Hells Angels Leader Held in Probe of Drug Sales

VENTURA —  A national Hells Angels leader, who for two decades cultivated the image of an upstanding citizen, has been charged with heading a criminal gang whose activities include the sale of drugs to high school students.

The arrest of George Gus Christie Jr., his two adult children and 21 others Friday night tarnishes his long campaign to portray the notorious motorcycle gang as free-spirited but law-abiding citizens harassed by law enforcement.

Instead, prosecutors say, Christie assembled a drug distribution network that relied on young Hells Angels operatives--or “HA Cub Scouts”--to sell drugs to teenagers as they left four middle and high school campuses in Ventura and Ojai.

Neither Christie nor his lawyer could be reached for comment Saturday.

While the Hells Angels have generally fallen from public view in recent years, they have been a growing presence in Ventura.

Christie hosted the Angels’ 50th anniversary celebration here in 1998 and angered police and public officials by posing for a group photo with hundreds of bikers on the steps of City Hall.

The Ventura chapter tripled its size to about 20 members, recruiting young street toughs who roared around downtown Ventura on flame-emblazoned Harley-Davidsons and allegedly engaged in a flurry of criminal activity that prompted investigations by police, sheriff’s intelligence officers and the district attorney’s organized crime unit.

It took eight months to present the current case to the grand jury, which on Friday indicted the suspects on 132 criminal counts.

Investigators arrested 24 of 28 suspects--including nine Hells Angels--in sweeps in Ventura and Orange counties on Friday night, ending a four-year investigation. Officers acted on eight Ventura County Grand Jury indictments on charges of theft, fraud, tax evasion, firearms possession, drug sales to minors and the use of a street gang in a criminal conspiracy.

The suspects were being held in Ventura County Jail late Saturday with bails ranging from $10,000 to--for Christie, his son and three other principals--$1 million each. Arraignment is set for Monday.

“An organized criminal enterprise has been stopped from selling drugs to our children and victimizing other citizens through violence, theft, fraud and intimidation,” Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury said in a written release Saturday.

Christie has denied any wrongdoing. Earlier last week, anticipating the indictments, he said: “I’ll save my comments for the courtroom. My lawyer and I will handle everything in the courtroom.”

Christie is represented by Barry Tarlow of Los Angeles, a high-profile former federal prosecutor who gained Christie’s acquittal in a 1987 federal murder-for-hire case.

The indictments represent the first time Christie, 53, the reputed heir to Ralph “Sonny” Barger as the Angels’ leader nationwide, has been charged with a serious crime since a Los Angeles jury acquitted him in the murder-for-hire case.

Since the early 1980s, the Angels have presented Christie as a representative of a new generation of members who are law-abiding and raise money for charities such as Toys for Tots.

After running a leg in the Olympic torch relay in 1984, he spoke in college and high school classes about the ethics of prosecutors and journalists. He hosted a fund-raiser for an Oxnard children’s museum in 1997. He even sold his life story to Hollywood as a tale of a modern-day folk hero who withstood the abuse of power by federal authorities.

He was one of six Hells Angels leaders profiled in a story in The Times in 1983 that described the “mellowing” of some members of the motorcycle gang.

“Being a Hells Angel,” Christie said, “means that people listen to you when you talk, and they move out of your way when you walk down the street. There’s a lot of power and you want to make sure that guys that get into the club aren’t going to abuse it.”

Wearing baggy pants and flannel shirts popular with teenagers, Christie is regularly seen at his Ink House tattoo and body-piercing parlor on Main Street in Ventura, talking on the sidewalk with Angels, tattooed employees and skinheaded hangers-on.

Undercover Investigation

He is calm and precise in his speech. Acquaintances describe him as smart and articulate--even gentlemanly--and nearly always in control of himself and those around him.

A Ventura native, Christie is unusually well educated for a local Hells Angel. He attended two years of college and was employed as a high-voltage electrician for the U.S. Defense Department and a cable splicer for General Telephone.

Although Christie was the prosecutors’ chief target, the case includes his 24-year-old son, George Gus Christie III, and 29-year-old daughter, Moriya Christie, a Ventura attorney who represents Hells Angels in court. Altogether, the family faces nearly four dozen criminal charges.

The senior Christie--who still rides his motorcycle and whose left arm is heavily tattooed--is charged with 23 criminal offenses that carry potential penalties of 15 to 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors say he not only oversees a criminal gang that peddled drugs to teenagers but that he carried a gun while committing crimes, evaded employee taxes, stole valuable property and hid large amounts of money in secret bank accounts.

As part of the current investigation, undercover agents bought drugs 25 times from Hells Angels or their associates, sheriff’s investigators said in 1999, after arresting several club members. Suspects typically peddled plastic bags containing two or three Valium pills to teenagers for $1 a pill, or sold Vicodin for $3 a tablet and Ecstasy for $20 a tablet, investigators said.

Indictments were delayed until Friday as prosecutors tried to weave an array of alleged crimes into a single conspiracy case.

Of the 24 named suspects--four were not identified because they had not been arrested--Christie and his son, plus William “Gunner” Wolf, 30, of Oxnard and Leonardo Martinis, 33, and Joshua Adams, 23, both of Ventura, are being held on $1-million bail.

Five suspects were already in jail or prison for crimes ranging from assault with a deadly weapon to drug sales.

Christie has repeatedly said the Angels pose no threat to the community. He describes his group as a recreational motorcycle club. Some members may have broken the law, but the Angels have never been involved in crime as an organization, he has said.

“I don’t know what the D.A. wants from me,” Christie said recently. “Am I a threat to this community? No.”

In previous interviews, Christie said this case is just the latest in a series of federal and state inquiries that targeted him because of his prominence but that had led only to a misdemeanor fighting-in-public conviction in 1993.

He’s being harassed again, Christie has said, because he hosted the Angels’ 50th anniversary celebration.

He is most disturbed, he has said, by charges that the Hells Angeles are involved in the sale of drugs to teenagers, something he said he would never allow. Prosecutors are trying to justify the time and money they’ve wasted investigating him, he said.

“And it’s a shame they have to go after my family because they have a problem with me,” he has said.

Authorities say the Hells Angels case is massive, involving tens of thousands of pages of evidence, much of it seized during raids over the last three years.

Tax Payments Under Scrutiny

Early in the investigation, in May 1998, authorities arrested Christie on suspicion of possessing narcotics and they arrested his estranged wife, Cheryl Christie, a bookkeeper for the Angels, on suspicion of possessing drugs for sale.

The initial raids focused on whether Christie had paid taxes for employees at his tattoo parlor.

Officers seized thousands of pages of documents and said they found a small amount of cocaine in Christie’s bed stand at his home in an industrial area of west Ventura. About $30,000 in cash was seized. They said they also found about $100,000 and a large amount of Vicodin, an addictive narcotic painkiller, in his wife’s hillside condo. She was not arrested Friday.

Christie has said in previous interviews that he had broken no laws and paid no employee taxes because his workers are contract employees, similar to those in beauty salons. Such workers are self-employed and pay their own taxes, he said.

“I’ve done the same thing for 20 years and the IRS never had a problem with it, and my tax attorney never had a problem with it,” he said. “Now the district attorney has a problem.”

Then in 1999, prosecutors stepped up their investigation of Christie, seizing personal and business records from the Ventura home of his 79-year-old mother and the house and law office of his daughter.

In raids in 1998 and 1999, the Sheriff’s Department arrested nine club members, most on drug-related allegations. No charges were filed, however, until Friday. Over 16 months, authorities said they seized $27,000 in cash, drugs valued at $364,000 and 15 weapons, including a “sniper rifle,” a semiautomatic shotgun, a sawed-off shotgun, a hunter’s rifle with a bayonet and a machete.

“The Hells Angels like to portray themselves as misunderstood recreational bikers who are harassed by the police,” Sheriff Bob Brooks said last year. “The Hells Angels try to put a positive spin on their charitable activities, but the fact is we are dealing with criminals who distribute drugs and, for the most part, are people with long rap sheets and violent backgrounds.”