unusual cases

that I've ever had.

-Cournoyer's drug operation was essentially

a continent-wide cycle of drugs and money.

It started in Vancouver

with marijuana that was grown out there.

-This is top-of-the-line hydroponic marijuana.

10 times more potent than the marijuana

that some of us old-timers would be used to.

-That marijuana would be transported

through a series of stash houses,

ending up in New York,

where it was distributed wholesale.

The bulk cash

that was derived from the marijuana sales in New York

would be flown by private planes to Southern California,

where it was picked up, used to purchase cocaine.

That cocaine was transported back up to Canada

and then the cycle would begin over again.

-The operation was so large that it required tens,

if not hundreds of people, to carry out.

♪♪

-The Hells Angels were an integral part

of this whole thing.

-Sometimes they fronted money for him.

Sometimes they provided protection for him

when he had shipments, either of money or drugs.

-What they were primarily involved with

was the transportation.

And really, that is the most important part

of the entire enterprise,

because if you can't get the drugs

from Vancouver to Montreal,

if you can't get the drugs from Montreal into the United States,

if you can't get the cocaine from Los Angeles to Vancouver,

there is no enterprise. There is no business.

-By 2012, it was a billion-dollar business.

-For every dollar that they spent on marijuana

at the beginning of the cycle,

by the time it was at the end of the cycle,

it was turning into $8.

The organization was making about a 900% profit.

-Who knew that marijuana writ large

was so unbelievably successful?

[ Cash register dings ]

-Law enforcement has been dealt crushing blow

after crushing blow

every time they start to investigate the Hells Angels,

but they finally catch a break with Sandra Craig.

-Raymond Craig and his wife Sandra, they weren't violent.

They were just a rich married couple

in suburban Montreal.

-When I first met Sandra, first of all,

she looked like, I'd say, a rich suburban mom.

She dressed very well,

and she didn't look anything like a drug trafficker.

-Her father in Bolivia was a drug lord,

so they sort of had carte blanche to import cocaine.

And they had the sophistication

of the South American drug lords to get it there.

The Craigs dealt with everybody,

and everybody sort of left them alone

because they could supply everyone.

-She had imported multitudes of kilograms of cocaine

into Montreal

and became associated with the Hells Angels.

-There was a dispute over a huge cocaine shipment

that went wrong.

The Hells Angels decided it was time

to eliminate the Craigs.

Sandra was driving on her way to meet the Hells Angels.

As she went down to grab it,

a car pulled up next to her

and unleashed a fusillade of gunfire.

She survived the attack only for the fact

that she was going for her phone,

down by the floor of her car.

-Her husband was killed, and she was left alive

because the Hells Angels just didn't respect women very much.

They thought, what can she do?

Well, what she did was she walked into a police station

and she gave them the records from the Nomads' bank.

-It was a key piece of evidence

to help us tie in Mom Boucher to that specific drug trade.

-This will lead to Operation Springtime,

the biggest mass arrest at that time

of Hells Angels in history.

-March 28th, 2001.

Everybody knew that at 6:00 a.m., it was go time.

-The police will arrest more than 120 people,

about 80 full patch members of the Hells Angels.

I mean, this is like the police in New York

arresting every single member of the Mafia.

It does not happen, right?

They basically shut down the Hells Angels in Quebec.

-And they arrested all of the Nomads

except for Stadnick, who was vacationing in Jamaica.

The Jamaicans actually arrested him on their behalf.

-Stadnick is in a jail cell in Jamaica awaiting extradition.

His arrest is seen as a huge blow to the forces

of the Hells Angels.

-Once Stadnick was in custody by the Jamaican authorities,

we then traveled to Jamaica,

walking into Kingston Prison with my partner.

We both looked at each other, and we said,

"You get my back, and I'll get your back."

Kingston Jail,

it's like no other jail that I've ever seen in my life.

I was under the impression that Stadnick

would be elated to see our arrival,

thinking that he could return to a Canadian jail

where he could get three square meals a day,

gym time, and a comfortable bed.

And I said, well, how would you like to stay here

for a couple of more weeks?

He looked at me and he says, "I'd be running the place."

As we were leaving the jail with Stadnick in handcuffs,

there were prisoners yelling,

"Yo, Walter!" and raising their fists.

There's no doubt in my mind that he would have found

allegiance in that prison over a few weeks.

♪♪

-A huge courthouse was built next to the Gouin prison

for what they called the mega-trials.

-$16.5 million was spent.

Underground tunnels, one-way mirrors

so that you wouldn't be able to see the jury.

-I mean, it was amazing to see that trial, right,

where you had dozens of Hells Angels

hidden behind glass.

This was a mega-show and a mega-trial.

-Springtime 2001, the largest crackdown ever.

And Stadnick our prized catch.

-Walter Stadnick went down for 20 years.

-Eight other Hells members are awaiting trial

on the same evidence, including Maurice "Mom" Boucher,

the head of the Hells Angels organization.

-I told Mom Boucher, "You know that you're going to go down

like all the others, whether you think

you're the greatest man on earth or not."

♪♪

-After several years of being a bit of a magician

and slipping out of what looked to be

surefire murder convictions and gangsterism convictions,

Mom Boucher is finally incarcerated on a life sentence.

-Maurice "Mom" Boucher's ultimate sentence was a relief.

It was a relief for law enforcement

that justice was served.

-For the rest of the club, many at that time

that was inside for something else.

But it was time this thing stop.

♪♪

-Mom Boucher had been so powerful,

and now he's facing life in prison.

[ Cell door slams ]

And from prison,

he continues to monitor and oversee

a lot of Hells Angels drug activity.

He was dodging murder contracts on his head behind bars.

-He still tried to operate the way he did before.

He was a tough guy in there.

He was associated with loan sharking business.

He tried to have people knocked off.

-A number of Native American gangbangers

in prison tried to kill him.

He became incredibly paranoid

that he was being poisoned.

So, he went on a potato chip diet

where he would only eat potato chips

because he was convinced they couldn't poison potato chips.

-His own members thought he went too far.

So, you know, it just tells you

about what kind of an individual he was.

-Those that weren't tight with him, in hindsight,

were like, that guy was a disaster,

and they kicked him out of the club.

-The great Quebec biker war

that left so much carnage in its wake

and led to, you know,

dozens of Hells Angels to be killed,

dozens of Hells Angels to be imprisoned.

There were a lot of bosses in the Hells Angels

that blamed Mom Boucher.

-How would you feel if you're putting your,

you know, your life on the line every day

for a guy who is making, you know, millions of dollars,

and at the end of the day,

you're just kind of collateral damage for him.

-He was planning to escape from prison

in different ways -- by helicopter, this, that.

It didn't work out. We found out about it,

and eventually he had a very serious depression in jail.

♪♪

Too bad for him.

♪♪

-The king is locked up in jail,

and now the whole system is in jeopardy of collapsing.

-If last month was the super bust,

then today was super bust part two.

[ Sirens wailing ]

-Here in British Columbia,

where the Hells Angels are very active in the drug trade,

they are among the richest Hells Angels in the world.

-There's Hells Angels there

that are multi-multi-millionaires.

-David Giles' nickname was "Influence,"

which you know, showed really the scope of his influence

within the Hells Angels, both in Canada

and in fact internationally.

-David Giles was involved in the coordination

of high-level criminality,

the coordination of loads

of primarily cocaine coming into Canada.

-David Giles did end up

finally getting busted in Operation E-Predicate.

It was something right out of "Miami Vice."

-This is what $4 million looks like.

The Mounties allege it came from the Hells Angels,

part of a $15 million cocaine deal.

-These RCMP undercover operators

are just amazing actors.

Like, if they sit next to you in a bar

and you've never smoked in your life,

all of a sudden you're smoking with this guy

and you don't know why.

Why am I smoking out in the street?

And there's these guys that are able

just to talk you into stuff, right?

-The investigation led Mounties from Kelowna

to Mexico and Panama.

-There were meetings with the undercover officers

who were posing as South American drug lords

based in Miami.

It was an extremely lengthy investigation

that stretched from the U.S. to Canada to Mexico

and to Panama.

-And they hoodwinked Giles and his crew,

and Giles and his crew got arrested.

You've lost the game. You're arrested. You're in jail.

-Also, they kicked him out of the club while he was in jail.

So, he went into jail naked.

He had a no patch.

-It's bad news for Dave Giles.

-And at this point, people were asking themselves

within the club, "What more could go wrong

with the Hells Angels?"

What they didn't know was

there was a lot more to go wrong

as we move into the future.

♪♪

-Cournoyer basically hired one of the best trial lawyers

in New York City,

so you could tell he wanted to go to trial.

He wanted to challenge the evidence.

-So, they have seizures of cocaine, kilos of cocaine,

tens or hundreds of pounds of marijuana,

huge amounts of physical evidence.

-One of the biggest risks of being a part

of a group like the Hells Angels

is there's always an opportunity

for somebody to be informing on you.

-Informants are very important.

I mean, we don't have a crystal ball to work with,

so we need these people.

-All of the co-defendants of Cournoyer pled guilty.

Most of them pled guilty and became rats,

and he was the last man standing.

So, I told him that I thought, my best estimate,

we had a 10% chance of winning his trial,

even with a good judge.

And I said, "If we lose, pine box."

And after some negotiations, uh, we worked out a deal.

-Essentially, what this case was really about

was Cournoyer enriching, empowering, and strengthening

incredibly dangerous criminal organizations.

♪♪

-There was a sense that the reign of terror

by the Hells Angels was over.

The Nomads, they were disbanded.

They had Boucher in prison.

-But no matter how bad

things seemed to get for the Hells Angels,

they would always regroup and come back

even stronger and more ferocious.

♪♪

-There are a bunch of raids. Hells Angels are picked up.

-Crime loves a vacuum, doesn't it?

And there are always people to step into it.

-Police and prosecutors realized that fighting the Hells Angels

is a bit like "Whac-A-Mole," right?

-But whenever we take people out of the picture,

they seem to have people that take their places.

-2001, they arrest almost every single Hells Angels,

closed down most of the chapters,

put dozens of people away.

A few years later, the Hells Angels

roughly have the same number --

400, 500 members across Canada.

♪♪

And so, the Hells Angels are back in business.

-Forever angels!

-The Hells Angels have had epic clashes,

brutal wars that have left

dozens and dozens of people dead.

-1990s, and the streets were, like, filled with ambulances,

bombs going off.

-We had the staff with the guns.

We had the staff with the narcotics.

We had the main players.

We had them on attempted murders.

-You had the Pagans and the Hells Angels

swinging it out with bats, guns, and knives

in the banquet hall as well as in the parking lot.

It was a bloody, bloody affair.