Bandidos MC criminal allegations and incidents
The Bandidos Motorcycle Club is classified as a motorcycle gang by law enforcement and intelligence agencies in numerous countries. While the club has denied being a criminal organization, Bandidos members have been convicted of partaking in criminal enterprises including theft, extortion, prostitution, drug trafficking and murder in various host nations.[25][26]
 Bandidos colors | |
| Founded | March 4, 1966[1] |
|---|---|
| Founded by | Donald Chambers[1] |
| Founding location | San Leon, Texas, United States[1] |
| Years active | 1966–present |
| Territory | 303 chapters in 22 countries[2] |
| Membership (est.) | 2,000–2,500[3] |
| Criminal activities | Racketeering, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, assault, extortion, money laundering, murder, loan sharking, prostitution, contract killing, trafficking in stolen goods, motor vehicle theft, counterfeiting[4] |
| Allies | |
| Rivals | |
| Notable members | |
Australia
The Bandidos are considered an outlaw motorcycle gang by the Australian Federal Police.[27] Numerous police investigations have targeted Bandidos members, and implicated them in illegal drugs supply and other crimes.[28][29][30] Australia's first Bandidos chapter was formed in Sydney in 1983. The club has around four-hundred members and forty-five chapters in the country, and has recruited members of various ethnic backgrounds.[31] The Australian Bandidos are allied with the Diablos,[6] Mobshitters,[7] Mongols[7] and Rock Machine,[9] while their rivals include the Comancheros,[7] Finks,[14] Gypsy Jokers,[16] Hells Angels,[7] Notorious,[20] Rebels[7] and Red Devils.[21]
New South Wales
The Bandidos' first international chapter was founded in Sydney by eleven disillusioned former members of the Comancheros. In 1983, Comancheros founder and president William George "Jock" Ross was allegedly caught in a compromising position with another club member's wife, a serious breach of club rules. Facing expulsion from the club, Ross refused to face any disciplinary action and instead announced that the Comancheros would be split into two chapters; those who supported bringing charges against Ross remained at the Birchgrove clubhouse while Ross and the remaining Comancheros set up a new clubhouse in Harris Park. Fighting between the two chapters prompted the Birchgrove chapter to break away and form a new club. Chapter president Anthony Mark "Snodgrass" Spencer, who had previously encountered the Bandidos' Albuquerque, New Mexico chapter during a visit to the United States, contacted their national president Ronnie Hodge and eventually received approval to form the first Australian Bandidos chapter and become its national president. Violence between the Bandidos and Comancheros continued until August 1984 when the two rival clubs formally declared war. Police believe the war began over turf, or drugs, or a combination of both.[32] On 2 September 1984, thirty-four Bandidos members and nineteen members of the Comancheros engaged in a shoot-out at a hotel in Milperra. The gun battle, which has come to be known as the Milperra massacre, left seven dead; Bandidos members Mario "Chopper" Cianter and Gregory "Shadow" Campbell, Comancheros members Robert "Foggy" Lane, Phillip "Leroy" Jeschke, Ivan "Sparra" Romcek and Tony "Dog" McCoy, as well as Leanne Walters, a fourteen-year-old innocent bystander who was shot in the face with a stray bullet. Twenty-eight people were also wounded.[33] The resulting court case following the massacre was at the time one of the largest in Australian history. Five Comancheros bikies were given life sentences for murder while sixteen Bandidos received sentences of seven years for manslaughter. Bandidos national president Anthony "Snodgrass" Spencer hanged himself in prison on 28 April 1985 before he could stand trial.[34]
Bandidos members Michael "Kaos" Kulakowski (the club's national president), Saša "Sash" Milenković (the national sergeant-at-arms) and Rick Raymond de Stoop were shot dead in the basement of a nightclub in Chippendale, Sydney in the early hours of 10 November 1997 by Constantine "Kon" Georgiou and Bruce Malcolm Harrison. Georgiou was a serving member of the Rebels at the time while Harrison was a former member.[35][36] The conflict between the groups had arisen over the control of the club's security.[37] Georgiou and Harrison were found guilty of the murders in August 1999, but successfully appealed against the verdict.[38] After a second trial was aborted, the pair were again convicted at a third trial in April 2003 and were later sentenced to a minimum of twenty-eight years in prison.[39]
On 30 January 2000, Bandidos member Paul Andrew Bobos was wounded after being shot in the chest with a Smith & Wesson revolver as he travelled to work on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle in Mourquong. Three men associated with the Adelaide, South Australia chapter of the Gypsy Jokers – Robert Cameron, William James Fuller and David Shannon – were charged with Bobos' shooting. Prosecutors alleged Fuller was a nominee for Gypsy Joker membership, and had shot Bobos as part of his initiation.[40] In November 2000, Shannon was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to firearms offences. Bobos died in an unrelated incident on 24 September 2000.[41]
A feud between the Bandidos and the Gypsy Jokers in the Hunter Valley began with several bashings before the home of a Bandidos member in Abermain was strafed in a drive-by shooting and a tattoo parlour owned by the club's Kurri Kurri chapter president Rodney Leslie "Pardo" Partington was firebombed in February 2001.[16] On 24 March 2001, Partington was killed when a homemade bomb exploded in his hands outside the Gypsy Jokers' Weston clubhouse.[42]
Bandidos members Felix "Big F" Lyle and his son Dallas Fitzgerald were targeted in a shooting at a pub in Haymarket carried out by Sean Lawrence Waygood, of the Anthony Perish criminal gang network, and his associate Michael Peter Christiansen on 8 October 2002 after the club was contracted to kill Waygood following an assault at a nightclub where he worked security. Neither of the Bandidos members were hit, although Raniera Puketapu, who had been mistaken for Fitzgerald, was shot three times and wounded.[43][44] Waygood pleaded guilty to shooting Puketapu as well as his involvement in a kidnapping and a separate attempted murder, and was sentenced to at least fifteen years in prison in May 2010.[45]
Felix Lyle served as the president of the Bandidos' "Downtown" chapter in Pyrmont, Sydney until 2002 and was expelled from the club by his successor Rodney "Hooks" Monk in 2006 for allegedly being "not of good character".[46] Monk's feud with Lyle and Dallas Fitzgerald related to the theft of $2 million worth of pseudoephedrine from Milad Sande, a major drug distributor and Bandidos associate who was shot dead during the robbery in Malabar on 23 November 2005.[47] Police believe Monk was behind the subsequent February 2006 kidnapping and torture of Fitzgerald over his role in the murder-robbery, and that Lyle paid $300,000 in ransom money. The kidnapping was allegedly a joint Bandidos and Nomads operation, as Sande was also affiliated with the Nomads.[48] Monk was shot and killed in East Sydney on 20 April 2006, allegedly by Bandidos member and Fitzgerald's protégé Russell Oldham, who later committed suicide by gunshot on Balmoral Beach on 11 May 2006.[49] Lyle went on to join the Hells Angels and served as president of the club's Sydney chapter. In February 2011, he organised the defection of around fifty to sixty Bandidos members to the Hells Angels, which led to the dissolvement of the Bandidos' Parramatta chapter. The Hells Angels paid $6 million to entice the Bandidos members to switch allegiance.[50]
Hostilities between the Bandidos and the Comancheros resumed in April 2007 after more than sixty members of the Parramatta and Granville chapters of the Nomads, previously affiliated with the Comancheros, defected to the Bandidos.[51] The defection resulted in a new eruption of violence between the clubs, involving fire-bombings and drive-by shootings.[52] New South Wales Police set up Operation Ranmore to stop the violence escalating, which resulted in three-hundred-and-forty people arrested on 883 charges as of January 2008.[53]
Four members – Joshua Clark, Bradley John Duff, Malcolm Sinclair Greig and Todd Obierzynski – were arrested after being found in possession of two semi-automatic rifles when they were stopped by police in a routine traffic check in Sydney's west while travelling home after carrying out two drive-by shootings on 10 December 2008. Police believed the shootings, carried out in Lurnea and Sadleir, to be linked to a dispute between the Bandidos and Rebels.[54]
The remaining former members of the Nomads' disbanded Parramatta chapter went on to found Notorious, a pseudo-motorcycle club.[55] On 16 March 2009, a drive-by shooting was carried out at the house of Mahmoud Dib, the sergeant-at-arms of the Bandidos' Blacktown, Sydney chapter. Notorious is suspected of the attack. On 20 March 2009, relatives of Notorious members were the targets of two drive-by shootings in Doonside and Prospect. It is suspected that these were retaliation shootings carried out by the Bandidos.[56] Further drive-by shootings that took place in Auburn on 22 March 2009, leaving two men in hospital, are believed to be related to Bandidos discovering that two associates of the club's Blacktown chapter were providing Notorious with the addresses of Bandidos members.[57] On 29 March 2009, police acting on an anonymous tipoff discovered an unexploded homemade bomb outside the home of Mostafa Jouayde, president of the Bandidos' Parramatta chapter, in Granville.[58]
Two senior Bandidos members were convicted of drug trafficking after police in Taree began investigating the club's involvement in the methamphetamine trade in August 2014. Ronald Dennis Leggett, the president of the Bandidos' Port Stephens chapter, was convicted of supplying more than four-hundred grams of methylamphetamine during a four-month period between 29 October 2014 and 11 February 2015, as well as possessing three firearms and other weapons. He was sentenced to a maximum of seven-and-a-half years in prison in May 2016. Manning Valley chapter treasurer and secretary Paul Rowsell, who sourced the drugs from Leggett and was subsequently selling them onto an undercover police officer posing as a dealer, was sentenced to a maximum five-and-a-half years in prison for his part in the supply ring.[59][60]
Shane "Wock" De Britt, president of the Bandidos' Central West chapter based in Molong, was fatally shot in the head at his home in Eurimbla on 14 January 2020.[61] Eight people – seven men and a woman – were arrested in connection with De Britt's murder.[62]
Three men, including Sydney Bandidos chapter president Bradley John Duff, were arrested and charged with cultivating a commercial quantity of cannabis, supplying a commercial quantity of a prohibited drug and participating in a criminal group on 13 April 2020 after police stormed a property in Coolah and seized two-hundred-and-fifty kilograms of dried cannabis plants, at various stages of the harvest process – a $1.65 million cannabis crop.[63]
Fares Abounader, who had joined the Bandidos after defecting from the Comancheros, was killed in a targeted drive-by shooting at his home in Panania on 29 August 2020.[64]
Queensland
Mario John Vosmaer, a member of the Bandidos' Mooroka chapter and the former president of the club in Queensland, pleaded guilty to trafficking heroin for fourteen months between 1994 and 1996 and was sentenced to eight years in prison at Brisbane Supreme Court in November 2002.[65]
Bandidos Brisbane chapter president Blair Raymond Thomsen, vice-president Ivan Glavas, sergeant-at-arms Kenneth James Whittaker and John Debilla, an associate and disgruntled former Rebels member, were convicted in June 2008 of firebombing a Rebels clubhouse in Albion, Brisbane on 27 March 2007. The Bandidos had carried out the attack as retribution after Rebels members assaulted Bandidos bikies with baseball bats at Bribie Island in February 2007, leaving one man critically injured.[66] Thomsen and Whittaker were sentenced to five years' imprisonment, suspended after twenty months, Glavas to four years', suspended after sixteen months, and Debilla was released after his 417 days already served in custody was deemed sufficient punishment.[67]
Bandidos member Leslie David Gadd was sentenced to eight years in prison in November 2012 for wounding a man during a home invasion. Gadd and an unidentified accomplice entered the Little Mountain home of Jason Enrique Gravestein, shot him in the thigh, and robbed him of around half a kilo of cannabis and around $2000 in April 2011.[68]
Bogdan Cuic, a member of the Bandidos' "West End" chapter in Brisbane, fled to Serbia after shooting and killing Jei "Jack" Lee during a botched cocaine deal in Eight Mile Plains on 12 April 2012. Cuic was extraditing from Serbia in 2016, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced nine-and-a-half years' imprisonment in November 2018. Cuic's associate, Marko Cokara, who was also present at the drug deal, was sentenced to eight years' for manslaughter.[69]
On 28 April 2012, Bandidos member Jacques Teamo, along with an innocent female by-stander, received multiple gunshot wounds from a rival gang member at the Robina Town Centre on the Gold Coast.[70] Mark James Graham, a Finks member who would later patch-over to the Mongols, was convicted of attempted murder and was sentenced to twelve years and three months in prison in November 2014.
Bandidos were involved in a mass brawl with Finks outside a Broadbeach tapas bar on 27 September 2013. Eighteen former Bandidos members, who were allegedly among a group of around fifty club members who travelled to the town that night to hunt down Bandidos enforcer Jacques Teamo's rival and Finks associate Jason Trouchet, pleaded guilty to their involvement and were given suspended prison sentences or fines at Brisbane Magistrates Court in August 2015.[71]
The Bandidos were one of twenty-six groups declared criminal organisations by the Queensland State Government under the Criminal Law (Criminal Organisations Disruption) Amendment Act 2013, which was passed on 16 October 2013.[72][73] The club's Brisbane chapters subsequently disbanded.[74]
Bandidos members Kevin Douglas Hill and Luke James Dyer, who were recruited by the club in jail, were sentenced to seven and five years’ imprisonment, respectively, for dealing methamphetamine and cannabis from their shared house in Eagleby in May 2014.[75]
Blair Raymond Thomsen, president of the Bandidos Sunshine Coast chapter, was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison in August 2017 for extortion. He had pleaded guilty in January 2017 to extorting a motorcycle (valued between $16,000-18,000) from a former club member and ordering another Bandidos member, Ricky Wayne McDougal, to take the motorcycle. Thomsen was also ordered to serve thirty-four months of a prison sentence that had been suspended, for the arson of a Rebels clubhouse during a dispute in 2007.[76]
The Bandidos are suspected in two drive-by shootings aimed at intimidation of Rebels members which were carried out in Bethania on 26 February 2017 and Calamvale on 10 March 2017. In relation to the turf war, police raided properties in Coomera, Marsden and Logan City on 30 March 2017, uncovering a Glock pistol, a revolver and drugs, including over two-hundred MDMA pills. Four people were arrested in connection to the incidents.[77]
The president and sergeant-at-arms of the Bandidos Brisbane "Northside" chapter were arrested on 20 December 2019 and charged with attempted murder relating to the wounding of a man who was shot in the face and shoulder over a debt in Samsonvale on 13 July 2019. Police also seized handguns, a sawn-off rifle, ammunition, fake IDs, drugs and gang paraphernalia during raids on two properties.[78]
Mario Vosmaer was bashed and shot at after being lured into an ambush by a suspected Comancheros member at his Archerfield car yard on 18 June 2020.[79]
Two Bandidos members, including the president of the club's Brisbane chapter, were each charged with three counts of extortion, two counts of armed robbery and one count of using a carriage to menace, and arrested during a series of simultaneous police raids across the Moreton Bay suburbs of Caboolture, Scarborough and Burpengary on 1 October 2020.[80]
South Australia
In addition to Queensland, the Bandidos have also been declared a criminal organization by South Australia under anti-gang laws. Ten groups in total were targeted by the legislation, which came into effect in August 2015.[81][82]
Tasmania
Todd Michael Walker, described by police as the Bandidos' Mersey River chapter sergeant-at-arms, was jailed for six months after pleading guilty to firearms trafficking in July 2018. He was convicted of trafficking a Glock nine-millimetre self-loading pistol between April and June 2016.[83]
The Bandidos are designated an outlaw motorcycle gang under laws put in place by the Government of Tasmania in November 2019. The laws ban the wearing of insignias for the Bandidos and four other motorcycle clubs.[84][85] Two Bandidos members also became the first to be charged under anti-consorting laws for convicted offenders passed in September 2018 when they were arrested in November 2019.[86]
Two members of the Hobart Bandidos chapter were arrested on 16 June 2020 and charged with trafficking a controlled substance following a joint operation between Tasmania Police's Serious Organised Crime Division and the Federal Police National Anti-Gangs Squad. The investigation began after more than seven-hundred grams of methylamphetamine was seized aboard the Spirit of Tasmania in December 2019.[87] On 30 June 2020, the chapter president was also arrested and charged with trafficking offences.[88]
Victoria
A feud between the Bandidos and the Vikings Motorcycle Club began in May 1995 after the Vikings resisted a forced amalgamation by the Bandidos. The Vikings' clubhouse in Ballarat was strafed with gunfire and, in an apparent retaliation, a Bandidos member was targeted in a hit-and-run road incident.[89] The police initiated Operation Barkly in an attempt to stem the violence, and two undercover police officers infiltrated the Ballarat Bandidos chapter as part of the operation, becoming full-patch members on 21 October 1997. As Bandidos members, the pair were involved in over thirty drug deals in three states. On 11 December 1997, approximately one-hundred police officers carried out a series of coordinated raids against the club in four states, arresting nineteen people and seizing around $1 million of drugs and $6 million of precursor chemicals in the manufacture of drugs. Also confiscated were numerous weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle. Bandidos members Peter Skroke and Andrew Michlin were sentenced to six months in prison for methamphetamine trafficking.[90]
Bandidos enforcer Ross "Rosco" Brand died in hospital on 23 October 2008, seven hours after being shot in the head as he left the Bandidos' clubhouse in Geelong.[91] Club associate Paul Szerwinski was also wounded in the shooting. Rebels affiliate John Russell Bedson was convicted of Brand's killing and sentenced to a maximum of twenty-three years in prison in March 2011, while his half-brother, Derek Bedson, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to at least eight years in prison.[92] The attack was carried out in retaliation after a fight broke out between a Death Before Dishonour (DBD, a Rebels-affiliated club) member and a Bandidos prospect earlier that day; the DBD bikie was arrested while the Bandido was not.[93]
Stephen Jones, a former member of both the Rebels and the Bandidos who reportedly left the Bandidos on good terms in 2008, was bashed and robbed of a car and two motorcycles at his Epping, Melbourne home by Bandidos members Taniora Tangaloa, Jack Vaotangi and Jasmin Destanovic on 15 January 2009. Tangaloa, Vaotangi and Destanovic were convicted of armed robbery, aggravated burglary and intentionally causing serious injury in January 2014. Tangaloa and Destanovic were sentenced to eight years' imprisonment while Vaotangi was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years'.[94]
Bandidos national sergeant-at-arms Toby Mitchell survived being shot six times outside a gym near the Bandidos clubhouse in Brunswick, Melbourne on 28 November 2011.[95] He subsequently spent weeks in intensive care, underwent thirty operations and lost a kidney, gall bladder and most of his liver.[96] The shooting remains unsolved, although the Prisoners of War, a Hells Angels-affiliated prison gang, has been linked to the crime. Mitchell survived another attempt on his life when he was shot in the arm as he walked into the clubhouse of the Diablos – a Bandidos support club – in Melton, Melbourne on 1 March 2013.[97] This shooting has also gone unsolved, with the Hells Angels or associates again being suspected. Mitchell left the Bandidos due to ill health in November 2013[98] and went on to join the Mongols in April 2019.[99]
Bandidos members Luke Paul Maybus and John Peter Walker were convicted of manslaughter for the killing of Michael Strike, a man who had been drunkenly harassing Maybus' pet pitbull outside the Bandidos' clubhouse in Melbourne and who was subsequently dragged inside by the pair and beaten to death on 24 May 2014. In March 2016, Maybus and Walker were sentenced to ten and eight-year prison terms, respectively. A third man, Joseph Girgis, was sentenced to six months in prison for assisting Maybus in the removal of Strike's body from the club's premises.[100]
A man was arrested after police seized steroids and a loaded firearm during a raid of the Bandidos Melbourne chapter clubhouse on 1 August 2019. A property in Doveton was also searched as part of an operation by Echo Taskforce, a police group assigned to bikie-related crimes.[101]
Belgium
The Bandidos are designated a criminal motorcycle gang by Belgium's Federal Police.[102]
At the request of Dutch authorities, Belgian police searched a property in Borgloon in May 2015 as part of an operation against the Bandidos that also included raids carried out in the Netherlands and Germany.[103]
Bandidos members were among a number of people arrested in Limburg on 28 September 2020 as part of an investigation into a large-scale drug trafficking ring, which began after a shipment of almost 3,000 kilograms of cocaine was discovered at the Port of Antwerp in late 2019. Dozens of police raids led to the seizure of millions of euros in cash, gold and luxury cars.[104]
Canada
The Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC) has designated the Bandidos an outlaw motorcycle gang.[105] The club operated in Canada between 2000 and November 2007, with chapters in Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec. The Bandidos' Canadian chapters went defunct due to infighting, law enforcement efforts, and pulled status from the club's American leadership.[106]
Alberta
Joseph Robert "Crazy Horse" Morin, president of the Edmonton chapter of the Rebels, contacted the Bandidos with the aim of patching over in October 2001[107] and the Edmonton Rebels became a Bandidos hangaround club in 2003. On January 30, 2004, Morin – by then a probationary Bandidos member – and hangaround Robert Charles Simpson were shot dead outside an Edmonton strip club.[108] The murders have gone unsolved, although sources close to the investigation speculated at the time that Campbell and Morin were killed by a group opposed to the Bandidos' presence in the city.[109] The Edmonton Bandidos chapter – made up of eighteen-to-twenty members – patched over to the Hells Angels' Red Deer-based nomads chapter in October 2004, effectively tripling the Angels' presence in the province.[110]
An attempt by the Bandidos to establish themselves in Calgary in 2007 ended after a violent assault at a bar by the Hells Angels.[111]
Manitoba
On February 8, 2005, a motorist was run off the road and kidnapped by several men before being taken to an undisclosed Winnipeg address and tortured for several hours. Two members of the probationary Bandidos chapter in the city – Ronald Charles Burling and Jason Llewellyn Michel – and another two men – Josh Adam Curwin and Billy Jo Ducharm – whom police were unable to identify as connected to the club were charged with aggravated assault and abduction.[112] Michel pleaded guilty in October 2006.[113]
Ontario
Project Amigo, a fifteen-month joint investigation into the Bandidos in Ontario and Quebec by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), and the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) culminated in a series of raids on June 5, 2002 and led to the arrests of most club members in Ontario, including national president Alain Brunette. The operation ended the criminal influence of the club in both provinces, and left the Bandidos is Ontario with only fifteen members who were consolidated into a single chapter based in Toronto, although its members were in fact scattered all over southern Ontario.[114]
Bandidos member George "Crash" Kriarakis was assaulted by a dozen members of the Hells Angels outside a restaurant in Woodbridge in June 2003.[115]
Four Bandidos members and prospects – Cameron Acorn, Pierre "Carlitto" Aragon, Randy Brown and Robert "Bobby" Quinn – pleaded guilty to partaking in the killing of drug dealer Shawn Douse, who was beaten to death at the apartment of Bandidos prospect Jamie "Goldberg" Flanz in Keswick on December 6, 2005. In January 2008, Brown received a life sentence for second-degree murder, Acorn and Quinn were sentenced to nine years' imprisonment for manslaughter, and Aragon was sentenced to seven years' for aggravated assault.[116]
On April 8, 2006, four vehicles containing the bodies of eight murdered men were discovered in a farmer's field outside of the hamlet of Shedden. Six of the men killed in what became known as the Shedden massacre[117] were full members of the Bandidos Toronto branch, including the president of the organization in Canada; they were Luis Manny Raposo, John Muscedere, Jamie Flanz, George Jessome, George Kriarakis, Frank Salerno, Paul Sinopoli and Michael Trotta. The suspects in the case, Michael Sandham, Marcelo Aravena, Frank Mather, Brett Gardiner, Dwight Mushey and Wayne Kellestine, were also full members or probationary members (also known as "prospects"), in what police described as an internal cleansing of the Bandidos organization No Surrender Crew Canada (NSCC). The victims were brought to the farm of Kellestine, where they were held captive before being systematically led out of his barn and murdered execution-style. On October 30, 2009, after eighteen hours of deliberation a jury in London found the six suspects guilty on forty-four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of manslaughter.[118] These murders closed the chapter on the Bandidos Canada "No Surrender Crew" and ended any hopes of Bandido dominance in the country.
Hells Angels members Remond "Ray" Akleh, of the Ottawa-based Nomads chapter, and Mark Cephes Stephenson, of the Oshawa chapter, were charged on September 28, 2006 with murder conspiracy and counsel to commit murder for an alleged plot to murder Bandidos national president Frank "Cisco" Lenti. Although Hells Angels member and police informant Steven Gault testified that he was recruited to be the hitman in the plot against Lenti, Akleh and Stephenson were ultimately acquitted on January 19, 2009.[119] Lenti refused an offer of police protection when informed of the alleged plot, but he did start carrying around a handgun.[120] On December 2, 2006, Lenti fatally shot Hells Angels West Toronto chapter sergeant-at-arms David "Dread" Buchanan and wounded two other club members – Dana Carnnagie and Carlos Virrili – after he was confronted at a strip club in Vaughan where he worked as a security consultant.[121] Lenti pleaded guilty to manslaughter and two counts of aggravated assault, and was sentenced to six years in prison in June 2008.[122]
Quebec
The Montreal-based Rock Machine patched over as the Bandidos Quebec chapter in December 2000 amidst the Quebec Biker War, a turf war against the more powerful and better organized Hells Angels, which was fought between 1994 and 2002. This war prompted the over-matched Rock Machine to align itself with the Bandidos.[123][124] Not all members approved of the patch-over. Some defected to other clubs while others remained with the club but hoped to restore their sovereignty.[125] The biker war, which was initiated when the much smaller Rock Machine formed an affiliation – "the Alliance" – with Montreal crime families such as the Pelletier clan and other independent dealers who wished to resist the Angels' attempts to establish a monopoly on street-level drug trade in the city,[126][127] ended with mass killings by the Hells Angels,[128] plus public outcry over the deaths of innocent bystanders[129] resulted in police pressure including the incarceration of over a hundred bikers.[130] The law enforcement operation Project Amigo, which began in 2001 originally as an investigation of the Rock Machine, led to the arrest of every Bandidos member in Quebec in June 2002, effectively ending the club's presence in the province.[131]
Denmark
According to the National Center of Investigation, the Danish Bandidos are involved in a wide range of crimes, including drug dealing, extortion, fraud, tax evasion, robbery, weapons trafficking, money laundering, the sale of stolen goods, and violent crimes.[132] The Bandidos have ten chapters and approximately one-hundred-and-fifty members in Denmark,[133] and have traditionally recruited members of Danish ethnicity, although this has changed somewhat in recent years.[134] The club has links to the country's Turkish mafia.[90]
The forerunner to the Bandidos in Denmark was the Morticians, a club founded in 1984. The Morticians were initially a support club of the Hells Angels but by 1988, both groups had transformed from motorcycle enthusiasts and small-time criminals into more sophisticated criminal organizations, and disputes between the groups led to a feud. After merging with other clubs rejected by or opposed to the Hells Angels, the Morticians rebranded as the Undertakers, establishing two chapters; "Northland" (based in Stenløse) and "East Coast" (in Hørsholm).[133] In 1992, the Undertakers contacted Bandidos leadership in the United States and France – where the club's only European chapter at that point was based – seeking membership. After serving as prospective members for a short time, the Undertakers were patched over by the Bandidos on 17 December 1993. In August 1995, the Bandidos' "Northland" chapter became the club's head chapter in Europe.[135] Between 1994 and 1997, there were at least thirty-six break-ins at Danish and Swedish Army installations; at least sixteen Bofors anti-tank missiles, ten machine guns, around three-hundred handguns, sixty-seven fully-automatic rifles, two-hundred-and-five rifles of various calibres, hundreds of hand grenades and land mines, and seventeen kilograms of explosives plus detonators were stolen. Police believe the Bandidos or their support clubs were responsible for the majority of the thefts.[136]
A turf war that began in January 1994 between the Morbids Motorcycle Club and the Hells Angels in southern Sweden would later escalate into what would be known as the Nordic Biker War when the Morbids aligned with the Bandidos, sparking a three-year-long gang war between the clubs for control over the drug trade in the Nordic countries. After incidents in Sweden, Finland and Norway, the war reached Denmark on 26 December 1995 when between five and ten Bandidos members attacked and severely beat two Hells Angels at a restaurant in Copenhagen.[137] On 10 March 1996, six Hells Angels ambushed and shot a group of Bandidos at Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen, killing Bandidos "Southside" chapter president Uffe Larsen and wounding another member, a prospect and a hangaround. A twin attack was also carried out the same day at Forebu airport in Norway where a Bandidos member was wounded.[138][139] Six Hells Angels members and associates were convicted in connection and sentenced to a total of fifty-three years in prison, and one was given a life sentence.[140] On 17 April 1996, the Hells Angels "South" chapter clubhouse in Snoldelev was hit with an anti-tank missile; the fourteen members inside were able to avoid serious injury. Four hours later, a second missile hit the clubhouse of the Hells Angels-affiliated Avengers in Aalborg; four gang members sleeping in the building were unhurt by the missile, which did not detonate.[141] Morten "Træben" ("Wooden Leg") Christiansen, the imprisoned vice president of Bandidos "Southside" chapter, was left in critical condition with shrapnel wounds and burns when assailants broke into Horserød State Prison and threw a hand grenade through his cell window which exploded under his bunk on 26 April 1996.[142][143] Hells Angels Copenhagen member Brian "Bremse" Paludan Jacobsen lost a leg and two associates were also wounded when two grenades were thrown in front of his home from a moving car in Brønshøj on 7 May 1996.[144][145] Bandidos member Jim Verner was found dead on 10 July 1996 in Nykøbing Falster.[146] A bomb weighing half a kilo was found underneath his car nearby and defused by an explosive ordnance disposal unit.[147] On 21 July 1996, a six-kilogram remote-controlled bomb hidden in a sports bag and placed in front of the Hells Angels' clubhouse in Ydre Nørrebro, Copenhagen failed to explode when the radio-controlled trigger malfunctioned, potentially saving the lives of four Hells Angels bikers in the building as well as residents of the street. The device was later detonated by police.[147] The fingerprints of Jacob "Hip Hop" Andersen, a member of the Bandidos chapter in Dalby, were found on the sports bag by police technicians. He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison in 1997.[148] On 25 July 1996, Jørn "Jønke" Nielsen, a founding member of the Hells Angels' Copenhagen chapter, was subjected to a murder attempt while sleeping in his cell at Jyderup State Prison. Two-to-four men infiltrated the prison and, after failing to gain access to Nielsen's locked cell, fired over twenty rounds from an automatic weapon through the cell window, shooting Nielsen twice in the abdomen and once in the arm.[149] On 5 August 1996, a civilian was shot in a drive-by shooting in Greve; police believe the victim was mistaken for a Hells Angels member living in the same building. An associate of the Bandidos "Southside" chapter was wounded after being shot in his car as he left the clubhouse near Haslev on 14 August 1996. On 4 September 1996, a bomb planted on the car of a Hells Angels member exploded after falling from the vehicle in a parking lot; the bomb detonated three meters away, damaging several cars but causing no injuries.[147] On 12 September 1996, a car bomb exploded outside a Hells Angels clubhouse situated in a residential neighborhood of Roskilde, causing extensive damage but no injuries.[147] The location was attacked again in the early hours of 22 September 1996, with over two-hundred-and-fifty machine gun rounds fired at the building from an adjacent football pitch, wounding one Hells Angels member.[150] On 6 October 1996, the Hells Angels were holding their annual "Viking Party", attended by around one-hundred-and-fifty people, at their fortified compound in Copenhagen when the building was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade from a Carl Gustaf M3 84 mm recoilless anti-tank rifle, which had been stolen from a Swedish Army depot during a burglary on 19 February 1994. Hells Angels prospect Louis Linde Nielsen and Janne Krohn, a twenty-nine-year-old woman who resided in the neighborhood and accepted an invitation to the event, were killed. Among the fifteen injured was Hells Angels Denmark national president Christian Middelboe.[151] Bandidos member Mickey Borgfjord Larsen was brought into custody on 24 October 1996 after his fingerprints were found on a machine gun thrown away by assailants in Fælledparken following the rocket attack; he was charged with the attack on the Hells Angels party as well as the attempted murder of Jørn Nielsen at Jyderup prison, but was released after four months in custody due to a lack of evidence.[152] Bandidos prospect Niels Poulsen was convicted of carrying out the attack in March 1998 and sentenced to life imprisonment.[153] Bandidos and Hells Angels were involved in a shootout outside a Copenhagen restaurant on 1 December 1996; no one was injured. Two members of the Bandidos came under gunfire while trapped in a private yard in Valby, Copenhagen on 5 December 1996; one biker was injured. On 9 December 1996, a member of the Bandidos' Aalborg chapter survived being shot ten times as he waited in his car.[137] Hells Angels member Kim Thrysøe Svendsen was shot and killed while driving in Vejgaard, Aalborg when unknown perpetrators fired three rounds at his car on 10 January 1997. Around five-hundred Hells Angels bikers from across Europe and the United States attended Svendsen's funeral.[154] Several members of the Bandidos were charged with the killing, but due to lack of evidence, the prosecution had to give up the case, after which the suspects were released.[155] The murder remains unsolved. On 2 February 1997, a prominent Bandidos member remanded in a detention center in Køge survived an attempt on his life when an anti-tank missile fired at his cell failed to explode.[156] Another Bandidos member survived a murder attempt the following day on Amager after being shot while walking to his car. The shooting took place near a kindergarten.[157] The Hells Angels again attempted to kill a jailed rival by firing an anti-tank missile into a police cellblock in Holbæk on 18 February 1997, destroying two cells but leaving a Bandido and another inmate unhurt.[158] On 1 April 1997, a Hells Angels associate was wounded by a shot from a 9mm pistol, fired at him from another car as he waited at a stop light in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen. Later that day, two men were arrested on suspicion of perpetrating the shooting; one of the men was a Bandidos member.[159] On 1 May 1997, an attempt was made on the life of a Bandidos member being held at Vestre Prison; an electric razor given to him containing ninety-five grams of explosives would have exploded had it been plugged in, but the device was suspected and seized by prison authorities before it was used.[160] Three more attempted murders were carried out against Bandidos members in Denmark that month; one was shot in Køge and another had a Molotov cocktail thrown at his apartment in Copenhagen, while three men associated with the club were shot in Aalborg. On 7 June 1997, four Bandidos members were shot outside a restaurant in Liseleje; Bjørn Gudmandsen was killed and three were wounded.[161] Hells Angels member Vagn Smidt was convicted of the murder and three attempted murders, and sentenced to life in prison on 20 November 1998.[162] The final incident in the biker war took place on 11 June 1997 when a Bandidos clubhouse in Dalby was attacked with a hand grenade. The war formally ended on 25 September 1997 when Bandidos Europe president Jim Tinndahn and his Hells Angels counterpart Bent "Blondie" Svane Nielsen announced that they had signed a peace agreement and shook hands in front of Danish television news cameras.[163] As part of the truce, the clubs agreed to cease expansion in the Nordic countries and to divide territories of criminal activity. Although terms of the agreement have since been broken by both sides, the Bandidos and Hells Angels have largely been able to avoid conflict.[164]
Claus Bork Hansen, a former senior member of the Bandidos who was expelled from the club and later aligned himself with the Hells Angels, was killed after being shot twenty-six times as he returned home from restaurant with his girlfriend in Vanløse, Copenhagen on 21 March 2001.[165] He had previously been warned by police that he was on the Bandidos' hit list and was offered protection, which he refused.[166] Four Bandidos members were charged with his murder; Jens Christian Thorup was found guilty of killing Hansen on 11 April 2002, while Kent "Kemo" Sørensen, Karl Martin Thorup and Peter Buch Rosenberg were cleared.[167] Thorup was initially sentenced to life in prison but his sentence was reduced to sixteen years on 15 January 2003.[168] Hansen had made a pact with his close friend and fellow Bandidos member Mickey Borgfjord Larsen, where they mutually promised to take revenge in the event of the other's murder. Larsen threatened the lives of several high-ranking Bandidos following Hansen's death and was subsequently killed himself in a car bombing in Glostrup on 17 September 2003.[169][170] Bandidos members Jacob "Hip Hop" Andersen and Lennart Elkjær Christensen were convicted of murdering Larsen and were sentenced to life in prison on 13 June 2005.[171] Their sentences were reduced to sixteen years on 6 January 2006.[172]
Bandidos associate Flemming Jensen was beaten and stabbed to death by Hells Angels members in a tavern in Aalborg on 12 August 2001. Hells Angels prospect Jesper Østenkær Kristoffersen confessed to stabbing Jensen eight times and was sentenced to six years in prison for manslaughter on 7 February 2002,[173] while Jørn "Jønke" Nielsen was sentenced to four years on 18 September 2002 for aggravated assault resulting in death as witnesses claimed that he had kicked and stomped on Jensen.[174]
On 21 June 2002, two Bandidos members – Jacob Daniel Winefeld and Robin Nielsen – committed a particularly serious bank robbery against a Nordea branch in Ålsgårde. Michael Pichard, a bystander who tried to stop the robbery by overturning the robbers' motorcycle and blocking the bank entrance with his car to prevent them from fleeing, was shot and killed by Winefeld. On 2 October 2003, Winefeld and Nielsen were sentenced to sixteen years in prison for the robbery and the murder of Michael Pichard.[175]
Nyborg State Prison inspector Jens Tolstrup was assaulted in the garden of his residence in Nyborg by two men armed with baseball bats on 6 November 2002. Tolstrup left his role as prison inspector in November 2003.[176] On 12 February 2004, there was an attempted hit-and-run on a prison official outside the prison. Two months later, three men associated with the Bandidos were arrested and charged with both assaults.[177] On 13 October 2005, club hangarounds Mikael Sartil and Rasmus Vanman Munk Jensen were convicted of the assault on Tolstrup and the attempted assault. Michael Kenneth Pedersen, vice-president of the Hillerød Bandidos chapter, was acquitted of planning Tolstrup's attack but was found guilty of the attempted assault. Sartil, Jensen and Pedersen were sentenced to nine, eight and six years in prison, respectively.[178]
On 15 November 2002, Bandidos prospect Stig Bartholdy was sentenced to fourteen years in prison at the Vestre Landsret (High Court of Western Denmark) for attempting to smuggle cocaine and hashish from the Netherlands to Denmark, and for producing counterfeit money. Nine men and one woman were sentenced to a total of ninety years in prison in a comprehensive narcotics case for smuggling amphetamine, MDMA, hashish and cocaine.[179]
Bandidos member Thomas Brian Jensen was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison on 16 November 2011 after he pleaded guilty to selling two kilograms of amphetamine and three-hundred grams of cocaine, and for possessing two guns with ammunition at his residence in Haslev when he was arrested on 29 June 2011.[180]
Renewed tensions between the Bandidos and Hells Angels resulted in an outbreak of violence in September 2012. After two stabbings and an attempted hit-and-run, a seventeen-ton unmanned truck with a brick on the accelerator ploughed into a property used by the Bandidos on Amager on 18 September 2012. Police suspect the incident was carried out by the Hells Angels support group AK81. The following day, a hundred bikers – including Bandidos Europe president Michael "The Chef" Rosenvold – were arrested as police raided eighteen locations across Zealand in an attempt to assert control ahead of a what they believed to be an imminent gang war. Guns, knives, axes, drugs and anabolic steroids were also seized in the raids.[181]
The Bandidos and Hells Angels remained the leading criminal organizations in Denmark until law enforcement efforts against motorcycle gangs allowed numerous upstart immigrant gangs – such as Black Army, Black Cobra, Bloodz, Brothas and Loyal to Familia (LTF) – to seize control of markets and territories previously dominated by the bikers.[182] In addition to street gangs, newly arrived motorcycle gangs also challenged the Bandidos' and Angels' control of the biker scene. In 2013, the Dutch club Satudarah opened a chapter in Bagsværd. This was then followed by the influx of three German groups; Black Jackets, Gremium and United Tribuns. Police have speculated that the Dutch and German gangs expanded into Denmark to enter the country's criminal market, and that the Bandidos and Hells Angels initially permitted this encroachment on their territory as they wanted to avoid a turf war which would draw police attention to their illegal activities.[183] According to a report by Politiken in 2016, there were at least ten major gangs active in Denmark.[184] That same year, the Rigspolitiet stated that there were a total of ninety-six gangs in the country.[185]
A war between the Bandidos and the Black Cobra gang erupted in Køge after Oruc Türkoglu, a leading Black Cobra figure in the city, was wounded in a stabbing by Bandidos members on 29 January 2013. A few days later, shots were fired at the home of another Black Cobra member southwest of Copenhagen, although no one was injured. In the early hours of 6 February 2013, a prospective Bandidos member was shot in the knee after being attacked by three Black Cobra members at his home in Herfølge. Later that day, a tattoo parlor in Køge associated with the Bandidos was riddled with gunfire by two young men on a moped. A fifteen-year-old Black Cobra member was charged with attempted murder after police raided twenty-three properties and recovered two firearms during a crackdown on the gang environment on 28 February 2013.[186] A truce was reached and the conflict was brought to an end after four representatives from each gang met on 29 March 2013.[187]
Bandidos sergeant-at-arms Peter Buch Rosenberg and another club member, Michael Fuhlendorff, were convicted of weapons possession after police discovered two loaded guns, a silencer, binoculars and other equipment at a cottage in Dronningmølle where Rosenberg was living, protected by two bodyguards, during a conflict with the Brothas Souljaz gang. The find came shortly after gunshots had been fired at a Bandidos clubhouse in Hvidovre in March 2013. At the Østre Landsret (High Court of Eastern Denmark) in March 2014, Rosenberg was sentenced to one year and six months' imprisonment and Fuhlendorff was sentenced to two years and nine months', which included a sentence for additional crimes.[188]
In July 2013, a conflict erupted between the Bandidos and the Westside Nation, a breakaway group of former members of the club's "Westside" chapter in Næstved who defected following a dispute over the club's national leadership. Although no one has been charged for the crimes, it is believed that the Westside Nation was responsible for a number of arson attacks that took place in the autumn of that year, including a Molotov cocktail attack on a tattoo parlor owned by a Bandidos member in Rødovre on 3 October 2013 and the burning of a commercial property in Kvistgård on 20 November 2013. A Westside Nation figure was assaulted and stabbed in his home in Næstved in November 2013.[189] On 9 December 2013, Edin Fakic, the brother of a Westside Nation member, was shot and killed with a machine gun in his Næstved apartment after being mistaken for his gang member sibling Nermin Fakic. Bandidos member Martin David Larsen was convicted of the murder in December 2015, although his accomplices in the killing were never identified.[190] The Westside Nation disbanded in 2014, with some members returning to the Bandidos and others patching over to Satudarah, forming the core of the club's Copenhagen chapter. This resulted in the beginning of a gang war between the Bandidos and Satudarah.[23] Three shootings involving Bandidos and Satudarah took place in Næstved between 23 September and 4 October 2016, leaving three men wounded.[191] Two teenaged Bandidos associates were convicted of attempted murder for the 23 September 2016 shooting of a Satudarah member and were sentenced to eight and nine years in prison in May 2018.[192] Further shootings took place on 12 and 13 October 2016, with two homes being shot at. Police believe the shootings are related to a conflict over control of the town's drug market.[193] Two Bandidos members were stabbed after a mass brawl with Satudarah members broke out at a boxing event in Herlev on 27 October 2017. An upsurge in violence ensued in the following days. On 29 October 2017, two shots were fired through the window of the home of a Bandidos member in Nørre Alslev, and a Bandidos member was assaulted by six men in Søborg the following day. The brother of a Satudarah member was tracked down and beaten shortly after. Attacks with Molotov cocktails and firearms were carried out on Bandidos clubouses in Køge and Hvidovre on 31 October and 2 November 2017, respectively. On 4 November 2017, a car was burned at Satudarah's clubhouse in Egedal.[194] On 29 March 2019, Bandidos prospect Jim-Bo Poulsen was convicted of the attempted murder of a hashish dealer and Satudarah member who was shot six times in Næstved on 13 November 2017. Another prospect, Kenneth Bech Simonsen, was acquitted of taking part in the shooting but convicted of unlawful possession of a weapon.[195] In September 2019, Bandidos "Westside" chapter president Kristian "Biggie" Beck Hansen was sentenced to eleven-and-a-half years in prison for organizing the attempted murder.[196] Hansen had previously been sentenced on 29 March 2019 to two-and-a-half years in prison for trafficking seventy-five kilograms of hash.[197] In February 2020, Hansen was acquitted of the attempted murder after an appeal. Poulsen's sentence was also reduced from twelve years from eight.[198] Denmark's three dominant motorcycle gangs – the Bandidos, Hells Angels and Satudarah – reportedly entered into an agreement to counteract disputes in June 2019. One rule of the agreement states that the clubs must avoid recruiting former members of one another as this has been a frequent cause of conflicts. The agreement was made after membership of the LTF street gang was made illegal by authorities, and the bikers became concerned that they could be targeted with similar legislation.[199]
Beginning in 2014, a feud involving the Bandidos and the Black Army resulted in numerous shootings and assaults in Næstved, where both gangs have clubhouses. Arising from a dispute over the hash market in Næstved, the conflict commenced on 4 October 2014 when a shot was fired at the president of the Bandidos "Westside" chapter through a window in his home. Two people were convicted for the act. After several clashes during the spring and summer of 2015, the rival groups attempted to settle the dispute during a meeting at a restaurant in the city on 4 September 2015, in which leaders from both factions participated. After a period of peace, the conflict briefly flared up again in December 2015.[200] On 27 December 2015, five Black Army members were chased into a police station after being shot at following a confrontation with Bandidos bikers. The following day, Black Army members attacked Bandidos with pepper spray. The Black Army shot six rounds at the Bandidos' clubhouse in the early morning of 30 December 2015, and the Bandidos responded by firing five shots at the Black Army clubhouse in the early evening hours of 1 January 2016.[201] Due to the risk posed to ordinary citizens of Næstved by the gang war, South Zealand and Lolland-Falster Police decided to prohibit access to the clubhouses of both groups for a two-week period beginning 2 January 2016, a ban made possible by the Rockerloven, an anti-gang law passed during the Nordic Biker War in 1996.[202]
An attack on a man in the Vapnagård housing estate in Helsingør on 30 June 2015 was linked to a conflict between the Bandidos and the immigrant gang LTF. The victim, an immigrant, was airlifted to Rigshospitalet.[203] The following week, on 6 July 2015, shots were fired at the Bandidos' clubhouse in the town. The building was hit, although no one was injured.[204]
A Bandidos member holding the rank of krigsminister (“minister for war”) within the club was convicted of the 11 November 2015 triple murder of Philip Rasmussen, Suhaib Jaffar, and Mike Patrick Winther, members of a gang known as the Vanløse Group who were killed with a revolver and a shotgun as they slept in their apartment in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen. Two non-club members were also convicted as accomplices to the crime; one was found guilty of accessory to murder, and the other of possessing firearms. The trio were convicted in May 2017. A fourth man, also a Bandidos member accused of taking part in the murders, committed suicide in custody in June 2016.[205][206] According to the court transcripts, the murders were a culmination of a conflict between a member of the Bandidos and the victims that may have taken place weeks before.[207]
The Bandidos have also been involved in a turf war with Gremium in North Zealand after Gremium opened a chapter in the traditional Bandidos stronghold of Helsinge on 3 February 2017 by patching-over the Local BrotherHood (LBH) gang.[15] In June 2017, a man associated with Gremium was convicted of assaulting a Bandidos associate in the Skærød area of Helsinge on 2 April 2017.[208] In May 2017, a police operation led to the arrests of twenty-one people after two groups of gang members from Bandidos and Gremium clashed in the town.[209] A senior Gremium member survived a shooting attempt in Helsinge in November 2017.[15] In May 2018, two men associated with the Bandidos were sentenced to prison after being convicted of a hit-and-run on a Gremium member that took place in November 2017.[210]
Nicolas Nielsen, a member of the Holbæk Bandidos chapter, was sentenced on 17 September 2020 to three years and six months in prison after being convicted of aggravated assault for an attack on a man at a property near Gørlev in September 2019, which left the victim with several facial injuries, a skull fracture and several other injuries.[211]
Finland
The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) defines the Bandidos as an organized criminal group.[212] The Bandidos are the largest motorcycle club in Finland, with around two-hundred-and-forty members and fourteen chapters.[213] Groups affiliated with the Bandidos in the country include the Diablos and X-Team.[214]
The Bandidos' predecessor in Finland was the Undertakers Motorcycle Club, founded by Marko Hirsma in August 1994. The Undertakers established relations with the Bandidos in Denmark and became a probationary chapter in August 1995 before being patched over on 5 October 1996.[215] The Nordic Biker War, which began in January 1994 between Morbids MC and the Hells Angels in southern Sweden and later escalated into a war over control of the drug trade in the Nordic countries between the Hells Angels and Bandidos after the Morbids aligned with the latter, saw several violent incidents around Helsinki in 1995 and 1996. The vice-president of Cannonball MC, a club allied with the Hells Angels, was wounded by an Undertakers member in a shooting at restaurant on 1 April 1995. On 25 July 1995, Undertakers members fired a rocket-propelled grenade stolen from a Swedish Army weapons depot at the Hells Angels' clubhouse in northern Helsinki. Two Bandidos (former Undertakers) members were later convicted for the attack; Kai Tapio Blom was sentenced to six years' imprisonment and Antti Tauno Tapani was given four years'. When Bandidos Finland president Marko Hirsma arrived at a Helsinki court house for the trial of Blom and Tapani on 27 September 1995, he was attacked and beaten by Hells Angels and Cannonball members. A Hells Angels-owned tattoo parlour was later destroyed in retaliation.[215] On 12 February 1996, two grenade attacks were carried out against the Hells Angels; two people were badly injured when a restaurant in Tapanila belonging to a Hells Angels members was bombed, and in a second attack a motorcycle garage in Hernesaari owned by a Hells Angels member was also targeted.[216] On 1 March 1996, two Bandidos members were shot outside their clubhouse in Kamppi; club vice-president Jarkko Kokko died sixteen days later in hospital from his wounds, and the other survived.[217] Two Hells Angels prospects were convicted for the murder; Ilkka Ukkonen was sentenced to twelve-and-a-half years' imprisonment and Jussi Penttinen was given six years'.[218] An unexploded bomb was found at Hells Angels' clubhouse on 12 May 1996. Another attack on the same location a week later, 18 May 1996, also failed when two drunken men – neither of whom were Bandidos members – blew themselves up while attempting to throw hand grenades into the clubhouse. Both men survived but were badly wounded. Marko Hirsma was sentenced to nine months in prison on 12 July 1996 after being convicted of orchestrating the attempted attack.[219] In the final public incident of the conflict, Bandidos and Hells Angels fought at a music festival north of Helsinki on 29 June 1996. Due to the imprisonment of leading bikers, the violence moved off of the streets and into prisons. Members of the Bandidos and Hells Angels were involved in a prison fight in July 1996, and in November 1996, Marko Hirsma was attacked and beaten in Sörka Prison amidst a struggle for control of the prison drug trade fought between the Bandidos and a rival group. Mass brawls also ensued at Sörnäinen Prison. Hostilities between the Bandidos and Hells Angels formally came to an end on 25 September 1997 when a truce between both groups was brokered.[215] Since the end of the biker war, the once-rival clubs have operated in parallel rather than competing with each other.[220]
In October 1999, a Bandidos member and a hangaround were involved in a shootout in Lahti with a member of the Rogues Gallery gang who suffered a leg wound. On 18 January 2000, members of the Bandidos and their support club Black Rhinos MC were present at the men's trial and visited a nearby restaurant during a recess in the proceedings where they were ambushed by three gunmen. Two members of the Bandidos' "Downtown" Helsinki chapter, chapter president Björn Isaksson and Sakke Pirra, and Black Rhinos member Juha Jalonen were killed, while three others were wounded.[221] When the trial resumed, both Bandidos charged with the shooting and wounding of the Rogues Gallery member were convicted; Kai Tapio Blom was sentenced to two years and six months in prison, and Andrei Antoni Jensko was given a sentence of two years and seven months. In April 2001, three Rogues Gallery members who were former Cannonball bikers – Pertti Hämäläinen, Sami Koivula, and Eikka Lehtosaari – were convicted of the restaurant triple murder and sentenced to life in prison.[222][223]
The Finnish Bandidos came close to disbanding in 1999 due to an internal feud concerning Marko Hirsma's leadership. Membership of the club dwindled to just seven – of whom, four were imprisoned at the time – and reinforcements were required from Norway and Denmark. Hirsma reestablished his former club Undertakers MC after being expelled from the Bandidos that year, and also made contact with the Outlaws. The Bandidos continuously pursued their former president due to his consorting with other clubs after his expulsion, beating him and robbing him of his motorcycle in Germany in the spring of 2000, and strafing his home with submachine gun fire in the autumn of that year.[215] Kai Tapio Blom and Andrei Antoni Jensko, both recently paroled from prison, killed Hirsma during a gunfight in front of his home in Helsinki on 20 October 2001.[224] On 11 March 2002, Blom and Jesko were convicted of murdering Hirsma, attempting to murder Hirsma's wife and endangering several bystanders including Hirsma's child; they were sentenced to life in prison and ordered to pay Hirsma's widow and child a total of more than $50,000 in compensation for non-material damage.[225]
Bandidos Helsinki chapter president Pentti Tapio Haapanen and vice-president Harri Tapio Reinikainen were convicted of shooting and wounding a Rogues Gallery member and a member of the Lepakko Gang in Sörnäinen, Helsinki in July 2005. In December 2005, Reinikainen was sentenced to four years and three months' imprisonment for attempted murder and firearms possession, and Haapanen was sentenced to two years and two months' for aggravated assault and firearms possession. Police stated that the motive for the shootings was to avenge the restaurant murders in Lahti in 2000.[226][227]
In January 2008, two Bandidos and five X-Team members in Espoo were among twenty-one people charged with importing and distributing amphetamine.[228]
The Southwest Finland District Court convicted and sentenced several Bandidos members and associates to prison terms on 4 October 2013 for their part in a drug ring. The two main perpetrators were sentenced to more than seven years in prison for aggravated drug offenses, while others received varying sentences. The convictions related to a haul of over four kilos of amphetamine which was recovered in Nakkila and was to be distributed in the Turku area, as well as the illegal cultivation of cannabis.[229]
In March 2017, two members of the Bandidos' Tampere chapter – including the chapter president – and four X-Team members were prosecuted for a number of crimes relating to fraud, embezzlement and forgery which took place between 2013 and 2014.[230]
A Bandidos member, a club hangaround and a member of the X-Team were convicted in October 2016 of violently collecting a debt from a man on two occasions in Tampere in 2014. Bandidos supporter Hupu Viljo Oliver Laiti was sentenced to three years and two months' imprisonment, X-Team member Antti Niilo Raatikainen was sentenced to two years', and an unnamed Bandidos member was sentenced to one year's suspended prison sentence.[231]
A leading member of the Bandidos in Tampere fled to Thailand in the autumn of 2016 when he became sought by authorities on suspicion of distributing twenty-five kilograms of amphetamine and cocaine. After being located by Finnish police in Thailand, he decided to relocate again to Sweden. He was arrested upon arrival at Stockholm Arlanda Airport on 20 March 2017 and was subsequently turned over to Finnish authorities.[232]
In March 2017, charges against six members of the Bandidos' Nokia chapter accused of membership of a criminal group, and importing liquid amphetamine from Germany to Finland, were dropped as the Pirkanmaa District Court did not find sufficient evidence. However, club members were convicted on lesser charges, including drug and firearms offences.[233]
France
The Bandidos' first chapter in Europe was founded in Marseille on 20 September 1989 when the club patched over the Club de Clichy.[223] This expansion provoked a war with the Hells Angels, who were already established in France. Bandidos member Jean-Paul Debono « Choquette » was wounded in the arm when his tattoo parlour in Bouches-du-Rhône was targeted in a shooting attack on 3 April 1991, and Bandidos Marseille chapter president Michel "Bubu" Burel survived a shooting attempt on 29 May 1991.[234] In June 1991, the clubhouse of the Wanted Bikers, a club in Haute-Savoie affiliated to the Bandidos but wishing to instead begin an association with the Hells Angels, was shot at and the motorcycles parked outside were destroyed. On 22 August 1991, Michel Burel was killed in a drive-by shooting by four men on motorcycles, and two other Bandidos were wounded. On 6 February 1992, police, acting on intelligence supplied by an informant in the Buccaneers – a Hells Angels support club – arrested eight Hells Angels members in Grenoble in connection with the shooting, as well as members of the Buccaneers who supplied the stolen motorcycles used in the attack.[52] A man received injuries to the back and legs after an explosive device was detonated at the entrance to the Hells Angels chapter in Grenoble on 7 December 1991.[235][236]
Members of the Bandidos' Marseille, Montpellier and Metz chapters organized the 7 May 1995 shooting of two members of the Apocalypse Riders, a Hells Angels support club, in Créancey which left both men wounded and one, Jérôme Parent, paraplegic. The attack was carried out as retaliation after around thirty Hells Angels members passed through the territory of a Bandidos prospect club in Dijon the day before. The subsequent police operations disbanded the Bandidos chapter in Montpellier as well as the prospect club in Dijon. On 25 March 1999, Bandidos Metz chapter vice-president Dominique "Jésus" Colas was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to eighteen years in prison for the shooting.[237][238]
In 2003, two hundred kilograms of cannabis were seized aboard a boat in Saint-Malo, bound for the Channel Islands and then on to Great Britain. A Bandidos member was arrested and imprisoned in Rennes in connection with the haul.[239]
Two members of the Bandidos' Dijon chapter were incarcerated following a search of one of their homes in August 2013 in which approximately fifteen rifles, handguns and machine guns were found. The search followed a violent incident involving firearms that broke out in the corridors of a building in Dijon, pitting the Bandidos against drug traffickers.[240][241]
Four members of No Surrender's Metz chapter were beaten and had their colors stolen by members and associates of the Bandidos' Strasbourg chapter at a motorcycle rally in Pont-à-Mousson on 11 March 2018. Ten Bandidos members and associates were arrested in connection with the attack in Alsace and Haute-Marne in February 2019. During the arrests, a member of the Bandidos support club Bomber-Raiders was wounded after opening fire on police in Saint-Dizier; he was subsequently charged with attempted murder.[242][243]
Three Bandidos members, including the president of the club's Dijon chapter, were given prison sentences by the Dijon Criminal Court in July 2019 following their convictions for the violent robbery of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle from another club in Chevigny-Saint-Sauveur.[244]
Germany
German police have accused the Bandidos of involvement in illegal gambling, prostitution, arms dealing, extortion, money laundering and drug trafficking.[245] The Bandidos expanded into Germany in June 2000 when the club patched over seventeen chapters of the Ghostrider's, Road Eagles and Destroyers that had been serving as probationary chapters since the previous year. In March 2012, seventy-one Bandidos chapters were known to police in the country.[246] The Bandidos in Germany are supported by the Chicanos, Diablos and X-Team.[247]
A gang war involving the Bandidos and the Hells Angels began around 2004 after the Bandidos moved into Hells Angels territory across northern Germany.[248] The war also spread to the east of the country in 2006 when both clubs expanded into the Cottbus area.[249] In March 2006, a group of Hells Angels raided a Bandidos clubhouse in Stuhr where they assaulted and robbed five Bandidos members. Three were given prison sentences and another eleven were handed down suspended sentences at a trial which took place in Hanover on 16 December 2008.[250] In November 2006, a major police operation in Cottbus led to the arrests of 128 Bandidos members, preventing an imminent confrontation with the Hells Angels.[251] On 27 May 2007, five Hells Angels members attacked, robbed and injured a Bandidos member in Hohenschönhausen, Berlin. Nineteen police vehicles were in use and shots were fired. According to sources, two high ranking Hells Angels members – the former president of the Angels' nomads chapter and the chapter's treasurer and former road captain – were involved in the incident.[252] A Bandidos member left a Hells Angels member critically injured by shooting him twice after being attacked in the presence of his wife and child in Cottbus in February 2008.[253] The Bandido was cleared of attempted manslaughter over the shooting in November 2008 as the court deemed his actions self-defense. He was, however, convicted on drug trafficking charges and of injuring two Hells Angels members with pepper spray at a disco in Forst in February 2007. He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison.[254] On 11 June 2008, two Bandidos members were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a Hells Angels member in Ibbenbüren.[255] Reports say they drove to his Harley-Davidson shop where they shot him dead on 23 May 2007. After the first day of a related lawsuit on 17 December 2007, riots between the two gangs and the police had been reported.[256] Delegates from the Bandidos and Hells Angels met at a Magdeburg hotel on 10 December 2008 to discuss a peace treaty between the clubs, although no agreement could be concluded.[257] On 8 October 2009, Bandidos member Rudi Heinz "Eschli" Elten was shot to death by Hells Angels prospect Timur Akbulut in Duisburg.[258] Akbulut was convicted of manslaughter over Elten's killing and was sentenced to eleven years in prison on 30 August 2010.[259] Around fifty Hells Angels armed with clubs stormed a bar frequented by Bandidos in Duisburg's red-light district on 31 October 2009, leaving the bar destroyed and several people injured. Around a hundred police officers were needed to stop the violence. Several hours later, a hand grenade was thrown through the window of a Hells Angels clubhouse in Solingen. The grenade failed to explode, and police later detonated the device in a controlled explosion.[248] In February 2010, around seventy ethnic Turkish Bandidos members and supporters in Berlin in an unprecedented move defected and joined the Hells Angels, forming a sub-chapter known as "Hells Angels Nomads Türkiye". This triggered a gang war in Berlin that lasted from February to April 2010.[260] The warring clubs formally arranged to a truce when Bandidos Europe vice-president Peter Maczollek and Hells Angels Hanover chapter president Frank Hanebuth met at a lawyer's office in Hanover on 26 May 2010. The agreement came amidst the threat of a nationwide ban on both clubs.[261][262]
Bandidos and Chicanos members engaged in a large brawl with an Arab criminal family in Reinickendorf on 6 August 2007 which resulted in a biker and two Arabs being injured, one seriously. Baseball bats, machetes and knives were used in the confrontation, which escalated from a verbal disagreement. Four bikers were arrested, and Spezialeinsatzkommando (SEK) was deployed during the subsequent investigation, which included a search of a clubhouse.[263]
The Bandidos have been involved in a conflict with the Rock Machine in Ulm and Neu-Ulm which started after Suat Erköse, a former Bandidos member, formed a Rock Machine chapter in the area in early 2011. A group of Bandidos attacked the home of Rock Machine president Erköse in May 2011, destroying his car and firing shots into his house. A former Bandidos member was sentenced to six years and nine months' imprisonment in March 2015 after he was convicted of leading the group.[264] An accomplice had previously been sentenced to three years and six months' in January 2014.[265] The struggle for territorial supremacy between the clubs erupted again in March 2012 when a pub frequented by the Rock Machine was targeted in an arson attack and a Bandidos pub was burned down in retaliation two weeks later.[266][22]
On 26 April 2012, the authorities of North Rhine-Westphalia banned and disbanded the Aachen chapter of the Bandidos, and three support clubs. In the following action carried out by the North Rhine-Westphalia Police, thirty-eight properties were searched, in which firearms and stabbing weapons were found. The display of Bandidos symbols and the wearing of Bandidos regalia was also forbidden in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Northrhine-Westphalia government found its actions necessary because the Bandidos wanted to build up their criminal supremacy through racketeering and violence.[267][268]
A passer-by was left wounded after being shot in the chest during a street battle between the Bandidos and Hells Angels in Düsseldorf on 31 December 2014. The violence began when a group of Hells Angels tried to storm a club where a man associated with the Bandidos was working as a bouncer. A Hells Angels member was also wounded by gunfire.[269]
A nationwide ban on wearing the emblems of the Bandidos and eight other motorcycle clubs – including the Chicanos, Diablos and X-Team – in public came into effect on 16 March 2017.[270]
Five members of the Hagen Bandidos chapter as well as the president of the Iron Bloods 58, a Bandidos support club, were charged in August 2019 with committing violent crimes during a conflict with the rival Freeway Riders Motorcycle Club. In June 2018, Bandidos members allegedly stormed a lounge where they pepper sprayed a man wearing a Hells Angels t-shirt. Then, on 28 September 2018, Bandidos attacked a Freeway Riders member, who escaped in his car, with batons and firearms. A Bandidos member carried out an attempted drive-by shooting on another biker the following day. Investigators also found cocaine, brass knuckles and stun guns during searches of Bandidos' residences.[271]
Ireland
On 20 June 2015, Road Tramps member Andrew "Odd" O'Donoghue was shot dead by Alan "Cookie" McNamara, a member of the Caballeros – a Bandidos prospect club. McNamara killed O'Donoghue in a revenge attack after he was knocked to the ground and stripped of his colours by three Road Tramps members outside a pub in Doon. He was convicted of O'Donoghue's murder on 31 September 2017 and was given a mandatory life sentence.[272] The Caballeros were reportedly granted full membership to the Bandidos as a result of McNamara's actions.[273] Road Tramps members Seamus Duggan, James McCormack and Raymond Neilon pleaded guilty to the robbery of McNamara and were given probation in October 2017.[274]
The first Bandidos chapter in Ireland was formed in Limerick in October 2016. The initiation ceremony was attended by influential Bandidos members from across Europe, and was observed by Gardai and Belgian police.[275]
Netherlands
The first Bandidos chapter in the Netherlands was established in Sittard on 15 March 2014 following a patch-over of a No Surrender chapter, and the club has since been under continuous attention by the Dutch law enforcement.[276] The Dutch Bandidos are closely allied with Satudarah, as both clubs have the Hells Angels as common enemy.[10] The day after the chapter's formation, an attack with explosives was carried out on the home of Bandidos president Harrie Ramakers, who was previously the vice-president of the Hells Angels' nomads chapter before defecting.[277] The explosion not only left Ramakers' house badly damaged, but also surrounding houses and parked cars. On 22 March 2014, another attack on his home damaged only a window of his house and a car window.[278] A second Bandidos chapter, also a former No Surrender branch, was founded in Alkmaar on 26 March 2014.[279] A fire was started at the Alkmaar chapter clubhouse located in Heerhugowaard on 29 March 2014, the first night in which there was no police surveillance on the premises.[280] On 7 May 2014, another attack was carried out on the residence of a member of the Bandidos, this time in the town of Susteren. Five houses and a car were damaged in the explosion, which was caused by a hand grenade.[281]
Harrie Ramakers was sentenced to ten months in prison on 21 July 2014 for prohibited weapons possession and possession of drugs. He and four other men, three of whom were members of the Bandidos, were arrested in March and police discovered weapons in his car and a large quantity of drugs at his residence in Geleen.[282] Ramakers is furthermore a suspect in several murder investigations.[283]
On 27 May 2015, a large police operation and raids on thirty locations across Limburg, Brabant and neighboring regions in Belgium and Germany, including several homes of club members, led to the discovery of five rocket launchers, many automatic weapons, explosives and illegal fireworks.[284] The raid was part of an ongoing police investigation involving large-scale drug trafficking; twenty people were arrested and accused of synthesizing and dealing of hard drugs, extortion and money laundering.[284]
A third Dutch Bandidos chapter was formed in Nijmegen in January 2017.[285]
On 20 December 2017, the Court of Utrecht, on the application of the public prosecutor, declared the activities of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club to be contrary to public order and, on the same grounds, banned and dissolved its Dutch faction.[286] "The prohibition will stop behavior that may disrupt or disrupts our society," was stated by the judge. The ban took effect immediately.[287] However, on 24 April 2020, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands ruled that, while the national branch of the club remains banned, local chapters are permitted to continue.[288]
New Zealand
New Zealand's first Bandidos chapter was founded in South Auckland in 2012 by club members deported from Australia.[289] A second chapter was established after the club patched over a branch of the Rock Machine in Christchurch in November 2013. At that time, it was reported that there were more than twenty full-patched members in the country.[290]
Three Bandidos associates – Jesse James Winter, Alvin Rivesh Kumar and Nicholas Andrew Hanson, a club prospect – were imprisoned for a combined twenty-five years and nine months in November 2017 for the assault and stabbing of a man in Christchurch on 30 August 2015. Stephanie Jane McGrath, the woman who planned the attack, was also sentenced to six years in prison.[291]
Bandidos member Adrian Le'Ca was sentenced to fifteen years and nine months' imprisonment in February 2018 after pleading guilty to charges relating to the importation and possession for supply of methamphetamine and cocaine. Another man, Fred Uputaua, was sentenced to thirteen years and nine months in prison in September 2017 while Le'Ca's sister, Queenie Anne Matthews, and nephew, Meinata Piahana, were also convicted in the case and both were sentenced to eleven months' home detention in November 2017. The convictions followed Operation Cossack, a seven-month joint operation between Counties Manukau Police and the New Zealand Customs Service which recovered 14.9 kg of methamphetamine and 1.9 kg of cocaine in October 2016.[292] Police stated that the drugs had been imported with the help of the Thailand chapter of the Bandidos.[293]
Norway
The National Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS, or Kripos) considers the Bandidos an organized criminal motorcycle club.[294] According to figures found in the Norwegian National Police Directorate for 2014, 62% of Bandidos members in Norway had previous criminal convictions.[295] The club has five chapters and approximately forty members in the country.[296] The Norwegian Bandidos are affiliated with the Chicanos[297] and X-Team,[298] and are allied with the Outlaws.
The Bandidos were founded in Norway in 1995 during the Nordic Biker War, a conflict in which they feuded with the Hells Angels over territory and control of the drug trade.[300] The war started in southern Sweden in January 1994 when the Morbids Motorcycle Club, a small club with only six members, refused to capitulate to the Hells Angels and instead aligned themselves with the Bandidos. This affiliation drew the Bandidos into the conflict, which reached Norway on 19 February 1995 when there was a shooting involving members of Rabies MC and Customizers MC in Oslo. Customizers fired at Rabies members riding in a car, leaving one man wounded. Rabies later patched over to the Bandidos, while the Customizers joined the Hells Angels.[296] On 17 December 1995, two leading members of the Bronx '95 – a club founded in 1995 that was given hangaround status by the Bandidos and was intended to be the precursor to a Bandidos chapter in Trondheim – were shot and wounded while riding in a car. Three Hells Angels members were indicted for the shooting, but were acquitted of attempted murder in December 1996.[301] The incident effectively stopped the founding of a Bandidos chapter in Trondheim, a city that has since been seen as Hells Angels territory.[302] On 15 January 1996, a bomb was detonated at the clubhouse of Hells Angels hangaround club Screwdriver MC in Hamar, and on 18 January 1996, the Hells Angels Norway headquarters in Oslo was firebombed.[303] On 10 March 1996, the Hells Angels carried out twin attacks on Bandidos members returning from a weekend meeting in Helsinki, Finland; one attack took place at Kastrup Airport outside Copenhagen, Denmark, and the other at Oslo's Fornebu airport. The target of the ambush at Fornebu was Lars Harnes, who was shot and wounded with a handgun in the airport's arrivals lobby.[303] Hells Angels Oslo chapter president Torkjell "Rotta" ("Rat") Alsaker was found guilty of shooting Harnes and sentenced to three years in prison in November 1998.[304][305] On 15 July 1996, Bandidos Sweden members Michael Garcia Lerche Olsen and Jan Krogh Jensen were travelling to the Bandidos chapter in Drammen when they were intercepted and ambushed by Hells Angels members at Mjøndalen. Several shots were fired from a semi-automatic 7.65 caliber pistol, one of which hit Krogh Jensen in the head and killed him. It has been speculated that Lerche Olsen, a former member of the Hells Angels' Copenhagen chapter who was expelled from the club and later went on to become president of the Bandidos' chapter in Kattarp, near Helsingborg, was the intended target.[306] A Hells Angels member was acquitted of murdering Krogh Jensen on 11 June 1998[307] and the investigation into the killing was closed in 2000.[308] On 19 July 1996, four days after Krogh Jensen's death, a car occupied by a Hells Angels member and a companion was targeted in a drive-by shooting in Oslo; no one was injured. Two people associated with the Bandidos were charged in the case, and police believe the shooting was a retaliation for the killing of Jan Krogh Jensen. A car bomb exploded outside the Hells Angels clubhouse in Oslo on 30 October 1996; no persons were injured. A motorcycle shop in Alnabru, Oslo, where two Bandidos members worked, was bombed on 13 March 1997. No one was injured, and two men were charged in the case.[309] On 4 June 1997, the Bandidos' clubhouse in Drammen was reduced to rubble when a van bomb was detonated outside, killing Irene Astrid Bækkevold, a fifty-one-year-old woman who was driving past in her car. Her husband was among twenty-two people injured, none of whom were motorcycle club members.[310][311] After a four-and-a-half year investigation, seven men associated with the Hells Angels, including the Angels' national president Torkjell Alsaker, were convicted for their roles in the bombing.[312] Irene Bækkevold was the second civilian killed in the biker war, and the subsequent public backlash and increasing scrutiny from law enforcement forced the Bandidos and Hells Angels to end their conflict. The war formally concluded on 25 September 1997, as Danish representatives from both clubs called a truce and agreed to divide territory of criminal activity into geographical areas, and to cease expansion in the Nordic countries.[313] Since then, a cold war over territory and members has emerged in Norway, with the Bandidos allied with the Outlaws on one side, and the Hells Angels allied with the Coffin Cheaters on the other.
Central figures of the Bandidos in Drammen started a debt collection agency called Bandidos Kapital & Invest in September 1999.[314] The company closed in February 2000 after it had been the subject of numerous police complaints and allegations of improper practices.[315]
After its founding in 2003, the Bandidos chapter in Kristiansand quickly took control of the local amphetamine market by coercing the local dealers into sourcing their drugs from the Bandidos or paying a 20% tax. A wave of violence and threats was carried out against a substantial number of drug dealers in the area.[316]
The president of the Bandidos' Fredrikstad chapter was sentenced to three years in prison for drug possession in November 2007. He had been found in possession of nineteen-and-a-half kilograms of hashish in November 2005. Two Moroccan dealers whom the Bandidos president sourced the drugs from were also convicted.[317]
Bandidos members were involved in a bar brawl that left a pub proprietor and two patrons injured in Fredrikstad on 17 April 2008. Five club members left the scene in a car which was later found at the Bandidos' clubhouse in Borge, where seven people were arrested.[318] In April 2009, three were found guilty of partaking in the violence and sentenced to six months', one-hundred-and-twenty days' and ninety days' prison sentences, while another two were acquitted.[319]
In October 2009, five Bandidos members were among eight men convicted of the extortion of an auto shop in Fredrikstad which took place in January 2009. The five bikers had been hired by three former employees of the shop to pressure the owner for both money and assets. One of the convicted men was sentenced to three years' imprisonment, while the other seven were sentenced to six months'.[320] After a retrial in January 2011, the five club members were again found guilty and were sentenced to a combined twenty-one years in prison.[321]
Three former Bandidos members were acquitted of anti-organized crime legislation charges, but were convicted of extortion and accepting money to carry out contract killings along with a fourth man by Jæren District Court in July 2013.[322]
Twelve Bandidos were arrested as approximately one-hundred-and-twenty club members gathered in Oslo for an international meeting in August 2013. Four Swedish bikers with criminal records were arrested and deported, three Norwegian members were arrested for drug possession, and six others – five German and one Polish – were refused entry to the country upon arrival at the airport.[323]
Police carried out a raid at the Bandidos' clubhouse in Randesund, Fredrikstad on 11 April 2014 and arrested two men and a woman. The raid was executed after another man had been found in possession of a small quantity of drugs after leaving the clubhouse.[324]
Several people were arrested following a drug raid on the Bandidos' clubhouse in Porsgrunn on 23 January 2020.[325]
Portugal
On 24 March 2018, a group of Bandidos members meeting at a restaurant in Prior Velho were attacked by approximately twenty members of the Hells Angels armed with knives, sticks, iron bars and hammers. Seven people were injured, including three in serious condition. One of those most seriously hurt was a German Bandidos chapter president. Authorities believe a potential target of the attack was Mário Machado, a member of the Bandidos-affiliated Red & Gold gang and former leader of the Portuguese Hammerskins, who escaped harm as he was late to the meeting.[326] Machado previously shot in the leg and wounded Pedro "Thor" Silva, president of the Hells Angels' nomads faction on the Algarve, in 2009 after Silva did not authorize the formation of a skinhead group in the area.[327]
Sweden
Police in Sweden believe that the Bandidos Motorcycle Club makes money primarily through illegal activities, including drug offenses, violent crimes, protection activities, robberies, extortion, weapons offenses, illegal gambling, money laundering and other economic crimes.[329] According to a police report from 2018, 88% of Bandidos members in the country are convicted criminals, having been convicted of a total of 2,096 crimes.[330] The Swedish Bandidos have run extensive extortion rackets by offering restaurants and bars "protection" from other criminal gangs.[331] The club has eight chapters in Sweden[332] and has prominently recruited members of non-Swedish ethnicity.[333] Affiliates of the Bandidos in Sweden include the Chicanos, Diablos and X-Team.[334]
The Bandidos were established in Sweden after patching over the Morbids Motorcycle Club in Helsingborg as a probationary chapter in January 1994. The chapter formally became full-patch Bandidos on 28 January 1995.[335] The Morbids had previously acted as a Hells Angels hangaround club and vied with other clubs for the right to become the Angels' first Swedish chapter; the Malmö-based Dirty Dräggels proved victorious in that contest when they were patched over on 27 February 1993. The Morbids were later offered a path to Hells Angels membership on the condition that they merge with the Rebels, a rival club with whom they had previously clashed. Rejecting the offer, they instead aligned with the Danish Bandidos chapter. Shortly after the founding of the Helsingborg Bandidos, the Rebels – a Hells Angels support club at that point – carried out a shooting attack on the Bandidos' clubhouse. A second attack on the clubhouse was launched a week later, on 26 January 1994, when Hells Angels member Thomas Möller fired a high-caliber submachine gun from the roof of a van, resulting in a Bandidos member losing a finger.[136] On 13 February 1994, fifteen Danish Bandidos members were ambushed by Hells Angels associates at a club in Helsingborg, resulting in thirteen gunshots being fired and Hells Angels-affiliated Rednecks member Joakim Boman being shot dead. At least two others – Hells Angels hangaround Johnny Larsen and a Bandidos member – were wounded.[216] This signaled the beginning of the Nordic Biker War, a turf war involving the Bandidos, Hells Angels and numerous support clubs which escalated into Finland, Norway then Denmark and lasted for over three years. The Bandidos and their support clubs are suspected by police in at least thirty-six break-ins that occurred at Swedish and Danish Army weapons depots between 1994 and 1997, resulting in the theft of at least sixteen Bofors anti-tank missiles, ten machine guns, around three-hundred handguns, sixty-seven fully-automatic rifles, two-hundred-and-five rifles of various calibres, hundreds of hand grenades and land mines, and seventeen kilograms of explosives plus detonators.[136] A Bandidos member killed a fellow inmate at Helsingborg prison in November 1994.[336] On 17 July 1995, Bandidos Sweden president Michael "Joe" Ljunggren was shot and killed while riding his motorcycle on the E4 south of Markaryd in Småland. He had been returning from a meeting with the Undertakers Motorcycle Club – a Finnish club that became a Bandidos probationary chapter the following month before being patched over in October 1996 – in Helsinki. Ljunggren's murder remains a cold case,[337] and there have been differing theories surrounding his killing. One assumption is that he was followed and killed by the Helsinki Hells Angels (Undertakers members fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the Angels' clubhouse in Helsinki eight days after Ljunggren's murder in a presumed revenge attack), while another is that he was killed by his own club in an internal feud.[333] The Bandidos fired an anti-tank missile into the Hells Angels' clubhouse in Hasslarp on 31 July 1995. Dan Lynge, a Danish police officer who infiltrated the club, carried out surveillance on the compound with a Swedish Bandidos prospect in the days before the attack.[338] On 6 December 1995, a shootout involving two vehicles took place on a motorway outside Helsingborg, leaving a Hells Angels member with a leg wound.[137] A hand grenade left by the car of a Hells Angels hangaround in Helsingborg on 29 February 1996 failed to explode. Another gunfight between two cars happened in Helsingborg on 5 March 1996, resulting in a Bandidos prospect suffering serious injuries.[137] In the early hours of 11 April 1996, the Hells Angels' compound in Hasslarp was targeted again, this time with two rockets. The clubhouse was severely damaged, but no-one was injured or killed.[339] Bandidos Sweden president Mikael "Mike" Svensson was shot in the leg while driving near the Hells Angels' Hasslarp headquarters on 23 July 1996. His car was hit by several bullets.[340] On 4 August 1996, a Hells Angel was injured by gunfire while driving his car in Helsingborg. On 27 August 1996, sixteen rounds were fired at the car of a Bandidos member in Stockholm, although he was not hit.[303] The following day, the vice-president of the Hells Angels' Helsingborg chapter survived being shot three times after he was attacked by three men at his garage. Bandidos and Hells Angels are believed to have exchanged fire on a Helsingborg street on 15 September 1996.[137] A rocket was fired on the Hells Angels' Helsingborg chapter on 24 September 1996, and a similar operation was conducted against the same clubhouse four days later. A missile launcher was tied to the second story of an adjacent abandoned factory, and a string rigged to the trigger and attached to the Bandidos' getaway car pulled the cord. The rocket cut through electrical wires over a railway track before hitting the compound. Two hand grenades and a smoke grenade were also thrown into the building. There were no injuries in either attack.[136] On 3 October 1996, a large explosion outside the Hells Angels clubhouse in Malmö injured four people and caused widespread damage to buildings within several hundred yards. Four bikers inside the building were not injured, and twenty families had to be evacuated from their homes.[341] A member of the Bandidos' Helsingborg chapter was involved in a shootout outside his home on 13 January 1997 with two people who fled by car. A member of the Stockholm Hells Angels later visited a hospital with a bullet wound. On 22 March 1997, yet another anti-tank missile was fired at the Helsingborg Hells Angels clubhouse. This time, the grenade failed to explode. The clubhouse of the Aphuset Motorcycle Club – a Bandidos support club – was bombed on 28 April 1997. A simultaneous bombing of a garage used by Bandidos supporters was also carried out. Internal pressure, as well as increased scrutiny from law enforcement and public backlash – particularly in Denmark and Norway, where innocent bystanders had been killed in attacks by bikers – brought an end to the conflict, which officially ceased on 25 September 1997 when the rival clubs established a truce.[137]
The Bandidos and Hells Angels remained the dominant gangs in Sweden until the mid-2000s when street gangs began to appear, challenging the bikers' monopoly over the country's criminal rackets.[342] In response to the changing criminal landscape, the Bandidos formed the X-Team, a street gang whose members act as the Bandidos' foot soldiers and carry out street-level crime.[343]
Bandidos Sweden president Mehdi Seyyed was sentenced to nine years in prison on 14 January 2009 for two counts of attempted murder. He bombed two cars in Gothenburg, on 19 and 20 September 2006, with hand grenades, in acts of revenge as the victims had previously testified against him. Four other Bandidos members received shorter sentences for their involvement in the attacks. Testimony in the case was provided by a former X-Team member whom Seyyed had previously assaulted.[344]
Andreas Olsson, president of the Stockholm Bandidos, was arrested in October 2006 after 3.6 kilograms of amphetamine were found in his backpack as he returned from Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was sentenced to a ten-year prison sentence.[345]
Patrick Huisman, the president of the Ludvika Bandidos and a former member of White Aryan Resistance and the Brödraskapet, was arrested in April 2007 and charged with extortion. He was sentenced to one year and six months in prison.[346]
In July 2007, Bandidos Säffle chapter president Anders Gustafsson was charged with the attempted extortion of kr500,000 from a construction company.[347] He was sentenced in 2008 to four years in prison after being convicted of extortion and the serious assault of a man who suffered a bleed on the brain.[345]
Ahmed "Manolo" Mohamed, a member of both the Stockholm Bandidos and the criminal Bredängs network, was convicted of grievous assault in 2013 after he stabbed a person wearing a Hells Angels jersey.[348]
In April 2018, police discovered a haul of thirty-seven firearms – including thirteen automatic rifles – and 7,400 rounds of ammunition of various kinds, seventeen plastic explosives, forty-two sticks of dynamite, remote-controlled triggers, 131 tear gas grenades, and ten kilograms of drugs – cocaine, amphetamine, MDMA, cannabis and tramadol – in two stolen cars in a parking garage in Skärholmen, Stockholm. Police raided the Bandidos' Stockholm chapter clubhouse on 7 November 2018 and arrested the branch vice-president Ozan Sarikaya, who was charged with drug and weapons crimes, and violation of the Flammable and Explosive Goods Act. On 2 July 2019, Sarikaya was acquitted on all counts at Södertörn District Court.[349]
Bandidos member Aghvan Baghdasaryan, and his friends Nima Morravej and Sammy Hyväoja, were involved in a shooting of rival drug dealers in Borlänge on 11 January 2019 that left one man dead and another wounded. Although investigators were unable to prove who fired the weapon, the trio were convicted of assisting in murder and assisting in attempted murder and were each sentenced to fourteen years in prison in October 2019.[350]
Gothenburg Bandidos president Johnson Bogere and his brother, former boxer Patrick Bogere, fled the country when they became sought by authorities for the kidnapping and torture of two men in western Sweden. After several months on the run, the pair were apprehended in Malaga, Spain in July 2019 and subsequently extradited to Sweden.[351] In December 2019, Patrick Bogere was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and Johnson Bogere was sentenced to two years', while several others were also convicted in the case.[352]
A gang war involving the Bandidos and No Surrender in Östergötland County has resulted in several bombings and shootings. The conflict reportedly began as the Bandidos acted to prevent the newly arrived No Surrender from establishing a presence in the drug market. An explosion at a residential building in Linköping on 7 June 2019 is believed by police to be an attack by the Bandidos on a No Surrender member.[353] Two No Surrender bikers, including a leading member, were shot dead outside a nightclub in Norrköping on 5 December 2019.[19] Another No Surrender member was targeted in a bombing on 22 January 2020 in the Hageby area of Norrköping.[354] On 9 April 2020, two No Surrender members were shot in a car outside a Norrköping fast food restaurant; one was killed and the other wounded.[355]
Switzerland
On 11 May 2019, Bandidos members clashed with members of the Zürich Hells Angels chapter and the Broncos – a Hells Angels support club from Bern – in Belp. A dozen Bandidos were celebrating a member's birthday when they were attacked by the Hells Angels, who summoned support from the Broncos, allegedly for wearing their colors at a motorcycle rally in nearby Murten earlier that day. Three men were injured, including one who needed emergency surgery after being shot in the chest.[356] Thirty-four people were arrested.[357]
Thailand
The Bandidos operate seven chapters in Thailand.[52] While membership is predominantly Thai,[358] Australian,[359] Danish[360] and Swedish[361] club members are also active in the country.
A Danish Bandidos member was shot and killed in Bangkok in July 1996. A member of the Hells Angels was subsequently imprisoned.[296]
In June 1997, a woman was killed when a bomb exploded in the Bandidos headquarters in Bangkok.[296]
Three Bandidos members – British nationals Peter Watkins-Jones and Crispin John Grandvil Papon-Smith, and Danish national Kim Lindegaard Nielsen – were arrested by the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) in Koh Samui in July 2006, suspected of money laundering and bribery. All major charges against the men were dropped due to a lack of sufficient evidence.[359] Nielsen was instead sentenced eighteen months in prison for coercing another person to traffic in drugs.[362]
During a crackdown on foreign gangs in the country launched by the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) in 2014, Thai police stated that the Bandidos are active in Koh Samui and Phuket, where they are involved in illegal land development.[363]
Australian Bandidos member Derek Paul Gibson and a Dutch national, Adrianus van Gool, were arrested in Chiang Mai and charged with extortion and attempting violence in March 2017 after another Australian man informed police that the pair were threatening to kill his family over unpaid debt-recovery fees.[364][365]
United States
The Bandidos have been designated an outlaw motorcycle gang by the U.S. Department of Justice.[8] The club is involved in drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, prostitution, money laundering, explosives violations, motorcycle and motorcycle-parts theft, intimidation, insurance fraud, kidnapping, robbery, theft, stolen property, counterfeiting, contraband smuggling, murder, bombings, extortion, arson and assault.[4] The Bandidos partake in transporting and distributing cocaine and marijuana, and the production, transportation and distribution of methamphetamine.[366] Active primarily in the Pacific, Southeastern, Southwestern and the West Central regions, there are an estimated eight-hundred to one-thousand Bandidos members and ninety-three chapters in sixteen US states.[367][3] Club membership is predominantly white and Hispanic.[368] The Bandidos are supplied with drugs by Los Zetas,[369] and have also associated with the Outlaws in criminal ventures.[8] The Bandidos' rivals include the Hells Angels,[17] Mongols[18] and Vagos.[24]
Arkansas
Twenty-two members and associates of the Bandidos were arrested in Little Rock on February 22, 1985 as part of a nationwide law enforcement operation against the club. Five of those arrested were charged under the Continuing Criminal Enterprise Statute, the first time the law had been used in Arkansas.[370] An investigation into the Bandidos' involvement in drug trafficking began sixteen months earlier and involved the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).[371] A court-authorized wiretap was used at the Bandidos' Little Rock chapter clubhouse as part of the investigation.[372]
Four Bandidos members from Texas – Isidro Savala Zerrata, Jr., David Thomas Wood, Keith Allen Miller and Thomas Fisher Goodnight – were stabbed by Massachusetts Hells Angels members after an altercation broke out between the groups in a parking lot in Eureka Springs on July 29, 2007. Two of the Bandidos members were critically injured.[373] In March 2009, Hells Angels members Jason David Gallo, Eric Claudio Franco, Robert Thomas Reynolds and Derek Jeffrey Roy were each sentenced to five year suspended prison sentences and fined $4,000 after pleading guilty to second-degree battery. Plea agreements were also reached for two other Hells Angels, Christopher Michael Sweeney and Manny R. Monteiro, who were unable to attend the hearing; Sweeney was in prison in New York on federal weapons charges, while Monteiro had been deported to Portugal.[374]
Colorado
Bandidos chapters have been established in Denver, Pueblo and Grand Junction. The Bandidos and their support clubs in Colorado are involved in producing and distributing methamphetamine at wholesale and retail levels, in addition to smuggling, transporting and distributing cocaine and marijuana.[375]
Eight Bandidos members and associates in Colorado were indicted on September 13, 2011 on charges of trafficking methamphetamine and cocaine. Five of those – Keith P. Allison, Ronald C. Tenorio, Edward R. Goll, Adan C. Chavez and Tommy Freyta – were arrested during a series of raids in Denver, Golden, Rio Grande County and Thornton on September 27, 2011. A sixth man, Joseph P. Windsor, was already in custody, while another two remain at large. The indictments were related to a law enforcement operation against the Bandidos which resulted in drugs and firearms charges against a total of thirty-nine club members and associates in Colorado and Texas.[376]
Three high-ranking Bandidos members were aming eight people indicted by a Colorado grand jury in January 2015, accused of operating a drug trafficking ring in the Denver metropolitan area. The indictments followed Operation Tick and Flea Collar, an investigation that began in September 2014 and also led to the seizure of two-and-a-half pounds of methamphetamine.[377] National sergeant-at-arms Philip Duran, Denver "Westside" chapter president Lorenzo Sojo, and the chapter sergeant-at-arms Michael Mensen pleaded guilty to violating the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act and felony drug charges. In November 2016, Sojo was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment and Mensen to twenty-four years', but Duran escaped from custody on October 28, 2016 before his sentencing.[378]
Louisiana
The Bandidos have a strong presence in Louisiana. The club's Louisiana branch, which relies on Mexican drug cartels as its primary source of narcotics supply, distributes methamphetamine and, to a lesser extent, cocaine and marijuana, in the state.[379]
Jimmy R. Graves, a member of the Bandidos' Dallas, Texas chapter, was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty in July 1972 to the March 9, 1972 contract killing of National Guard sergeant Charles Edwin Overfield, who was shot dead on Interstate 20 near the Texas state line.[380] Overfield was a witness against Robert Powell, a Bandidos associate charged with the attempted burglary of a Louisiana National Guard armory. Powell was sentenced to thirty years in a state penitentiary for attempted aggravated burglary and bribery of a witness in the trial.[381]
David Wall, identified by law enforcement as the president of the Bandidos in the Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, was shot and killed with a shotgun outside a Bossier City lounge on September 5, 1974.[382] A former club member was indicted in Wall's death but was never brought to trial because the only witness to the killing became a fugitive rather than testify.[381]
In December 1979, Bandidos member William S. "Wheeler" Light was convicted of second-degree murder for the July 21, 1979 killing of off-duty police officer Ronald Euell "Ron" Dean, who was shot in the head at point-blank range through a car window outside a bar in Shreveport. Light was sentenced to life in prison.[383]
Shreveport Bandidos members Lloyd Dale Randolph and James R. Shoemake were shot to death with a 9 mm caliber pistol by Dennis Baker as they beat him with an ax handle at his trailer home in Stonewall on June 1, 1986.[384] Investigators ruled that the killings were self-defense. Randolph and Shoemake, a former Shreveport chapter president, went to Baker's home armed with two handguns and an ax handle to confront him after a dispute concerning the title to a motor vehicle.[385]
Montana
Bandidos member Joe Cancellare was imprisoned for his role in two assaults involving shotguns in Missoula in 1994.[386]
Eleven Bandidos were arrested on May 27, 2003 after kidnapping and robbing Scott Spencer, a member of the rival Kinsmen Motorcycle Club, of his colors at gunpoint in Great Falls. A three-hour standoff ensued when an employee at Spencer's motorcycle repair shop alerted police.[386]
Nine members of the Bandidos' Missoula chapter were among twenty-six club members and associates indicted on a variety of charges at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle, Washington on June 10, 2005 following a two-year investigation by the ATF. Bikers were arrested during a series of raids in three Northwestern states, which resulted in the seizure of narcotics, firearms, U.S. currency, evidence of trafficking in stolen motorcycles and seventy marijuana plants.[387] Missoula chapter president Bernard Russell Ortman was apprehended in Lubbock, Texas.[388] Several Missoula Bandidos were charged with the kidnapping of an individual that took place in May 2003.[389] In April 2006, Ortman and another chapter member, Dale Granmo, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kidnap.[390]
New Mexico
The Bandidos are the most significant motorcycle gang involved in drug trafficking in New Mexico. The club maintains chapters in Albuquerque, Alamogordo, Las Cruces, Silver City and Roswell, and is also responsible for contract killing, extortion, welfare and bank fraud, and arson.[391]
Bandidos national president Jeffrey Fay Pike decided in 2011 to split the Bandidos' Western Hemisphere chapters from the club's international chapters in Europe and Australia, a move opposed by a faction in New Mexico and West Texas led by El Paso, Texas chapter president Ernest "Ernie" Morgas. During a meeting of around seventy club members in Roswell in March 2011, Pike loyalists ambushed Morgas' supporters. After being beaten with weapons and interrogated at gunpoint, Morgas and fifteen other members of the El Paso chapter were expelled from the club.[392][393]
In March 2015, members of the Wheels of Soul and Bandidos engaged in a gunfight outside a restaurant in Albuquerque, leaving a Wheels of Soul member shot and wounded.[394]
Amidst a turf war between the clubs, Vagos member David Andrew Cordova and his son David Ray Cordova fired more than twenty rounds of ammunition at the home of a Bandidos member from a pickup truck in Santa Fe on July 29, 2017. The elder Cordova suffered a gunshot wound during the drive-by shooting.[395]
Bandidos sergeant-at-arms Thomas "Mañana" Giles and club hangaround Michael John Vickery were arrested by the FBI in Albuquerque on October 19, 2017 during a raid in which more than twenty vehicles and trailers were seized. The arrests came as part of an investigation into the trafficking of methamphetamine, stolen firearms and stolen vehicles.[396] Giles and Vickery allegedly sold heroin and methamphetamine to a confidential informant on four occasions between September 8 and September 29, 2017.[397]
At least five instances of violence between the Bandidos and Mongols have taken place since the Mongols founded their first chapter in Albuquerque in 2019, resulting in two killings.[18]
Oklahoma
The Bandidos have a presence in Oklahoma City, Lawton, Shawnee, Tulsa, Elk City, Poteau and Bartlesville, and are involved in gunrunning, retail-level drug distribution and human trafficking, often in conjunction with Mexican drug cartels.[398][399]
Fifteen people were arrested and charged with misdemeanor obstructing justice after members of the Bandidos and Mongols were involved in a brawl in Shawnee on December 20, 2009.[398] The fifteen Bandidos members, their wives and girlfriends sued the city and police of Shawnee in November 2010, alleging more than a dozen state law and constitutional rights violations.[400]
Texas
The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) classifies the Bandidos as a criminal street gang.[401] As of 2008, there are 672 club members in the state.[25]
On December 22, 1972, Bandidos members Donald Eugene "Mother" Chambers, Jesse Fain "Injun" Deal and "Crazy" Ray Vincente abducted drug dealer brothers Marley Leon Tarver and Preston LeRay Tarver in El Paso and drove them into the desert north of the city. There, the two dealers were forced to dig their own graves, after which the bikers shot them with a shotgun and set fire to their bodies. Earlier that day, the brothers had sold baking soda to the Bandidos, claiming it was amphetamine.[402] Chambers, Deal and Vincente were convicted of the murders, with testimony given by Robert Munnerlyn, a club prospect and police informant who was an eyewitness to the event. The trio received life sentences. Chambers, the Bandidos' founder and national president, was paroled in 1983 and retired from the club.[403][52]
Bandidos members Gary Elsworth Lichtenwalter and Glen Alan Wilhelm assaulted Harris County Sheriff's Office deputy Rodney Scott Morgan at a bar in Houston on February 26, 1974. Wilhelm attempted to stab Morgan; the attack was stopped when Houston Police Department officer F. G. Todd drew his pistol. Morgan and Todd were working undercover, investigating a Bandidos member. Lichtenwalter was convicted of aggravated assault and sentenced to five years in prison.[404]
Two seventeen-year-old girls were abducted at gunpoint from a San Antonio nightclub by three Bandidos members and taken to a motel room where two of the men beat and raped them on December 9, 1976. When police and motel security were called to investigate noise coming from the room, both men fled through a window.[405] Charles Edward Tamminen, the Bandidos' national sergeant-at-arms, was apprehended as he fled. He was convicted of aggravated rape on March 14, 1981 and was given a ninety-nine-year prison sentence.[406]
Steven Daniel "Trapper John" Vance, a member of the Ghost Riders Motorcycle Club, was shot and wounded with a shotgun in Dallas on July 9, 1977. A police report filed on the incident indicates that he told investigating officers that he had been shot by Bandidos. The Ghost Riders were initially formed as a Bandidos support club before drifting beyond the Bandidos' control and forming an alliance with the Banshees MC.[407] On January 26, 1979, Vance pleaded guilty to the shotgun wounding of Bandidos member "Big" Jim Bagent and was sentenced to ten years' probation. He was also charged with another two shootings of Bandidos members; the wounding of Ronald Kim Tobin and his nephew Lloyd Tobin, and the killing of Johnny Ray Lightsey. Prosecutors did not ask for his indictments on those charges, however.[408]
Members of the Bandidos were involved in a brawl with patrons of a chili cook-off in Grand Prairie in April 1978 after a young woman claimed she was raped by a Bandidos member. Seven people were hospitalized, some with stab wounds, and eight Bandidos members were arrested on charges ranging from rape to misdemeanor assault. Two were convicted; Ronald Kim Tobin was sentenced to eighteen years' imprisonment for rape, and "Weird" Larry Dale Sparks was sentenced to seven years' for stabbing. Tobin's sentence was overturned by judge Howard Fender in March 1979.[408]
On August 27, 1978, Johnny Ray Lightsey, president of the Bandidos' Fort Worth chapter, was shot six times with a .38 caliber pistol as he waited at a traffic light on his motorcycle and died a short time later at a hospital.[409] Later that day, two Banshees members were each shot twice with a high caliber weapon while riding their motorcycles on Interstate 45 north of Madisonville. Rodney Lee died of his wounds and James Harvey Cleveland was left in a critical condition. Before he died, Lee identified his attackers as three men in a tan Lincoln Continental and claimed that Bandidos had shot him. Aside from the Banshees, Fort Worth police who had allegedly threatened to kill Lightsey on a number of occasions, were also suspects in his murder. An enquiry carried out by a Tarrant County grand jury exonerated police and the district attorney's office in his murder. Ghost Riders member Steve "Trapper John" Vance was later charged with Lightsey's murder but was not indicted by a grand jury.[410]
Bandidos members were implicated in the San Antonio shootings of Assistant U.S. Attorney James W. Kerr Jr., who survived an assassination attempt when nineteen shots were fired into his car on November 21, 1978, and U.S. district court judge John H. Wood Jr., who was killed with a shot from a high-powered rifle on May 29, 1979.[411] Kerr identified three Bandidos as his possible assailants in a police line-up, while over a hundred club members were subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury in the Wood case. Rudolph James "Shakey" Malo, a Bandidos chapter president, was accused of pulling a .357 Magnum pistol on federal agents who raided his apartment on February 10, 1979 as part of the investigation.[412] The Bandidos were vindicated of Wood's murder when drug lord Jamiel Chagra pleaded guilty to hiring contract killer Charles Harrelson to assassinate the judge.[413] Bandidos members were named by Chagra as the men he contracted to kill Kerr, although no one has ever been tried in that shooting.[371]
Two Bandidos – Thomas Lloyd "Hammer" Gerry and Jay Lane Roberts – were charged with the murder of fellow club member "Fat" Jan Colvin, who was found dead in a vacant lot in Irving in November 1978.[408] Roberts was found guilty and sentenced to fifty-five years in prison. Additionally, Gerry and Roberts were among the suspects in the James Kerr shooting.[414]
Bobby Joe Holt, president of the Galveston chapter of the Bandidos, was shot and killed on January 15, 1983. A companion, William Edward Gwaltney, suffered two shotgun wounds to the stomach and legs.[415]
Bandidos member John Keith Bachelor was shot dead during a confrontation with members of the Banshees Motorcycle Club that also left four people hospitalized in Porter on April 30, 1983. The fight began after Bandidos ordered Banshees to remove their colors.[416] Bandidos national president Ronald Jerome "Ronnie" Hodge ordered retaliation against the Banshees at a meeting of national officers in Houston on May 5, 1983, and club members subsequently organized plans to carry out bombings against their rivals. A team consisting of Joe Edward "Little Joe" Benavides, Crandle Phillip Lamonte Presnel, John Randal Hanson and Dale Lynn Brewer – president of the Cloverleaf chapter – planted bombs on a van and a home belonging to Banshees members, which detonated on July 5, 1983, causing property damage but no deaths or injuries. Twenty-three Bandidos were indicted on March 31, 1988 for their participation in the conspiracy, and on December 7, 1988, nine national officers and six local chapter officers of the Bandidos were found guilty of explosives violations.[417] Hanson, Adams Otis Fisher and Raymond Douglas Shirley, president of the Longview chapter, served as government witnesses.[418]
Bandidos member Steve "Panhead" Jonas was killed by a shotgun wound to the neck in a nightclub parking lot in San Antonio on July 17, 1983. Three days later, club members from across the country formed a funeral procession more than a mile in length on Interstate 10.[419]
Numerous Bandidos members, including national secretary-treasurer William Jerry "Frio" Pruitt, were arrested on narcotics and weapons charges in Corpus Christi, Dallas, and Houston during a nationwide law enforcement operation against the club on February 22, 1985.[372] Twelve arrests were reported in the Houston–Corpus Christi area, where the club's "mother chapter" is based.[420] The operation, coordinated by the Justice Department and involving the FBI, DEA and ATF, was at the time the largest ever conducted against a motorcycle gang and led to a total of eighty-two arrests in nine states.[371] An investigation into the Bandidos' involvement in methamphetamine and PCP trafficking had commenced sixteen months prior.[370]
Beginning in 1989, members of the Bandidos' San Antonio chapter were contracted by Daniel Nieto, a major distributor of marijuana between San Antonio and Saginaw, Michigan, in collecting payments from a number of customers in Michigan. On September 2, 1991, Bandidos members Ernest "Neto" Cortinas, Eric Wayne Green and Edward Salas carried out a drive-by shooting on the home of Forest Zudell, a delinquent debtor, in Mount Morris Township, Michigan, resulting in the death of a fourteen-year-old boy. The Zudell family were under the protection of the Outlaws and in order to prevent retaliation, the Bandidos obtained $25,000 from Nieto to pay the Outlaws in compensation. Nieto and several co-conspirators were arrested in May 1992, and Nieto and others plea bargained for reduced sentences in return for information and testimony against other members of the organization. He testified that the Bandidos eventually took over his business and that he acquiesced in the takeover as he feared for his life and the lives of his family. Cortinas and Green were among twenty-eight people indicted in January 1995 on charges of conspiracy with intent to distribute marijuana; all were found guilty.[421]
Bandidos national sergeant-at-arms Thomas Lloyd "Hammer" Gerry began trafficking in drugs as early as 1989 and was imprisoned in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from 1990 until he was paroled on January 5, 2005. Retired from the club, he again began dealing methamphetamine in 2007 and headed an organization with links to the Aryan Brotherhood and La Familia Michoacana which operated from Fort Worth until August 20, 2009, when nineteen members were indicted and arrested by the DEA. The drug ring is believed to have generated approximately $5 million. Gerry was sentenced to thirty years in prison and died on October 15, 2010, aged sixty-two.[422][423]
Five Bandidos members – national president Charles Craig "Jaws" Johnston, national secretary-treasurer Terry Larque, San Antonio chapter president Ernest Cortinas, San Antonio chapter vice-president Richard Benavides and former international president James Lang – were convicted of conspiring to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine. In November 1998, Johnston, Larque, Benavides and Lang were sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, while Cortinas was sentenced to five years' because he urged his accomplices to accept a plea deal. The case began after the DEA raided a meth lab in Bexar County in October 1994, and expelled former Bandidos national officer Jay Lane Roberts assisted federal agents in linking the lab to the Bandidos. Roberts subsequently entered the Witness Protection Program.[424] Johnston died at the age of seventy-two on January 27, 2020.[425]
Houston police discovered approximately 660 grams of methamphetamine during a search of the home of Bandidos member David Gregory Smith on October 4, 2000. The search followed an eleven-month law enforcement investigation into the club.[426] Smith was convicted of possession with intent to deliver the drugs, and was sentenced to thirty-seven years in prison in April 2002.[427]
Frederick "Fast Fred" Cortez and Richard Steven "Scarface" Merla, two members of the Bandidos' Southwest San Antonio chapter, shot and killed Roberto Lara after luring him to a secluded area in Atascosa County in January 2002. Lara was murdered in retaliation after he killed Javier Negrete, another member of Cortez's and Merla's chapter, in a drive-by shooting in San Antonio on October 20, 2001.[428] Cortez, a prospect at the time, was present during Negrete's murder and returned fire at Lara's vehicle. He was subsequently made a full-patch member. Merla was serving a forty-year prison sentence for the murder of boxer Robert Quiroga when he testified that he and Cortez killed Lara on the orders of Bandidos national vice-president John Xavier Portillo. In October 2016, Cortez pleaded guilty to murder in aid of racketeering; he was sentenced to thirteen years' imprisonment on October 2, 2018. Merla was sentenced to forty years' to run concurrently with his sentence for killing Quiroga. Portillo was sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus twenty years' on September 24, 2018 after being convicted on racketeering charges.[429]
Bandidos member Richard Merla was arrested in 2006 and pleaded no contest in 2007 to murdering Robert Quiroga, International Boxing Federation super flyweight champion between 1990 and 1993, on August 16, 2004. A dispute had arisen between Merla and Quiroga concerning a Scarface poster that Merla had illegally obtained from one of Quiroga's friends, and Merla stabbed Quiroga to death later that night. A passer-by on Interstate 10 found Quiroga lying next to his car, having been stabbed multiple times, and flagged down a police car.[430] Merla was sentenced to forty years in prison.[431] "I don't regret it. I don't have no remorse. I don't feel sorry for him and his family. I don't and I mean that" Merla admits.[432] In regards to the murder of Robert Quiroga (who had celebrity status as an IBF champion around the San Antonio area where the local Bandidos chapter president John Portillo was one of his biggest fans), the Bandidos Motorcycle Club denounced any involvement in the crime, stating that Merla's actions were his own and not those of the club. Merla was expelled from the Bandidos due to his actions.[432]
In March 2006 police in Austin announced that the Bandidos were the prime suspects in the March 18, 2006, slaying of a forty-four-year-old local motorcyclist named Anthony Benesh. Benesh, who had been attempting to establish an Austin chapter of the Hells Angels, was shot in the head by an unseen sniper, as he was leaving a North Austin restaurant with his girlfriend and two children. Police said that Benesh was flanked by other people and the shooter used only one bullet, fired at a distance from a high-powered rifle. The murder occurred on the same weekend as the annual Bandidos MC "Birthday Party" in Southeast Texas, marking the 40th anniversary of the club's 1966 founding. According to police, in the days before his murder, Benesh had been receiving telephone calls from Bandidos telling him to stop wearing a vest that displayed Hells Angels patches.[433][434][435] On March 7, 2017 federal authorities announced that four members of the Bandidos gang had been arrested and charged with Benesh's murder.[436]
Antonio "Tony" Marquez, vice-president and sergeant-at-arms of the Bandidos' Kerrville chapter, was involved in an altercation with an unidentified man who arrived at the Bandidos' clubhouse armed with an knife on February 24, 2007. After disarming the individual, whom police were unable to trace, Marquez fired several shots from a pistol at the fleeing man.[437] Marquez was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison in October 2008.[438]
On September 26, 2011, three members of the Bandidos' San Antonio chapter – sergeant-at-arms Gerardo "Junior Ray" Gomez Jr, Jason Earl "Sarge" Morris and Angel Cevallos – were arrested by FBI agents and local authorities, and charged with possession with intent to distribute more than five-hundred grams of cocaine. The trio had previously engaged in a narcotics transaction with undercover agents.[439] The following day, twenty-seven club members and associates were arrested in Dallas on charges of conspiracy to possess and to distribute heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine. One of those arrested was also charged with possession of a machine gun. Six others were arrested in Colorado and charged for trafficking methamphetamine and cocaine the same day. Another was arrested in San Francisco, California, while two remain at large. The Dallas charges followed of a multi-year investigation into the illicit distribution of drugs and firearms by the Bandidos MC and its affiliated support clubs. The operation involved the participation of the FBI, DEA, ATF, DPS and several local police departments.[440]
Jack Lewis, president of the Abilene chapter of the Bandidos, was charged with the November 2, 2013 stabbing of Timothy Shayne Satterwhite, a member of the Cossacks Motorcycle Club. Lewis was acquitted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in December 2015 after another Bandidos member, Wesley Mason, testified he had in fact stabbed Satterwhite and another Cossacks member in self-defense.[441]
Around twenty Bandidos members ambushed members of three rival clubs – the Cossacks, Ghost Riders and Wino's Crew – at a bar in Fort Worth on December 12, 2014, resulting in Ghost Riders member Geoffrey Brady being shot dead and two others suffering injuries. The attack took place during a dispute concerning the Bandidos' taxing of smaller clubs for the right to wear a state bottom rocker.[442] Bandidos members Howard Wayne "Dobber" Baker, Nicholas "Zombie" Povendo and Robert "Drifter" Stover were arrested in connection with the shooting. In June 2017, Baker was sentenced to forty-five years in prison after being convicted of engaging in organized crime and directing the activities of a street gang.[407] The cases against Povendo and Stover were dismissed in August 2015 and October 2018, respectively.[443]
Approximately ten Cossacks forced a Bandidos member off Interstate 35 at Lorena on March 22, 2015 and beat him with chains, batons and metal pipes before stealing his motorcycle.[444] Later that day, Bandidos confronted a Cossack in Mingus and demanded that he remove the bottom rocker from his colors. When he refused, he was beaten with a hammer.[445]
On May 17, 2015, the Bandidos were involved in a gun battle at a Twin Peaks restaurant parking lot in Waco that killed nine people and wounded eighteen. Among the dead was a member of the Bandidos and members of the Cossacks. As of January 2016, the incident remains under investigation, and it remains unclear who fired shots. There was heavy law enforcement present at the scene before any violence erupted, which leads to the belief that it might have been a set-up.[446] Local bikers from many motorcycle clubs (amongst them many veterans and church bike groups) were present to attend a quarterly meeting of the Confederation of Clubs (COC) which had been established over twenty-five years earlier. Twin Peaks corporate executives later revoked the franchise permit in Waco (which also included a sister location in Killeen which was part of the same Twin Peaks franchise). As a result of the Twin Peaks brawl, three high-ranking members of the Bandidos MC (national vice-president John Portillo, national president Jeffrey Ray Pike, and sergeant-at-arms Justin Cole Forster), were taken into custody by the FBI between late December 2015 and January 2016.[447] On May 17, 2018, Portillo and Pike were both convicted on a thirteen-count indictment of a range of charges, including racketeering, conspiracy, murder, extortion and drug dealing.[448] On September 24, 2018, Portillo was sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus twenty years in prison without the possibility of parole. On September 26, Pike was sentenced to life in prison plus ten years without parole.[449]
Three members of the Bandidos' El Paso chapter – president Juan Martinez, secretary Thomas Decarlo and sergeant-at-arms James Heredia – were charged with engaging in organized criminal activity-aggravated robbery after being accused of attacking and attempting to steal the colors of members of Los Traviesos Motorcycle Club on August 3, 2016. A man was injured after being hit on the head with a baseball bat and an extendable baton.[450] Martinez died on August 3, 2017 after being shot in a fight with another motorcycle gang. The case against Decarlo ended in a mistrial in November 2017.[451]
Javier Gonzalez, vice-president of the Kinfolk Motorcycle Club's El Paso chapter, was sentenced to fifty-six years in prison in January 2019 after he was convicted of murdering Bandidos El Paso chapter president Juan "Compa" Martinez, Jr. Martinez was shot seven times on July 30, 2017 and died on August 3, 2017. Bandidos members Ballardo Salcido and Daniel Villalobos, and Organized Chaos MC (a Bandidos support club) vice-president Juan Miguel Vega-Rivera were also shot in what began as a bar brawl between the two groups. The Kinfolk were established in 2016 by former Bandidos members critical of the leadership of the club.[452]
The Bandidos and the Mongols were involved in a shootout that left one person – Alex Canales Villarreal – dead and three wounded at a bar in Midland on February 16, 2020.[453]
Washington
There are fourteen Bandidos chapters in Washington.[389] The club is involved in methamphetamine distribution and violent crime in the state.[454]
As part of a nationwide law enforcement operation against the club, thirteen Bandidos members were arrested in Washington on drugs and weapons charges on February 22, 1985, eleven in Bellingham and two in Everett and Puyallup.[370] Those arrested included club officers Jack Edward Sekora, George Irving Sherman and John Jerome Francis.[372] The arrests followed a sixteen-month investigation of the Bandidos MC that involved the FBI, DEA and ATF.[371]
Bandidos sergeant-at-arms Frederick Entzel was killed another member – Dale Chandler – was wounded after Bandidos and members of the Iron Horsemen exchanged gunfire due to a drug dispute at a motorcycle rally near Zillah on June 18, 2000. Iron Horsemen member Darren Patrick Lumsden was also shot and left in critical condition. Chandler was charged with first-degree assault on Lumsden.[386]
Thirty-two members and associates of the Bandidos' Bellingham and Missoula, Montana chapters were indicted in the U.S. District Court in Seattle on June 10, 2005, charged with conspiracy to commit murder, witness tampering, violent crime in aid of racketeering, and drug and weapons offenses. Several weapons, including firearms and knives, methamphetamine, marijuana, stolen motorcycles and motor vehicle parts, and over $25,000 in cash were seized during subsequent raids and arrests, which resulted from a two-year investigation into a variety of criminal activity by the club.[387] Eighteen of those charged pleaded guilty,[455] including international president George Wegers, Bellingham chapter president Glenn Merrit and Missoula chapter president Bernard Ortman.[456] In October 2006, Wegers reached an unusual plea agreement through representation by his attorney Jeffrey A. Lustick, under which he received twenty-two months' credit for time served and three years on supervised release. Despite this being a felony conviction, the plea agreement accepted by judge John C. Coughenour allowed Wegers to continue to participate in Bandidos events, associate with known felons, and travel worldwide with court permission. No RICO forfeitures were imposed by the court.[457] Merritt received the longest prison term of those who pleaded guilty when he was sentenced to four years' for drug possession and trafficking in stolen property in November 2006. The others received sentences ranging from probation to thirty months in prison.[458]
FBI and local police investigators announced in January 2020 their belief that Bandidos members and associates were involved in the January 27, 2017 murders of a family of four in Seabeck. Christale Careaga and her children Jonathon Higgins and Hunter Schaap were found shot dead in their burning home while Johnny Careaga was found shot and burned to death in a truck on a rural tree farm in Mason County two days later. Bandidos associate Danie Jay Kelly, Jr. was previously named as a person of interest in the case.[459] There is a $20,000 reward for information leading to conviction in the Careaga family murder.[460]
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- "1984: Seven killed in Sydney biker shootings", BBC
- The gang wars explained - 40 years of bikie hatred Paul Kent, The Daily Telegraph (28 March 2009)
- Sex, drugs, crime: Underworld life of bikie ‘Kaos’ Duncan McNab, The Queensland Times (22 November 2018)
- Heavy price of loyalty Malcolm Brown, The Sydney Morning Herald (22 April 2006)
- Gangland Sydney James Morton and Susanna Lobez (2011)
- Bikie slayers 'in crime's worst league' Ellen Connelly, The Sydney Morning Herald (19 February 2000)
- Men convicted of murdering 3 members of Bandido bikie gang Australian Broadcasting Corporation (9 April 2003)
- Why Adelaide's bikie gangs continue to attract new membership Sean Fewster, The Advertiser (25 August 2013)
- The myths and mayhem of bikie gangs in South Australia Nigel Hunt, The Advertiser (5 April 2009)
- Bikies call truce Dan Proudman, The Sydney Morning Herald (3 April 2001)
- How a murderous empire was brought down The Sydney Morning Herald (18 December 2011)
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- Crime world henchman jailed for murder News.com.au (28 May 2010)
- Bikie boss Felix Lyle facing deportation to New Zealand Kate McClymont, The Sydney Morning Herald (12 March 2017)
- $100,000 reward for information relating to the homicide of Milad Sande New South Wales Police Force
- Sydney's deadly bikie turf war Marnie O'Neill, The Daily Telegraph (11 February 2007)
- A violent man takes his last victim - himself Kate McClymont and Les Kennedy, The Sydney Morning Herald (13 May 2006)
- The great bikie defection Dylan Welch, Campbelltown-Macarthur Advertiser (26 February 2011)
- War feared as bikie chapter defects The Daily Telegraph (21 April 2007)
- The Fat Mexican: The Bloody Rise of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club Alex Caine (2009)
- Crime Inc's riders Brisbane Times (12 January 2008)
- Drive-by shootings: four charged Geesche Jacobsen, The Sydney Morning Herald (23 January 2009)
- Brotherhoods Art Veno (2011)
- Family bikie link seen in shooting Arjun Ramachandran and Dylan Welch, The Sydney Morning Herald (20 March 2009)
- Murder, bashings and bullets as rival gangs clash Dylan Welch, Linton Besser and Les Kennedy, The Sydney Morning Herald (23 March 2009)
- Homemade bomb found outside top bikie's house Michael Vincent, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (31 March 2009)
- Port Stephens president of Bandidos pleads guilty to commercial drug supply Dan Cox, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (11 April 2016)
- Port Stephens Bandidos boss Ronald Leggett jailed for supplying 475g of ice Sam Rigney, The Newcastle Herald (30 May 2016)
- Bikie boss executed in his home Sarah McPhee, Daily Mercury (17 January 2020)
- Eighth person charged over Bandido killing The West Australian (20 October 2020)
- Bikie president and two others charged after police raid cannabis farm near Mudgee Lucy Cormack, The Sydney Morning Herald (14 April 2020)
- Former Comanchero bikie Fares Abounader shot dead outside his Panania home in 'ambush' attack Bellinda Kontominas and Rani Hayman, ABC News (30 August 2020)
- Queensland bikie boss jailed The New Zealand Herald (11 November 2002)
- Arson hearing told of betrayal Jason Gregory, The Courier-Mail (17 April 2007)
- Bikies jailed for arson after Bribie bashing Sunshine Coast Daily (5 June 2008)
- Bandido jailed eight years for shooting Christine Flatley, News.com.au (7 November 2012)
- Bikie Bogdan Cuic jailed over manslaughter of Jei 'Jack' Lei during botched cocaine deal Ellie Sibson, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (14 November 2018)
- Paul Millar and Adam Cooper (2012-04-29). "Bikie wars: Man and woman shot at Robina Town Centre; Courier Mail". couriermail.com.au. Retrieved 2012-06-07.
- Broadbeach bikie brawl: All 18 accused walk free from court Greg Stolz, The Courier-Mail (15 August 2015)
- Premier Campbell Newman releases list of bikie gangs to be declared as criminal organisations under tough new laws Sarah Vogler and Robyn Ironside, The Courier-Mail (16 October 2013)
- 26 OMCG declared a Criminal Organisation M. T. Gatenby, Gatenby Law (21 October 2013)
- Brisbane's Bandidos disbanding amid crackdown Marissa Calligeros, Brisbane Times (18 October 2013)
- Bumbling bikie drug dealers shed light on life at bottom of Queensland’s criminal underbelly Josh Robertson, The Courier-Mail (3 June 2014)
- Former Bandidos president jailed for extortion Tessa Mapston, The Chronicle (10 August 2017)
- Moment police raid Rebels, Bandidos hideouts to crack drive-by shooting case Ryan Keen, Gold Coast Bulletin (11 May 2017)
- Senior Brisbane bikies charged with shooting man in face over debt Toby Crockford, Brisbane Times (23 December 2019)
- Senior Queensland bikie and wife bashed, shot at in alleged daylight ambush Paula Doneman, Mac Lyon and Jess Mumme, Seven News (18 June 2020)
- Two alleged Bandido bikies, including Brisbane president, charged with extortion Toby Crockford, Brisbane Times (2 October 2020)
- New anti-bikie laws have come into force in South Australia, making 10 motorcycle gangs criminal organisations. Special Broadcasting Service (6 August 2015)
- SA bikie laws have dramatic effect on gangs' behaviour, police commissioner says Chris McLoughlin, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (26 February 2016)
- Bandidos sergeant-at-arms jailed for firearms trafficking Leah McBey, The Advocate (31 July 2018)
- State government, Tasmania Police targeting outlaw motorcycle gangs with insignia law Kasey Wilkins, The Advocate (21 November 2019)
- Outlaw motorcycle gang laws are now in force Mark Shelton, Tasmanian Government (21 November 2019)
- Bandidos members first to be charged under new OMCG anti-consorting laws Edith Bevin, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (8 November 2019)
- Bandidos Outlaw Motorcyle Gang arrested and charged in Spirit drug trafficking investigation Meg Powell, The Advocate (16 June 2020)
- Spirit of Tasmania used by Bandidos to import drugs into the state, police allege Sandy Powell, The Advocate (30 June 2020)
- Gangland Crimes That Shocked Australia Ian Ferguson (2008)
- Les Gangs de Motards Criminalisés: Une expansion internationale Xavier Raufer, Institut de Criminologie de Paris
- Bandidos enforcer Ross Brand shown no mercy Carly Crawford, Herald Sun (24 October 2008)
- Kirsten Veness (2011-03-23). "Pair jailed over Bandidos clubhouse shooting".
- Jail time for ex-Rebels bikie John Russell Bedson, killer of Bandidos rival Ross Brand News.com.au (23 March 2011)
- Bandidos bikies jailed for brutal ear-slice torture of member who wanted out Shannon Deery, Herald Sun (31 January 2014)
- Bandido bikie Toby Mitchell fighting for his life after Brunswick shooting Anthony Dowsley and Wayne Flower, The Advertiser (29 November 2011)
- 'Youth in a syringe': Toby Mitchell the outlaw poster boy for anti-ageing drugs Chris Vedelago and Cameron Houston, The Sydney Morning Herald (23 July 2016)
- Bikie enforcer Toby Mitchell survives another ambush Anthony Dowsley, Herald Sun (3 March 2013)
- Bikies and killer unite in prison Nino Bucci, The Sydney Morning Herald (6 November 2013)
- Dressed for offence? Toby Mitchell social media photo sparks outlaw bikie concerns 3AW (17 April 2019)
- Vic bikies in court to support killers Caitlin Guilfoyle, Yahoo! News (18 March 2016)
- Loaded firearm and drugs seized in Bandidos clubhouse raid Rachel Eddie and Charlotte Grieve, The Age (1 August 2019)
- Vier criminele motorbendes in België Het Laatste Nieuws (14 May 2009)
- Politie houdt grote actie tegen motorbendes in België, Nederland en Duitsland Het Laatste Nieuws (27 May 2015)
- Belgian former police chief (77) arrested for large-scale cocaine trafficking The Brussels Times (29 September 2020)
- 2004 Annual Report Archived 2009-12-22 at the Wayback Machine- Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, cisc.gc.ca
- Hells Angels under pressure as outlaw motorcycle clubs from across the globe expand into Canada Adrian Humphreys, National Post (June 6, 2015)
- Edwards 2010, p. 112.
- Edmonton shootings may be tied to biker turf war Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (February 3, 2004)
- Unsolved homicides: Joseph Campbell Edmonton Police Service (March 2, 2018)
- Patchover of Alberta Bandidos gives Hells Angels monopoly Timothy Appleby, The Globe and Mail (October 25, 2004)
- ‘Never-ending war’: How Alberta is cracking down on the Hells Angels and the outlaw biker gangs that support them Juris Graney, Edmonton Journal (September 7, 2018)
- Cops seek duo in Bandidos torture case Cary Castagna, Sun Media (February 2005)
- Biker pleads guilty Winnipeg Sun (October 12, 2006)
- Langton, Jerry (2010), Showdown: How the Outlaws, Hells Angels and Cops Fought for Control of the Streets, John Wiley & Sons, p. 173, ISBN 978-0470678787
- Edwards 2010, p. 115.
- Bikers get prison terms in '05 killing Peter Edwards, Toronto Star (January 8, 2008)
- Edwards, Peter (2010). The Bandido Massacre; A True Story of Bikers, Brotherhood and Betrayal. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. ISBN 978-1-55468-044-3.
- Edwards, Peter (October 29, 2009). "Kellestine guilty of eight counts of murder at Bandidos trial". The Star. Toronto. Retrieved April 26, 2010.
- Hells Angels acquitted of murder charges Peter Edwards, Toronto Star (January 18, 2009)
- Edwards 2010, p. 436.
- Biker Shot To Death Outside Vaughan Strip Club CityNews (December 2, 2006)
- Outlaw biker gets six years in fatal shooting at strip club Peter Edwards, Toronto Star (June 27, 2008)
- Sher, Julian; Marsden, William (2004). The Road to Hell : How the Biker Gangs are Conquering Canada. Random House. ISBN 0-676-97599-2.
- Sanger, Daniel (2005). Hell's Witness. Viking Canada. ISBN 0-670-04430-X.
- "Rock Machine Nomads". Rockmachine.ca. Archived from the original on 2011-11-03. Retrieved 2011-10-05.
- Edward Winterhalder & Wil De Clercq (2008). The Assimilation. ECW Press. ISBN 978-1-55022-824-3. Retrieved 2010-05-14.
- Winterhalder, Edward Out In Bad Standings; Inside The Bandidos Motorcycle Club, Blockhead City Press, 2005/Seven Locks Press, 2007 (ISBN 0-9771-7470-0)
- "CBC Mass Killings Mean Hells Angels Win Biker Turf War". Cbc.ca. 2006-04-11. Archived from the original on 8 February 2007. Retrieved 2011-10-05.
- "McGill Tribune, Bikers, Bill C-95, Drugs and Mom". Media.www.mcgilltribune.com. Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2011-10-05.
- York University, Organized Crime in Canada
- Langton 2010, p. 173.
- Denmark 2019 Crime & Safety Report Overseas Security Advisory Council (19 March 2019)
- Rockere - historisk baggrund Carsten Fenger-Grøn and Malene Grøndahl, faktalink.dk (2002)
- Rigspolitiet holder vågent øje med Satudarah TV 2 (12 November 2013)
- Hells Angels Vs. Bandidos: Bloody Battles on Nordic Streets Doug Mellgren, Associated Press (July 31, 1996)
- The Mammoth Book of Bikers Arthur Veno (2007)
- Issues in Global Crime Diplomatic Security Service (1998)
- "Airport Attack Leaves One Biker Dead". Findarticles.com. Retrieved 2011-10-05.
- Bikers bring hell to a haven in Scandinavia Julian Isherwood, The Irish Times (4 January 1997)
- Hell's Angels Convicted In Denmark Slaying The New York Times (December 21, 1996)
- Copenhagen - A Hell's Angels club house burns after being hit by an anti-tank missile The Independent (18 April 1996)
- Prison hand grenade attack wounds jailed biker United Press International (April 26, 1996)
- Attentäter brachen in Gefängnis ein Die Welt (27 April 1996)
- Hells Angels attacked in biker war United Press International (May 7, 1996)
- Gewalt: „Gott vergibt, Bandidos nie“ Thomas Hüetlin, Der Spiegel (22 July 1996)
- Englenes gerninger Ambro Kragh (2017)
- Rockere bag en stribe af bomber Jan Søgaard, B.T. (19 September 2003)
- Bombedømt rocker sigtet for bombe-mord Jan Søgaard, B.T. (28 April 2004)
- Drabelige angreb Ekstra Bladet (20 April 2003)
- Forslag til folketingsbeslutning om ekspropriation af rockerejendomme retsinformation.dk
- The Angels get a rocket from Hell The Independent (7 October 1996)
- Den dræbte blev morder som 17-årig Jan Søgaard, B.T. (18 September 2003)
- Danish biker gets life for grenade attack BBC (13 March 1998)
- ROCKERBEGRAVELSE ROCKERKRIGEN POLITI VEJGÅRD MC ROCKRBORG KIM THRYSØE SVENDSEN Europeana (21 January 1997)
- Nul erstatning til Bandidos-rockere Nul erstatning til Bandidos-rockere B.T. (9 June 2000)
- Rockerattentat Danske Nyheder.dk (3 February 1997)
- Rocker-skyderi Danske Nyheder.dk (4 February 1997)
- Rocket As Weapon in Biker Gangs`War SME (19 February 1997)
- Rockerattentat igen Danske Nyheder.dk (1 April 1997)
- Det var en bombe Danske Nyheder.dk (2 May 1997)
- Håndgranater og bilbomber: Sådan forløb 90’ernes blodige rockeropgør Signe Lene Christiansen, DR (10 March 2016)
- Denmark Hells Angel Gets Life Associated Press (November 20, 1998)
- "Danish Bikers Call Truce in Deadly Feud". The Independent. September 26, 1997. Retrieved October 5, 2011.
- Youth Gangs in International Perspective: Results from the Eurogang Program Finn-Aage Esbensen and Cheryl L. Maxson (2012)
- Tidligere Bandidos-Præsident likvideret Local Eyes (21 March 2001)
- Mordet på Claus Bork Hansen B.T. (17 June 2003)
- En fik livstid for rockerdrab - tre blev frikendt Politiken (12 April 2002)
- Rocker fik nedsat straf for drab Ekstra Bladet (15 January 2003)
- Han sprængte sin bedste ven i tusind stykker Bo Maltesen, Politiken (7 April 2013)
- Car-bomb killing of renegade rekindles Denmark's biker violence in suburbia Michael Bickett, The Independent (18 September 2003)
- Bandidos-rockere får livstid for bombedrab Politiken (13 June 2005)
- Højesteret mildner dom for rockerdrab Politiken (6 January 2006)
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- Bandidos-rockere fik 16 år for drab og røveri B.T. (2 October 2003)
- Fængselsinspektør giver op Kristeligt Dagblad (26 November 2003)
- Rockere anholdt for vold mod fængselsansatte Politiken (27 April 2004)
- Lange fængselsstraffe til rockere TV 2/Fyn (13 October 2005)
- 90 års fængsel for narkosmugling Fyens Stiftstidende (16 November 2002)
- Narkobagmand fik over syv års fængsel Allan Grasberger, Sjællandske Nyheder (16 November 2011)
- Police raid biker gang strongholds The Copenhagen Post (20 September 2012)
- De ændrede bandemiljøet i Danmark Anna Gottschalck, Berlingske (23 June 2016)
- Foreign biker gangs setting up shop in Denmark The Copenhagen Post (31 March 2016)
- Danish gang wars intensify with grenade attack The Local (14 December 2016)
- Police shut down two biker gang clubs in Odense Lucie Rychla, The Copenhagen Post (4 October 2016)
- Nu giver de hånd: Bandefred i Køge Anne-Marie Madsen and Michael Bo Mortensen, Ekstra Bladet (29 March 2013)
- Nu er der bandefred i Køge Sune Fischer and Jan Søgaard, Ekstra Bladet (29 March 2013)
- Rockere får fængsel for pistoler i sommerhus fyens.dk (4 March 2014)
- Bandidos åbner klubhus i Næstved - igen Sune Fischer, Ekstra Bladet (15 January 2015)
- Bandidos-rocker skød og dræbte Edin Fakic Ulrik Bachmann, Ekstra Bladet (4 December 2015)
- Skyderier i Næstved er opgør mellem Satudarah og Bandidos Ida Laursen Brock, TV 2 (4 October 2016)
- Bandidos-teenagere ville dræbe rival: Nu skal de 17 år i fængsel Anders Garde, TV 2 (23 May 2018)
- Få overblikket over bandekonflikten i Næstved Ida Laursen Brock, TV 2 (15 November 2016)
- Voldelig konflikt ulmer mellem Bandidos og Satudarah Astrid Søndberg, TV 2 (15 November 2017)
- Tre Bandidos-rockere skal 18 år i fængsel Ulrik Bachmann, Ekstra Bladet (29 March 2019)
- 11½ års fængsel til Bandidos-rocker zand.news (13 September 2019)
- Bandidos-præsident skal 14 år i fængsel for drabsforsøg Ulrik Bachmann, Ekstra Bladet (13 September 2019)
- Tidligere rockerpræsident frifundet Mette Fleckner, Ekstra Bladet (27 February 2010)
- Hells Angels unika avtal – med värsta fienden Jakob Kjelldén, Kvällsposten (18 June 2019)
- Ny, brutal bande skaber kaos: Væbnet bandekrig, afpresning og overfald på fængselsbetjente Jesper Vestergaard Larsen, B.T. (26 March 2017)
- Derfor slås rockere og bandefolk i dansk provinsby Jan Lauridtsen, TV 2 (8 February 2016)
- Warring Danish biker gangs denied access to clubhouses in Næstved The Copenhagen Post (4 January 2016)
- Bloody brawl in Helsingør sends young man to hospital Pia Marsh, The Copenhagen Post (1 July 2015)
- Shooting at Bandidos clubhouse could be linked to earlier gang conflict The Copenhagen Post (6 July 2015)
- Trial of gruesome Copenhagen triple murder begins The Local (9 March 2017)
- Danish biker gang leader convicted in triple murder case The Local (10 May 2017)
- Two found guilty in Frederiksberg triple murder case The Copenhagen Post (9 May 2017)
- 25-årig dømt for vold mod »Fucking Bandidos-luder« Karl Erik Frederiksen, Sjællandske Nyheder (22 June 2017)
- Kæmpe politiaktion mod bandefolk: Mindst 21 anholdt i Helsinge Netavisen Gribskov (8 May 2017)
- To mænd får fængselsstraffe for at køre ind i rocker Politiken (14 May 2018)
- Bandidos-rocker dømt for brutalt overfald med økse TV 2 (17 September 2020)
- "Poliisi teki Bandidoksen kerhotiloihin kotietsinnän Kempeleessä". Kaleva. 14 October 2015.
- Outlaws och Shark Riders de senaste kriminella mc-gängen att etablera sig i Finland Henri Foss, Hufvudstadsbladet (16 October 2018)
- Näin liivijengit toimivat eri puolella Suomea Marko Niemi, Yle (12 January )
- Jengiläisten riidat toivat Bandidosin Suomeen 1990-luvulla Jarkko Sipilä, MTV3 (12 May 2015)
- Major Incidents in Hells Angels-Bandidos Feud in Nordic Countries Associated Press (July 31, 1996)
- Missiles used to attack Hells Angels' clubhouses Chicago Tribune (April 18, 1996)
- Was geschah am 25. September 1997 in unserem Dänemark? Günter Schwarz, SH-UgeAvisen (25 September 2017)
- Bandidos-johtajan syytteistä pääosa nurin kranaattijutussa Jarkko Sipilä, Helsingin Sanomat (12 July 1996)
- Bandidoksen Suomen johtajan ampunut mies pääsee vankilasta vapaaksi Asta Tenhunen, Savon Sanomat (9 March 2017)
- Out In Bad Standings: Inside The Bandidos Motorcycle Club Edward Winterhalder (2005)
- Outlaw Bikers in Finland 1997-2005 GangstersInc.com (10 November 2010)
- Biker Gangs and Transnational Organized Crime Thomas Barker (2014)
- Kahdelle Bandidos-jäsenelle murhasyyte MTV3 (18 February 2002)
- Bandidos-jengin ex-johtajan ampumisesta elinkautiset MTV3 (11 March 2002)
- Bandidos-pyssymiehille lankesi linnatuomio Sörnäisten kahakasta Tiina Salumäki, Kaleva (2 December 2005)
- Bandidos-johtajille linnatuomiot MTV3 (2 December 2005)
- Pääsyytetyt ovat Bandidosin jäseniä MTV3 (29 January 2008)
- Useita Bandidos-jengiläisiä vankilaan Yle Uutiset (10 October 2013)
- Bandidosin tukijäsen tankkasi 35 000 eurolla kuussa eikä maksanut – syyte 325 000 euron petoksista Tuomas Rimpiläinen, Aamulehti (28 March 2017)
- Bandidos peri väkivaltaisesti velkaa Tampereella: Ryöstön yrityksiä ja vapaudenriistoja Tuomas Rimpiläinen, Aamulehti (20 October 2016)
- Finsk Bandidoshöjdare gripen på Arlanda Kerstin Nilsson, Aftonbladet (20 March 2017)
- Nokian Bandidosin amfetamiinisyytteet kaatuivat Turun hovioikeudessa Anne Heino, Yle Uutiset (31 March 2017)
- Sept Hell's Angels devant les assises Le Télégramme (13 September 1999)
- A. Hells Angels contre Bandidos / Outlaws xavier-raufer.com
- Les Gangs de Motards Criminalisés xavier-raufer.com (April 2006)
- La Guerre des Gangs RAJF.org (26 March 1999)
- Une fusillade entre bandes de motards rivaux devant les assises de la Côte-d'Or. Erich Inciyan, Le Monde (26 March 1999)
- Bikers dans l'Ouest. 20 ans de lutte... Le Télégramme (27 May 2012)
- Sortie de route pour des Bandidos dijonnais Angélique Négroni, Le Figaro (13 August 2013)
- Dijon : une quinzaine d’armes chez le chef d’un gang de motards Vincent Gautronneau, Le Bien Public (13 August 2013)
- Dix membres d’un gang de motards arrêtés dans le Grand Est Christophe Gobin, L'Est Républicain (6 February 2019)
- Plusieurs interpellations en Lorraine et en Alsace après un affrontement entre gangs de motards Mohand Chibani, France Bleu (6 February 2019)
- Vol d’une Harley : prison ferme pour le chef des bikers Le Bien Public (20 July 2019)
- Duisburg braces for trial amid biker war The Local (29 March 2010)
- landtag.nrw.de, Kleine Anfrage 1488 vom 26. Januar 2012 (PDF; 245 kB) Drucksache 15/4239 (abgerufen am 13. März 2012)
- Druckmittel gegen Rocker North Rhine-Westphalia Police (29 March 2010)
- Biker gang brawl followed by a grenade attack The Local (1 November 2009)
- Haftbefehl gegen Rocker-Chef der "Bandidos" Der Tagesspiegel (21 February 2008)
- "Three German Biker Gang Members Sent to Jail". Dw-world.de. Retrieved August 13, 2010.
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- Bandidos v. Hell's Angels: Biker Turf War Escalating in Germany Markus Deggerich and Holger Stark, Der Spiegel (3 April 2008)
- Gericht verurteilt Rocker zu dreieinhalb Jahren Haft Berliner Morgenpost (24 November 2008)
- German Biker Gang Members Get Life for Murder of Rival Deutsche Welle (11 June 2008)
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- Harte Jungs auf Kuschelkurs Jörg Diehl, Der Spiegel (12 April 2010)
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- Schüsse vor Duisburger Kneipe Westdeutscher Rundfunk (30 August 2010)
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- Biker Gangs in Germany: Hells Angels and Bandidos Agree to a Truce Der Spiegel (25 May 2010)
- German Hells Angels and Bandidos call truce Visor Down.com (26 May 2010)
- Prügelei zwischen Rockern und Araberfamilie Michael Behrendt, Die Welt (7 August 2007)
- Mehrjährige Haftstrafe für Ex-Bandido Südwest Presse (27 March 2015)
- gegen Rock Machine: Prozessbeginn nach Anschlag PZ-news.de (21 July 2014)
- Rock Machine Germany - Der gefährliche Import aus Kanada Focus
- NRW verbietet Rockerbande in Aachen Theo Schumacher, Der Westen (26 April 2012)
- Bandidos openen afdeling in Sittard De Telegraaf (16 March 2014)
- Passer-by wounded in biker shootout The Local (7 January 2015)
- "Ausdruck der Verachtung": Symbolverbot für acht Rocker-Gruppierungen in Kraft Focus (16 March 2017)
- NRW: Bandidos ballerten auf Kontrahenten – Eskalation im Hagener Rocker-Krieg hat Folgen Der Westen (18 June 2020)
- US-based gang praise Irish biker who murdered rival club member Ken Foy, Irish Independent (3 August 2017)
- Party for murdered Limerick biker plunged into darkness after power cut Irish Independent (6 August 2017)
- Tipperary bikers escape convictions for robbing jacket from rival who layer committed murder TipperaryLive.ie (4 October 2017)
- 'Some serious criminal elements showed up': Feared motorcycle gang forms in Ireland David Raleigh, TheJournal.ie (13 October 2016)
- Bandidos openen afdeling in Sittard De Telegraaf (17 March 2015)
- Aanslag op woning van oud-Hells Angel De Limburger (17 March 2014)
- Weer explosie bij huis Bandidos-lid Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (22 March 2014)
- Bandidos nu ook in Noord-Holland Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (27 March 2014)
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- Voorman motorclub Bandidos tien maanden de cel in Frank Huiskamp, NRC Handelsblad (21 July 2014)
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- Notorious Bandidos set up in South Auckland Stuff (17 June 2012)
- Bandidos move on Christchurch's patch Blair Ensor, Stuff (15 January 2014)
- Four people jailed for total of 31 years for Bandidos gang house-bus slash-attack David Clarkson, Stuff (29 November 2017)
- Bandidos gangster handed 15-year sentence for smuggling $17m of drugs into NZ Stuff (28 February 2018)
- Duo sentenced after Bandidos sting finds millions in drugs, jewels and cash Sam Hurley, The New Zealand Herald (10 November 2017)
- Her er de kriminelle MC-klubbene Dennis Ravndal and Tanja Wibe-Lund, Verdens Gang (25 August 2010)
- Preventing Crime: A Holistic Approach Tore Bjørgo (2015)
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- Bandidos oppretter støtteklubber Eivind Kristensen, Fædrelandsvennen (21 September 2006)
- Bandidos har støttegruppe i Halden Anne Mørk-Tønnesen, Halden Arbeiderblad (24 August 2010)
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- Kriminelle vil inn i Bandidos Adresseavisen (3 May 2002)
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- Ble feil mann likvidert? Bjørnar Tommelstad, Verdens Gang (21 February 2015)
- Bandidos-drapet uoppklart.net
- Her er politiets fiasko-liste Dagbladet (12 October 1998)
- Explosion destroys motorcycle gang headquarters in Norway Doug Mellgren, Associated Press (June 5, 1997)
- Bomb blast outside bikers headquarters Associated Press (June 5, 1997)
- Bombedømte må betale 450 millioner Arild M. Jonassen, Verdens Gang (27 October 2004)
- Den store Nordiske Rockerkrig Per Larsen (1999)
- Pengeinnkrevere på to hjul Tarjei Istad and Dag Hellesund, Dagbladet (1 October 1999)
- Bandidos gir opp inkasso Bjørn K. Bore and Eugene Brandal Laran, Dagbladet (1 February 2000)
- Organized Crime: Policing Illegal Business Entrepreneurialism Geoff Dean, Petter Gottschalk and Ivar Fahsing (2010)
- Tre års fengsel for Bandidosleder Lotte Olsen Jessa, NRK (14 November 2007)
- Bandidos-medlemmer i barslagsmål Anders Engen Sanden, NRK (17 April 2008)
- Rå vold mot uskyldige Anette Torjusen, Fredriksstad Blad (24 April 2009)
- Hele Bandidos-gjengen: Vi er uskyldige Bjørn Grønlien, Fredriksstad Blad (13 January 2011)
- Vil fengsle Bandidos-gjengen i 21 år Bjørn Grønlien, Fredriksstad Blad (28 January 2011)
- Norwegian 'mafia' felled for contract killing Ann Törnkvist, The Local (3 July 2013)
- Police bust Bandidos biker meet-up Richard Orange, The Local (26 August 2013)
- Razzia hos mc-klubben Bandidos Jon Anders Møllen, NRK (11 April 2014)
- Politiaksjon mot Bandidos-lokaler Frode Andresen, Dagbladet (23 January 2020)
- Quem são os Hells Angels que estão na mira da polícia e as ligações a Mário Machado Valentina Marcelino, Diário de Notícias (11 July 2018)
- Tiro de cabecilha skin em rival desencadeia vingança Henrique Machado and João C. Rodrigues, Correio da Manhã (28 March 2018)
- Bandidos tvingas ut från villan i Huddinge Linn Ogelid, Sveriges Television (4 February 2013)
- Polisen: Det betyder märkena på Bandidosvästarna Sandra Divinyi , Göteborgs-Posten (17 June 2016)
- Bilderna avslöjar Bandidos hemliga liv: ”Vill inte synas” Kim Malmgren, Mattis Wikström and Hannes Lundberg Andersson, Expressen (23 June 2019)
- Swedish Mafia: fighting a losing battle The Local (8 November 2007)
- Swedish biker gangs in expansion fast lane The Local (8 October 2010)
- MC-kriget mellan Hells Angels och Bandidos Magnus Hellberg and Per Lindelöw, Expressen (6 December 2018)
- Här finns de kriminella mc-gängen Sveriges Television (21 September 2006)
- History of Bandidos MC Helsingborg Bandidos-MC.se (2020)
- Chronologie van een bendeoorlog Trouw (7 October 1996)
- Olösta morden kring HA och Bandidos Jens Andersson, Expressen (17 September 2016)
- Jag tipsade om attacken Per-Ola Ohlsson, Aftonbladet (2 June 2002)
- Fakta/mc-kriget Dagens Nyheter (7 October 1996)
- DN-BAKGRUND: Sex dödade i mc-kriget Dagens Nyheter (6 August 1996)
- Så satte de skräck i hela Norden Aftonbladet (10 August 2016)
- Why have Sweden's biker gangs been able to fly under the radar? The Local (24 January 2020)
- Nätverket Baris Kayhan (2017)
- "Bandidos leader gets nine years in jail". Thelocal.se. Retrieved 2010-08-14.
- Här är Bandidosledarna som sitter i fängelse David Baas, Expressen (21 September 2008)
- Patrick Huisman leder Bandidos i Ludvika David Baas, Expressen (15 March 2008)
- Bandidosledare åtalad för utpressning Dagens Nyheter (11 July 2007)
- 61 män och 1 kvinna – de leder gängen Frida Sundkvist and Claes Petersson, Expressen (29 June 2018)
- Bandidos-toppen frias efter stora vapenfyndet Hannes Lundberg Andersson and Kim Malmgren, Expressen (2 July 2019)
- Bandidosmannen mördade tillsammans med vännerna Mattis Wikström, Expressen (4 October 2019)
- Bröderna Bogere utlämnas till Sverige Erik Göthlin, Göteborgs-Tidningen (18 July 2019)
- Dömda Bogere-bröderna vägrar acceptera straffet Linda Bergh, Göteborgs-Tidningen (3 December 2019)
- 400 dagar sedan bombdådet i Linköping – så jobbar polisen vidare Sveriges Television (11 July 2020)
- Sprängningen i Hageby – MC-ledare måltavla Tommy Pettersson, nkpg.news (22 January 2020)
- Ytterligare två män anhållna för dödsskjutning i Norrköping Sveriges Television (21 July 2020)
- Jetzt spricht der Hells-Chef über den Rocker-Krieg von Belp 20 Minuten (10 May 2020)
- Nach Rocker-Krieg in Belp BE: Bandidos-Schütze seit einem Jahr in U-Haft Blick (28 April 2020)
- Bikers in Thailand Pattaya Mail (24 May 2012)
- Australian bikies Hells Angels and Bandidos club members own nightspots in Thailand tourist centres Josh Robertson, The Courier-Mail (14 October 2011)
- Danish biker gangs setting up in Thailand IceNews (1 June 2012)
- Svenska maffian mitt bland semesterfirarna Josephine Freje, Expressen (4 December 2016)
- Bandidos Member Kim Lindegaard Nielsen Free in Three Weeks Gregers Møller, ScandAsia.com (27 December 2007)
- Police to launch crackdown on foreign criminal gangs including Samui and Phuket Bandidos Samui Times (9 December 2014)
- Aussie biker faces extortion charge Bangkok Post (24 March 2017)
- Australian and Dutchman Arrested on Extortion Charges in Chiang Mai Chiang Rai Times (23 March 2017)
- U.S. Dept. of Justice, Motorcycle Gangs, archived from the original on 10 February 2010, retrieved 27 October 2009
- Bandidos, The Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium
- Two faces of the Bandidos: Weekend road warriors or criminal gang? Rick Jervis, USA Today (May 24, 2015)
- FBI 2013 National Gang Intelligence Center report fbi.gov (2013)
- Pre-dawn Raids Net More Than 70 Motorcycle Gang Members Steve Ellwanger, Associated Press (February 22, 1985)
- Roundup of Bandidos motorcycle gang United Press International (February 21, 1985)
- 82 ARE ARRESTED IN DRIVE AGAINST MOTORCYCLE GANG Leslie Maitland Werner, The New York Times (February 22, 1985)
- Four Stabbed as Biker Gangs Rumble in Eureka Springs KAIT (July 30, 2007)
- Four in Hells Angels plead guilty in attack Adam Wallworth, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (March 17, 2009)
- Colorado Drug Threat Assessment National Drug Intelligence Center, justice.gov (May 2003)
- Metro Gang Task Force Arrests Bandidos Motorcycle Club Members and Their Associates FBI.gov (September 27, 2011)
- ‘Operation Tick & Flea Collar’ Nets Bandidos Motorcycle Club Leaders KCNC-TV (January 28, 2015)
- High-ranking Bandidos Motorcycle Club member escaped Denver court at sentencing hearing Blair Miller, KMGH-TV (November 22, 2016)
- Louisiana Drug Threat Assessment National Drug Intelligence Center, justice.gov (May 2001)
- Deaths The Times (March 10, 1972)
- Bandidos motorcycle gang begins return to Shreveport J.L. Wilson, The Times (April 9, 1978)
- Man is killed by gun blast The Times (September 6, 1974)
- Gang made its mark in Shreveport-Bossier's past The Times (February 24, 1985)
- 2 Bandidos killed in shooting Russell Dangeleisen, The Times (June 2, 1986)
- City police have warned members of the Bandidos motorcycle... United Press International (June 4, 1986)
- Out In Bad Standings: Inside The Bandidos Motorcycle Club Edward Winterhalder (2005)
- Twenty-six indicted following 2 year investigation of Bandidos motorcycle gang Justice.gov (June 10, 2005)
- Another Bandidos leader arrested The Seattle Times (June 14, 2005)
- ATF, Police Crack Down on 'Bandidos' Motorcycle Gang Gene Johnson, Kitsap Sun (June 10, 2005)
- Biker Gang Reaches Plea Deal on Kidnapping, Racketeering Charges Fox News (May 10, 2006)
- New Mexico Drug Threat Assessment National Drug Intelligence Center, justice.gov (April 2002)
- Bandidos trial details motorcycle gang's attacks on El Paso chapter members in Roswell Guillermo Contreras, El Paso Times (April 4, 2018)
- Bandidos’ secrets spilled by ex-national ranking member Guillermo Contreras, San Antonio Express-News (March 1, 2018)
- APD: Applebee's shooting witnesses not cooperating KOAT-TV (March 30, 2015)
- Struggle between Vagos and Bandidos rattles Santa Fe Las Cruces Sun-News (August 2, 2017)
- FBI arrests Bandidos Motorcycle Club’s ‘Sergeant at Arms’ in drug, gun trafficking case Mike Gallagher, Albuquerque Journal (October 25, 2017)
- FBI Versus Bandido agingrebel.com (October 25, 2017)
- Authorities Don't Expect Biker Gang Violence To Spill Into Oklahoma Jacob McLeland, KGOU (May 19, 2015)
- Oklahoma Drug Threat Assessment National Drug Intelligence Center, justice.gov (October 2002)
- Bandido's Motorcycle Club sues Shawnee police and city, alleging police brutality and unlawful arrest Ann Kelley, The Oklahoman (November 18, 2010)
- Texas Gang Threat Assesment Texas Department of Public Safety (November 2018)
- Chambers v. State of Texas Justia (March 20, 1974)
- Dirty Dealing: Drug Smuggling on the Mexican Border & the Assassination of a Federal Judge Gary Cartwright (1984)
- Lichtenwalter v. State of Texas Justia (July 13, 1977)
- Charles Edward Tamminen v. State of Texas Justia (July 20, 1983)
- Charles E. Tamminen v. State of Texas Leagle.com (December 22, 1982)
- Fort Worth Bandidos president sentenced for murder of rival biker gang member Christian McPhate, Dallas Observer (June 14, 2017)
- Never Love a Bandido Dick Reavis, Texas Monthly (May 1979)
- Motorcycle gang members are slain The Childress Index (August 29, 1978)
- Fort Worth motorcycle gangs ‘prefer to fly under the radar’ Deanna Boyd, Fort Worth Star-Telegram (May 20, 2015)
- Wood presides at drug smuggling conspiracy trial in El Paso of banker Rick De La Torre United Press International (May 28, 1981)
- Crime case widening Daily Record (February 22, 1979)
- Outlaws: Inside the Hell's Angel Biker Wars: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs Tony Thompson (2011)
- Suspect in Kerr ambush found in Denver El Paso Times (March 26, 1980)
- Bandido leader gunned down Galveston Daily News (January 17, 1983)
- One killed, four hurt in gang fight Galveston Daily News (May 2, 1983)
- Explosives Incidents Report Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (1988)
- United States of America v. Franklin D. Schmick, Joseph Edward Parr, William Jerry Pruett, Danny Franklin Johnson, Marshall Mitchell, Ken Vodron, Dale Lynn Brewer Justia (June 19, 1990)
- Bandidos bloodshed and funerals in San Antonio J.M. Scott, San Antonio Express-News (May 18, 2015)
- Raid on Cycle Gang Nets 80 Suspects in 8 States Kathy Sawyer, The Washington Post (February 22, 1985)
- United States of America v. Ernest Cortinas, Ricardo Rodriguez, Henry C. Villegas, Daniel Chavez Villegas, Johnny Albert Martinez, Linda Rodriguez, Eric Wayne Green Justia (May 22, 1998)
- Defendants receive lengthy sentences in methamphetamine trafficking conspiracy that generated $5 million in proceeds United States Department of Justice (May 13, 2010)
- PFC Thomas Lloyd “Hammer” Gerry Find a Grave (May 22, 1998)
- Leader of bike gang gets 5 years San Antonio Express-News (November 4, 1998)
- Craig Charles Johnston obituary Longview News-Journal (February 12, 2020)
- Justices decline to review use of drug-sniffing dogs Andrew Tilghman, Houston Chronicle (April 5, 2005)
- David Gregory Smith v. State of Texas Justia (February 5, 2004)
- San Antonio Bandidos Member Pleads Guilty to Murder U.S. Department of Justice (October 12, 2016)
- Bandido gets 13 years without parole for retaliation killing near San Antonio Guillermo Contreras, San Antonio Express-News (October 2, 2018)
- "The "Kid" vs "Pikin"". Eastsideboxing.com. Archived from the original on 2011-05-22. Retrieved 2010-08-14.
- Web Posted: 09/12/2007 2:00 CDT. "UPDATED: Merla pleads no contest in Quiroga slaying". Mysanantonio.com. Retrieved 2010-08-14.
- "Ex-Bandido Who Killed SA Boxing Legend Breaks His Silence | WOAI.COM: San Antonio News". Woai.Com. Retrieved 2010-08-14.
- The gang's all here, Texas Monthly, April 1, 2007
- Detective determined to solve 'professional hit' killing, Austin American-Statesman, October 1, 2006
- Who shot Anthony Benesh?, Austin Chronicle, May 19, 2006
- 4 Bandidos Gang Members Arrested in 2006 Death of Texas Man, Associated Press, March 7, 2017
- Marquez v. State of Texas Justia (November 4, 2009)
- Bandido member sentenced to 25 years Kerrville Daily Times (October 11, 2008)
- FBI's undercover motorcycle shop nets dozens of arrests Avi Selk, The Dallas Morning News (September 28, 2011)
- Nearly 40 Members and Associates of Bandido Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Charged in Three Districts for Alleged Drug and Firearm Offenses Federal Bureau of Investigation (September 27, 2011)
- Former Bandido president not guilty of aggravated assault Will Jensen and Andrew McMillan, KTXS-TV (December 18, 2015)
- Howard Wayne Baker v. State of Texas Justia (April 9, 2020)
- Closing arguments Friday in trial of Fort Worth leader of Bandidos motorcycle gang Mitch Mitchell, Fort Worth Star-Telegram (June 8, 2017)
- The story behind the biker-gang feud that erupted in a shootout at a Texas restaurant Emily Schmall, Business Insider (May 19, 2015)
- The Untold Story of the Texas Biker Gang Shoot-Out Nathaniel Penn, GQ (September 30, 2015)
- "The Untold Story of the Texas Biker Gang Shoot-Out". GQ. September 30, 2015.
- Bandidos national vice president, John Xavier Portillo, of San Antonio denied bond By mySA 16 February 2016
- Verdict reached in racketeering trial of top ex-Bandidos leaders, San Antonio Express-News 17 May 2018
- San Antonio judge sends Bandidos chief to federal prison for life without parole, Houston Chronicle, 26 September 2018
- Police: Bandidos tried to take vest during assault Daniel Borunda, El Paso Times (August 12, 2016)
- Bandido could face life in prison if convicted in El Paso biker battle Aaron Martinez, El Paso Times (November 3, 2017)
- Kinfolk gang member sentenced to prison in fatal shooting of Bandidos El Paso president Aaron Martinez, El Paso Times (January 24, 2019)
- FIRST ON CBS7: Bandidos and Mongols motorcycle gangs had shootout Sunday night according to police KOSA-TV (February 20, 2020)
- Washington Drug Threat Assessment National Drug Intelligence Center, justice.gov (February 2003)
- Rick Anderson (2006-07-12). "Born to be Wild - Page 1 - News - Seattle". Seattle Weekly. Archived from the original on 2011-06-14. Retrieved 2010-08-14.
- 5 prominent Bandidos in plea deal The Seattle Times (May 11, 2006)
- Johnson, Gene (2006). "Bandidos Leader Sentenced to 20 Months". FoxNews.com. Associated Press. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
- Bandidos gang president gets four years for racketeering The Everett Herald (November 17, 2006)
- Bandidos directly involved in murder of Careaga family, Kitsap officials say Andrew Binion, Kitsap Sun (January 27, 2020)
- $20,000 reward in Careaga family murder: ‘We know that members and associates of the Bandidos Motorycle Club were involved’, Q13 FOX, January 24, 2020
External links
- Official Bandidos website – listing many chartered local chapters, with links