By James ” Hollywood” Macecari
People have been wondering about the text we posted yesterday on Insane Throttle Biker News where a ATF agent was contacting Aaron Davies. Former Bandido and now National President of the Kinfolk M/C. Again we are currently investigating the information sent into us and verifying the sources claims. This morning we received a request from another source who wanted us to check out some of the news going on with the trial of high ranking Bandidos. They claimed the text is in connection with the following statement made in a mainstream newspaper concerning the witnesses testifying at these trials.
This is ongoing and we are still digging to see what all the connections are not only to this trial but to Twin Peaks. We will not make any type of allegations until all this information is verified.
The line of informants at this trial has been quite long to put it mild. It seems the government has been busy all this time concentrating on flipping people to take down the Bandidos Nationals. Sorry guys, there is no way to spin any of this. Feds have wiretaps, all kinds of rats lining up cutting deals, conversations with other clubs caught on tape. I hope the defense team has OJ Simpson’s dream team to pull this one out.
This is a whole lot of stuff being thrown at that jury right now. We all know that regular everyday citizens will not be able to cut through all the bs over former members of the club cutting deals to save their own ass. Audio and Video is also a very powerful way of getting a jury on their side.
As part of a cooperation agreement with the feds, Gomez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and is facing no more than 10 years in prison instead of the possibility of a life term had he been charged with murder
Thursday’s witnesses included a former member of the Iron Order Motorcycle Club who testified about a confrontation he and a fellow club member had with members of the Bandidos in July 2011 outside Hooter’s in Selma. The Bandidos wanted the Iron Order members to remove their vests, which had Texas “rockers,” or patches.
Insane Throttle will be reaching out for comment to the Iron Order Motorcycle Club regarding one of their ex members testifying at the trial.
Also testifying was an investigator from the district attorney’s office in Denver, who spoke about an investigation of Bandidos members there that has some overlap with the case in San Antonio. The third witness was an FBI agent who explained some wiretaps played for jurors of Portillo’s phone calls with fellow Bandidos and with the president of the Vagos Motorcycle Club in 2015.
Magenta Winans also took the stand to describe her part in helping the Bandidos murder a street gang member in retaliation for the killing of a fellow biker, aided their drug trafficking and ran the group’s call girl service in San Antonio, called Platinum Escorts
Insane Throttle is always a friend to those in motorcycle clubs. Always a friends to motorcycle clubs in general. Ok, well maybe not to friendly to the LEO clubs for obvious reasons. Everyone knows Insane Throttle to always be down the middle, never taking sides for any club. This is one of the biggest reasons we have the reach that we do. We report on what’s out there. Good or Bad. No matter what club is involved in the situation we are reporting on. This approach is the only one that will benefit the club scene as well as bikers in general.
Insane Throttle says this time and time again. It’s time for clubs to come into the present and stop doing crap that would’ve been able to pass in the old days. Technology is far superior now, people are in no way the same as they use to be when it came to do 1%er stuff in the sense of what was the past norm. The general population of bikers attitudes have been changing towards 1%ers and clubs in general.
Yea, I know. “We don’t care what everyone thinks.” Ok fair enough. Eventually as time goes on where is the membership going to come from to keep the club solvent? Old Timers from the Vietnam Age that really started all this is coming to an end. They are getting off their scooters and trading them in for a peaceful life out on a lake or river. This is probably why you are starting to see more of a gangster type of attitude within M/C’s because the older guys are leaving the scene.
Clubs were always suppose to be about the brotherhood. Riding motorcycles and chasing chicks. Not gangster-ism and murder, not extorting former members out of their bikes. If any of the allegations are true, which we will all find out when the jury comes back. Then it’s no wonder why people go around saying “Fuck Clubs.”
I know there is a lot of publications that pander to a base of people who no matter the evidence will always say “The government set it all up”. Insane Throttle isn’t one of those. Yea, we cannot stand rats because if you chose the life, stand and deal with the consequences. With that said, we are not a bunch that sits around with tin foil around our heads either. Clubs if they screw up need to take the responsibility. Only way they will learn how not to get mixed up again in another federal RICO trial.
Best thing that clubs can do is get back to biking and brotherhood. Drop all the fighting and killing each other over 1970’s beefs and come together as one. That’s the plain and simple truth to things. Clubs continue on the path they are on then it’s their future that is in peril. No one else’s fault but their own.
Insane Throttle Facebook Question of the day– Do you think it’s time for clubs to drop the beefs and come to the table and seek peace?
Source: MySanAntonio
Andrew “Corky” Gomez is now a pariah to the Bandidos Motorcycle Club despite dedicating seven years of his life to the group, even helping it commit murder.
Gomez, who was in the Bandidos from 1998 to 2005, testified Wednesday that he took over as president of a local Bandidos chapter in San Antonio in 2002 when its then-president John Xavier Portillo was promoted to the national chapter.
But Portillo, who is facing racketeering charges in a three-month trial in San Antonio with another former Bandidos leader, first had Gomez demoted and later kicked “out in bad standings” after Gomez got crossways with the outlaw biker club and refused to hand over his motorcycle to the Bandidos, Gomez testified.
“Basically, you’re out of the biker world,” Gomez said when asked what he meant. “You can’t go anywhere they (Bandidos) are.”
Gomez said he shot a Bandidos member who was part of a group that harassed him at his San Antonio auto shop and later was to be a witness for police against another Bandidos member, Johnny “Downtown” Romo, who had fired a gun at Gomez.
At one point, Gomez said, he reached a deal to try to end the harassment — he would not press charges against Romo if the Bandidos removed his “out in bad standings” designation and left him alone.
The deal lasted “a couple of years,” until Gomez bought a beer for a Bandidos member he saw at a bar, Gomez said. As Gomez reached out to shake the member’s hand, he was punched instead, Gomez testified.
Gomez said he called Romo, who told him Portillo refused to remove the designation because Gomez had not turned over his motorcycle. Gomez said he decided to pay $4,000 to the club to end the pressure.
He also testified that in January 2002, while he was vice president of the Bandidos’ Southwest San Antonio chapter, he was part of the plot to retaliate against Robert Lara for the 2001 killing of Javier Negrete, who was the local chapter’s secretary at the time.
Portillo was president of that chapter at that time, and Gomez said Portillo showed him the .22-caliber pistol he was going to give Bandidos member Richard Merla to kill Lara.
After Lara’s slaying, Gomez testified, Portillo called him to help him get rid of the weapon. Gomez drove Portillo to a creek off Rigsby Avenue, where Portillo tossed it in the water, Gomez said. That part of Gomez’s testimony conflicted with Merla, who testified on Tuesday that Portillo destroyed the gun with a torch at the home of Portillo’s brother.
He took over Negrete’s drug operations after his death, Gomez testified, and would often supply Portillo and other members with large quantities of cocaine and methamphetamines.
As part of a cooperation agreement with the feds, Gomez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and is facing no more than 10 years in prison instead of the possibility of a life term had he been charged with murder.
In cross-examination, Portillo’s lead lawyer, Mark Stevens, suggested that Gomez wrongly implicated Portillo in drugs and the Lara murder as part of Gomez’s attempts get up to $2,000 from police investigators so Gomez could try to save his auto shop.
While Gomez acknowledged being in debt, he claimed he decided to cooperate to “do the right thing.” Police paid him $500 at one point for providing photos of Bandidos in San Antonio, Gomez testified, adding that he used the money to pay traffic tickets.
Portillo was promoted to the Bandidos’ national chapter as national sergeant at arms in May 2002, and became vice president in 2013, according to testimony. He is on trial with Jeffrey Fay Pike of suburban Houston, who was the club’s president from 2006 until he and Portillo were arrested in January 2016.
Guillermo Contreras is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of his stories here. | gcontreras@express-news.net | @gmaninfedland
Source: My SanAntonio
Talk of murder, drugs and sex permeated Friday’s testimony in the racketeering trial of two top former leaders of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club as a former insider shed light on the group’s alleged underground conduct in San Antonio.
The insider was not an former Bandidos member, but Magenta Winans, a 46-year-old woman who testified that she helped the Bandidos murder a street gang member in retaliation for the killing of a fellow biker, aided their drug trafficking and ran the group’s call girl service in San Antonio, called Platinum Escorts.
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Her testimony was offered in support of a federal indictment that alleges the Bandidos’ racketeering enterprise spanned 16 years, from 2000 to 2016. Toward the end of that period, the Bandidos were headed by the two lone defendants on trial, former national president Jeffrey Fay Pike and ex-national vice president John Xavier Portillo.
Winans’ testimony largely implicated Portillo. Though Pike and Portillo are charged in a series of crimes related to racketeering conspiracy, including allegations that they ordered beatings or sanctioned murder, only Portillo is charged in the January 2002 murder of Robert Lara, a member of the Two Six Nation street gang.
Winans, a former meth addict, said she was introduced to the Bandidos in 2001 through a friend, the late boxer Robert “Pikin” Quiroga.
She said she met Richard Merla and Andrew “Corky” Gomez, members of the Bandidos’ Southwest San Antonio chapter, and had an affair with Gomez. She even went to work in his auto shop, Precision Automotive.
At the end of 2001, she heard through Gomez that fellow chapter member Javier “Jay” Negrete was fatally shot at Tiffany’s Billiards off San Pedro Avenue. Gomez introduced her to “the boss” — Portillo, Winans testified. Portillo, president of the local Bandidos chapter at the time, asked her: “Do you think you can take care of this for us? Our brother meant a lot to us.” She agreed.
After being given an alias, she infiltrated the Two Six Nation gang and befriended Lara, who confessed he killed Negrete, Winans testified.
When she reported back to the Bandidos, they instructed Winans to lure Lara to a desolate picnic area along Interstate 37 south of San Antonio. There, Merla and fellow Bandidos member Frederick “Fast Fred” Cortez pulled Lara out of the car and shot him repeatedly, she testified. She assumed the same fate awaited her.
But instead, the club hailed her, and the killing also earned Portillo a promotion in May 2002 to the national chapter, as a national sergeant at arms.
Before he was promoted, Portillo told her, “We’ll make sure you’re taken care of.
“He said, ‘We can make you property; and if anything happens to you, it happens to us,’” Winans testified.
She said she agreed with his request to get a tattoo. The tattoo, on her hip, once read: “Property of BMC SWSA” — Bandidos Motorcycle Club Southwest San Antonio chapter — and was designed to look like the patches Bandidos wear on their vests, she said. She later covered it up with a larger tattoo after her friend Quiroga was killed by Merla in 2005, and she stopped being the club’s “property.”
The wording and patch outlines of the old tattoo are still visible, according to a photo prosecutors showed jurors.
Winans said she also managed the club’s Playmate Escorts out of an apartment on Cincinnati Avenue, where customers were charged $200 an hour. She said some of the money went to Portillo.
Winans also testified that she broke up methamphetamine for Gomez for distribution and even delivered ounce quantities to Portillo.
After Lara’s murder, law officers tried to interview her three times about the killing. In June 2002, when she was jailed for traffic ticket warrants, Portillo bailed her out and she lied to police by saying she knew nothing about Lara’s murder.
When the feds arrested Portillo in January 2016 and searched his home, they found a receipt for what Portillo paid for Winans bail. Prosecutors showed it to the jury during Winans’ testimony.
Winans also was arrested in January 2006 for possession of 7 grams of meth. She said Portillo her not to worry, to “just go with the plan. Don’t change your lies, pretty much,” and that a lawyer paid by the Bandidos “will take care of you.”
A year later, she was arrested again for possession of marijuana. The feds, who were investigating the Bandidos, later “adopted” the state drug charges. Rather than go with the Bandidos’ lawyer, she chose a federal public defender “because I wanted the opportunity to live a structured life.”
As part of a plea deal, she pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor for possession of meth and got probation with a requirement for drug treatment and rehab.
For her cooperation, she will not be charged for Lara’s murder, she said. She will continue testifying Tuesday.
Guillermo Contreras is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of his stories here. | gcontreras@express-news.net | @gmaninfedland
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