42 Arrested in Motorcycle Gang Raids

Hundreds of federal agents and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies fanned out over three states Friday to drop an investigative net over the Mongols motorcycle club, arresting at least 42 people in Southern California and seizing dozens of illegal guns, cocaine and stolen motorcycles, they said.

The crackdown was the culmination of a perilous, 2 1/2-year investigation in which an undercover federal agent joined the club and rose into its executive ranks, officials of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said.

Authorities described the Mongols as among the most violent of the outlaw motorcycle gangs, and said its members were suspected in a wide variety of crimes that include murder, extortion, arson, weapons violations and illegal drug dealing.

At least three of those arrested Friday were charged with murder, ATF spokesman John D’Angelo said. The three are Adrian Gutierrez, 36, of Monterey Park, and two men identified only as David Herrera and David Rivera. Most of those arrested were charged with narcotics or firearms violations, D’Angelo added.

D’Angelo said he expects more charges to be filed.

Although the arrests all took place in Southern California, search warrants were also executed at Mongols chapters in Georgia and Oklahoma, authorities said. In all, the sweep involved 300 agents of the ATF and 375 Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, spokesmen for the agencies said at a downtown news conference.

The undercover ATF agent, who was not identified, joined the Mongols’ San Fernando Valley branch and rose through the ranks to become club treasurer, according to John Torres, the assistant agent in charge of the ATF’s Los Angeles bureau. Before joining, Torres said, the agent was subjected to a background check by a private investigator working for the Mongols.

How a veteran federal agent managed to pass that check and remain undetected for two years in a reputedly ruthless motorcycle gang was among the tantalizing questions left unanswered by the federal officials, who declined to discuss the operation in any detail.

“We’ll let the details unfold . . . in the judicial process,” U.S. Atty. Alejandro Mayorkas said.

“Our undercover agent put himself at great and prolonged peril to develop evidence of murder, weapons and narcotics violations, and other serious crimes,” Donald Kincaid, the Los Angeles division director for the ATF, said in a written statement. He said the crackdown had “shaken the gang to its core.”

Similarly, Torres said the raids had “decimated” the Mongols. He refused to say whether those arrested included any of the club’s leaders.

Federal agents displayed a table piled with loot at their news conference, including an outlawed Mac-10 assault weapon, a sawed-off shotgun and an array of Mongols T-shirts and leather vests emblazoned with the club’s logo: a grinning, pigtailed Mongol in bell-bottoms leaning back on a motorcycle.

In Friday’s raid, authorities said, agents seized 17 stolen motorcycles, 2 kilograms of cocaine, more than 70 illegal firearms and more than $27,000 in cash. Agents served search warrants in Wilmington, Temple City, Monterey Park, Rosemead, Alhambra, La Puente, San Diego, Porterville and Frazier Park.

The Mongols are believed to have begun in Southern California in the early 1970s. Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura was among those associated with the club in its early days, long before he gained fame as a pro wrestler.