Repost Of An Usenet Post From 2007 About HAMC

[Greg Carr]

Asset driven
related information
Annual Report of the Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada
Solicitor General of Canada - Creation of a Suspcious Transaction
Reporting and Cross-Border Currency Reporting Regime
Vol. 68, Issue 1 2006

B.C. police take aim at OMG money
"Church is out," says Det Cst Kevin Torvik from the passenger seat of
an idling, unmarked police truck.

Across the street, a few Nomads emerge from their fortified clubhouse
near Vancouver's gritty East End. The weekly meeting of elite Hells
Angels is over and Torvik, a member of the Vancouver Police
Department's outlaw motorcycle gang (OMG) unit, watches as some of
the world's most prosperous bikers pile into new sports utility
vehicles, a sports car and a Hummer.

Before the Nomads speed off into the nighttime fog, Torvik punches
their license plate numbers into his laptop. The computer's database
shows details of current charges committed by some of these top
bikers,
such as cocaine possession for the purpose of trafficking, and past
offences such as aggravated assault.

East End Hells Angel Damiano Dipopolo lives in a neighbourhood
overlooking the Burrard Inlet-a tony area that some police officers
dub
"Dipopoloville" because the biker has bought much of the real estate
that surrounds his gated, castle-like home.

Sgt Larry Butler, Torvik's boss, looks up from the driver's seat
just as Gino Zumpano appears at the clubhouse door. Like many of these
full-patch members, Zumpano has millions of dollars in assets. He
plays
the stock market and is one of the largest single shareholders in
Brussels House of Chocolates. (The company lost 98% of its value last
year and the BC Securities Commission doesn't seem to care.) At a
price
of over $2 million, Zumpano recently added one more piece of real
estate to his bulging portfolio: a giant, empty warehouse.

Members of the East End chapter, who have a clubhouse a few blocks
away
from the Nomads, show similar signs of wealth. Damiano Dipopolo, who
is
in his 30s, runs a clothing store and has several real estate
holdings.
He also holds millions of dollars in estimated assets.

Dipopolo lives in a nearby neighbourhood overlooking the Burrard Inlet
- a tony area that Butler dubs "Dipopoloville" because the Hells
Angel and his twin brother (an ex-East End prospect) have bought much
of the real estate that surrounds the Angel's gated, castle-like
home.

All of the neighbourhood's properties easily surpass the $500,000
mark.

This is only some of the territory covered by the VPD's OMG unit: a
three-man outfit with a big list of responsibilities, including the
monitoring of Hells Angel activities around Vancouver-area clubhouses,
investigating or assisting in the investigations of any crimes
involving Vancouver Angels or associates, and cultivating sources from
within the OMG world.

After a walk-through of the Drake Hotel, a bar and strip club where
the
East End chapter's president John Bryce runs a numbered company,
Butler and Torvik drive down some of the dingy alleyways a few blocks
away-the type that crawl with rats and are almost always filled with
drug addicts looking for a quick fix of crack or heroin. (The Drake
like Brandi's is owned by HA.)

"This is where a lot of the Hells Angels dope ends up," says Butler as
his truck rolls past groups of junkies, prostitutes and one of the
city's safe-injection sites.

Cutting off the tentacles
This snapshot of West Coast biker life illustrates the fact that
Vancouver is home to some of the world's wealthiest and
well-connected Hells Angels. Some of the top East Enders and Nomads
have contacts in the upper echelons of business and government. Other
members have connections or are employed at the city's main port to
ensure drug shipments make it to their intended recipients.

"Their tentacles spread so far," says Torvik of the bikers' extended
reach into all corners of society.

As expected, cutting those tentacles off is not an easy task. Proving
that any of the bikers' assets were purchased through ill-gotten
gains has presented a formidable challenge for the province's police
forces.

In the past, many top Hells Angels members in the Vancouver area
successfully insulated themselves from the crimes they ordered. They
are also well-versed in money laundering schemes, making the burden of
proof in proceeds-of-crime cases very onerous indeed, says Insp Andy
Richards with B.C.'s Organized Crime Agency who is currently seconded
to the province's Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit
(CFSEU-BC).

Making a difference to any proceeds case is the amount of support
police receive in the area of forensic accounting, adds VPD D/Chief
Cst
Max Chalmers. Such support is critical since, "after the charges are
laid, it's a real challenge to go back and untangle the web of
financial transactions to determine where the money came from, where
it
went, and how we best seize those assets and reclaim the money," he
says.

Meanwhile, Hells Angels spokesmen continue to claim their organization
is just a motorbike club with members who pay mortgages and work hard
at legitimate businesses like everyone else. After all, they argue, if
they have amassed the wealth that police say they have, why are they
working? Wouldn't they just retire?

They don't because they often depend on legitimate businesses to hide
assets that were acquired through proceeds of crime, argues Richards.

When it comes to fighting this pattern of events, the police do enjoy
support from other organizations. For example, the province's liquor
licensing authority denies outlaw bikers the means to launder money
through businesses by rejecting any new applications that come from
any
member or associate of the Hells Angels.

The same goes for licence transfers or those licences that are up for
renewal. Under the province's policy guidelines, licences are not
issued to anyone who is a member of, or associated with, an organized
crime group. As well, any licence application is rejected if the
authority finds it's funded by a criminal source.

Pursuing the paper trail RCMP Supt Marianne Ryan, chief officer of
CFSEU-BC, makes it clear that the province's police agencies are
fully prepared to go after any money made from crime, even if this
means going abroad to follow the paper trail.

"When they move the money offshore, it complicates things, but
doesn't make it impossible for us [to do our work]," she says,
pointing to bilateral or multi-national asset-sharing agreements.

"Our Department of Justice can say [to another country], 'The
money's in your bank account, and we can prove it's illicit money
from drug trafficking up here. We can seek forfeiture of that money
and
agree to share the reward.'"

Proceeds-of-crime investigations can also benefit from the efforts of
the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), to which G-7 members, and
several other countries, belong. Part of the FATF's mandate is to
curb money-laundering by developing harmonized systems in each of the
member countries.

"We're approaching this on a global level," Ryan says. "There are no
boundaries [for these people]. They will go wherever they can, and we
must do the same."

East End Hells Angel Damiano Dipopolo (left) and Nomad Gino Zumpano.
(If you go to the website they don't have the actual pictures of these
guys anymore. Wonder if they managed to get into the computer system.
Won't be the first time.)

http://www.gazette.rcmp.gc.ca/article-en.html?&lang_id=1&article_id=222
is where this article is from and it shows the East End clubhouse at
3598 East Georgia which is also the home of the Swollen Members.
======================================================
The Swollen Members have walked away from HAMC and Damiano and Gino
continue to have no convictions and remain club presidents. House Of
Brussels Chocolates went bankrupt in a pump and dump despite 5 million
dollars of marlet value at one point. None of the local media reported
on it only the Halifax Chronicle-Hareld did.

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