Hells Angels Leader Denies Selling Drugs to Students

Silent since his drug and racketeering indictment three weeks ago, Hells Angels leader George Christie Jr. maintained Thursday that he had nothing to do with selling drugs to high school students and is a law-abiding businessman with strong family values.

“Mr. Christie vigorously denies his involvement in any conspiracy [to distribute] drugs of any kind to any person, whether or not a minor,” says a motion to reduce his bail from $1 million to $250,000. A bail hearing is set for today in Superior Court.

The filing by Los Angeles lawyers Anthony Brooklier and Donald Marks insists that Christie never knew the young Air Force clinic clerk charged with stealing more than 700,000 prescription pills and funneling them through a Hells Angels associate to Ventura County adults and teenagers.

Nor did Christie ever talk with the Angels’ associate, Rogelio Botello, about drugs, the motion maintains. “In fact, the prosecution has evidence indicating that Mr. Botello requested that Airman [Joshua] Adams keep their relationship secret and unknown to Mr. Christie,” it says.

In an interview, longtime Hells Angels lawyer Robert Sheahen said the case is a waste of time and taxpayers’ money involving relatively few drugs and only $234,000 in confiscated cash. He estimated the county’s cost to defend suspects who can’t pay for their own defense at $2 million.

“This isn’t heroin, this isn’t cocaine, this isn’t methamphetamine or PCP or LSD,” he said. “This is Valium and Vicodin. Even if the charges are true, they’re penny-ante Vicodin dealers, and any high school kid can go into his parents’ medicine cabinet and get the same drug.”

The lead prosecutor, Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Bennett, declined to comment on the motion and on Sheahen’s comments.

Christie’s lawyers, insisting that he is not a flight risk, filed 50 pages of documents stating that the 53-year-old biker, a national Hells Angeles spokesman, is a lifelong Ventura County resident responsible for quelling problems with local Angels, not inciting them.

Even if Christie’s bail is not reduced, his family has enough equity in property to pay the $100,000 fee required for a $1-million bail bond.