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. Australia. The Bandidos are considered an outlaw motorcycle gang by the Australian Federal Police. Numerous police investigations have targeted Bandidos members, and implicated them in illegal drugs supply and other crimes. Australia's first Bandidos chapter was formed in Sydney in August 1983. The  club has around 400 members and 45 chapters in the country, and has recruited members of various ethnic backgrounds. The Australian Bandidos are allied with the Diablos, Mobshitters, and Rock Machine, while their rivals include the Comancheros, Finks, Gypsy Jokers, Hells Angels, Mongols, Notorious, Rebels and Red Devils. Belgium. The Bandidos are designated a criminal motorcycle gang by Belgium's Federal Police. 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. 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. An investigation carried out by a joint task force consisting of agents from the Belgian Federal Police and the Spanish National Police Corps resulted in a total of twenty-six raids being carried out in Belgium, the  Netherlands and Spain on 20 October 2021 in relation to a shipment of 11,497 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a consignment of scrap metal from South America to Antwerp, which was seized upon arrival at the port. Thirteen people were arrested in Belgium, and the president of the Bandidos in Spain – a Belgian national – was apprehended in Marbella on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and belonging to a criminal organization after he was identified by police as the organizer of the shipment. Four high-end vehicles valued at more than €700,000, jewelry valued at €300,000, €17,085  in cash, encrypted mobile phones and documentation were also seized. Canada. The Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC) has designated the Bandidos an outlaw motorcycle gang. 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. 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 and the Edmonton Rebels became a Bandidos hangaround club in  2003. On 30 January 2004, Morin – by then a probationary Bandidos member – and hangaround Robert Charles Simpson were shot dead outside an Edmonton strip club. 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. 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. An attempt by the Bandidos to establish themselves in Calgary  in 2007 ended after a violent assault at a bar by the Hells Angels. Manitoba. On 8 February 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. Michel pleaded guilty in October 2006. 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 5 June 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. Bandidos member  George "Crash" Kriarakis was assaulted by a dozen members of the Hells Angels outside a restaurant in Woodbridge in June 2003. 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 6 December 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. On 8 April 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 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 30 October 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. 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 28 September 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 19 January 2009. Lenti refused an offer of police protection when informed of the alleged plot, but he did start carrying around  a handgun. On 2 December 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. Lenti pleaded guilty to manslaughter and two counts of aggravated assault, and was sentenced to six years in prison in June 2008. 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. 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. 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, ended with  mass killings by the Hells Angels, plus public outcry over the deaths of innocent bystanders resulted in police pressure including the incarceration of over a hundred bikers. 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. 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. The Bandidos have ten chapters and approximately one-hundred-and-fifty members in Denmark, and have traditionally recruited members of Danish ethnicity, although this has changed somewhat in recent years. The club has links to the country's Turkish mafia. Finland. The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) defines the Bandidos as an organized criminal group. The Bandidos are the largest motorcycle club in Finland, with around two-hundred-and-forty members and fourteen chapters. Groups affiliated with the Bandidos in the country include the Diablos and X-Team. Nordic Biker War. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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'. 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. 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. Since the end of the biker war, the once-rival clubs have operated in parallel rather than competing with each other. Conflict with the Rogues Gallery. 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. 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. 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. Infighting. 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. 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. 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. Drug trafficking. In January 2008, two Bandidos and five X-Team members in Espoo were among twenty-one people charged with importing and distributing amphetamine. 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. 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. 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. Other incidents. 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. 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. France. The Bandidos' first chapter in Europe was founded in Marseille on 20 September 1989 when the club patched over the Club de Clichy. This expansion provoked a war with the Hells Angels, who were already established in France. Bandidos member  Jean-Pierre Debono 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Germany. The Federal Criminal Police Office has accused the Bandidos of involvement in illegal gambling, prostitution, arms dealing, extortion, money laundering and drug trafficking. 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. The club consists of 74 chapters and 1,200 members in the country. The German Bandidos are supported by the Chicanos, Diablos and X-Team. Conflict  with the Hells Angels. A gang war involving the Bandidos and the Hells Angels began around 2004 after the Bandidos moved into Hells Angels territory across northern Germany. The war also spread to the east of the country in 2006 when both clubs expanded into the Cottbus area. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. On 11 June 2008, two Bandidos members were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a Hells Angels member in Ibbenbüren. 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. 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. On 8 October 2009, Bandidos member Rudi Heinz "Eschli" Elten was shot to death by Hells Angels prospect Timur Akbulut in Duisburg. Akbulut was convicted of manslaughter over Elten's killing and was sentenced to eleven years in  prison on 30 August 2010. 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. 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. 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. 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. Conflicts with other gangs. 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. 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 faction 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. An accomplice had previously  been sentenced to three years and six months' in January 2014. 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. 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. Anti-gang legislation. 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. 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. 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. The Caballeros were reportedly granted full membership to the Bandidos as a result of McNamara's actions. Road Tramps members Seamus Duggan, James McCormack and Raymond Neilon pleaded guilty to the robbery of McNamara and were given probation in October 2017. The first 	Bandidos MC criminal allegations and incidents
10930797	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. 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. The Dutch Bandidos are closely allied with Satudarah, as both clubs have the Hells Angels as common enemy. The day after the chapter's formation, an attack with explosives was 	Bandidos MC criminal allegations and incidents
10930798	carried out on the home of Bandidos president Harrie Ramakers, who was previously the vice-president of the Hells Angels' nomads chapter before defecting. 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. A second Bandidos chapter, also a former No Surrender branch, was founded in Alkmaar on 26 March 2014. A fire was started at the Alkmaar chapter clubhouse located in Heerhugowaard on 29 March 2014, the first night in which there 	Bandidos MC criminal allegations and incidents
10930799	was no police surveillance on the premises. 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. 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 	Bandidos MC criminal allegations and incidents
10930800	at his residence in Geleen. Ramakers is furthermore a suspect in several murder investigations. 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. 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. A third Dutch Bandidos chapter was formed in Nijmegen in January 	Bandidos MC criminal allegations and incidents
10930801	2017. 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. The prohibition will stop behavior that may disrupt or disrupts our society," was stated by the judge. The ban took effect immediately. 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. New Zealand. New Zealand's first Bandidos chapter was  founded in South Auckland in 2012 by club members deported from Australia. 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. 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. 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. Police stated that the drugs had been imported with the help of the Thailand chapter of the Bandidos. Norway. The National Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS, or "Kripos") considers the Bandidos an organized criminal motorcycle club. According to figures found in the Norwegian National Police Directorate for 2014, 62% of Bandidos members in Norway had previous criminal convictions. The club has five chapters and approximately forty members in the country. The Norwegian Bandidos are affiliated with  the Chicanos and X-Team, and are allied with the Outlaws. Nordic Biker War. 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. 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. 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. The incident effectively stopped the founding of a Bandidos chapter in Trondheim, a city that has since been seen as Hells Angels territory. 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. 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. 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. 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. A Hells Angels member was acquitted of murdering Krogh Jensen on 11 June 1998 and the investigation into the killing was closed in 2000. 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. The Bandidos' clubhouse in Drammen was reduced to rubble on 4 June 1997 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. 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. 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. 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. Drug trafficking. 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. 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. 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. Several people were arrested following a drug raid on the Bandidos' clubhouse in Porsgrunn on 23 January 2020. Other incidents. Central figures of the Bandidos in Drammen started a debt collection agency called Bandidos Kapital & Invest in September 1999. The company closed in February 2000 after it had been the subject of numerous police complaints and allegations of improper practices. 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. 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. 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'. 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. 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. 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. In October 2017, raids conducted by Norwegian police resulted in the arrest of several full-patch members of the Rock Machine on charges of distribution of narcotics and firearms, illegal possession of firearms, and murder. The raids were conducted in relation to the murder of a prospective member of the Bandidos. 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. 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. Spain. The president of the Bandidos in Spain – a Belgian national – was arrested in Malaga on 20 October 2021 on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and belonging to a criminal organization after he was identified by police as the organizer of a 11,497 kilogram cocaine shipment which was hidden in a consignment of scrap metal from South America and seized upon arrival at the port of Antwerp, Belgium. His arrest followed an investigation carried  out by a joint task force consisting of agents from the Spanish National Police Corps and the Belgian Federal Police, which resulted in a total of twenty-six raids being carried out in Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. An additional thirteen people were taken into custody in Belgium, and four high-end vehicles valued at more than €700,000, jewelry valued at €300,000, €17,085 in cash, encrypted mobile phones and documentation were also seized in the raids. As a continuation of the operation, the president of the Bandidos in Germany, who lived in the same luxury urbanization in  Marbella as the Spain president, was also arrested as had a warrant for his arrest and imprisonment decreed by the National Court for his extradition to Germany. Both detainees were placed at the disposal of the Judicial Authority to be extradited to Belgium and Germany respectively. 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. 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. The Swedish Bandidos have run extensive extortion rackets by offering restaurants and bars "protection" from other criminal gangs. The club has eight chapters in Sweden and has prominently recruited members of non-Swedish ethnicity. Affiliates of the Bandidos in Sweden include the Chicanos, Diablos and X-Team. Establishment and initial crimes. 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. 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. Nordic Biker War. On 13 February 1994, fifteen Danish Bandidos members were ambushed by Hells Angels associates at a club in Helsingborg, resulting in 13 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. 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 36 break-ins that occurred at Swedish and Danish Army weapons depots between 1994 and 1997, resulting in the theft of at least 16 Bofors anti-tank missiles, 10 machine guns, around 300 handguns, 67 fully automatic rifles, 205 rifles of various calibres, hundreds of hand grenades and land mines, and 17 kilograms of explosives  plus detonators. A Bandidos member killed a fellow inmate at Helsingborg prison in November 1994. 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, and there have been differing theories surrounding his killing. 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. 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. Another gunfight between two cars happened in Helsingborg on 5 March 1996, resulting in a Bandidos prospect suffering serious injuries. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 2000s. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In July 2007, Bandidos Säffle chapter president Anders Gustafsson was charged with the attempted extortion of kr500,000 from a construction company. 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. 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. 2010s. The Rock Machine arrived in Sweden in the  early 2010s, initially forming a nomads faction. Quickly growing in influence, the Canadian-founded club established two additional chapters and began encroaching on the territory of the established clubs in the country. A feud emerged between the Rock Machine and the Bandidos after several Bandidos members reportedly patched over to the Rock Machine. These events resulted in the Bandidos attempting to assassinate the Rock Machine Sweden president on the premises of the Rock Machine's Klippan chapter clubhouse in September 2014; he would survive the attempt, and two members of the Bandidos in Helsingborg would be arrested and charged for  attempted murder after police executed searches of the headquarters of the Bandidos the Southern Bikers MC support club. 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. 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. 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. 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. Bandidos–No Surrender gang war. 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. Two No Surrender bikers, including a leading member, were shot dead outside a nightclub in Norrköping on 5 December 2019. Another No Surrender member was targeted in a bombing on 22 January 2020 in the Hageby area of Norrköping. 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. 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. Thirty-four people were arrested. Thailand. The Bandidos operate seven chapters in Thailand. While membership is predominantly Thai, Australian, Danish and Swedish 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. In June 1997, a woman was killed when a bomb exploded in the Bandidos headquarters in Bangkok. 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. Nielsen was instead sentenced eighteen months in prison for coercing another person to traffic in drugs. 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. 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. United States. The Bandidos have been designated an outlaw motorcycle gang by the U.S. Department of Justice. 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. The Bandidos partake in transporting and distributing cocaine and marijuana, and the production, transportation and distribution of methamphetamine . Active primarily in the Northwestern, Southeastern, Southwestern and the West Central regions, there are an estimated 800 to 1,000 Bandidos members and 93 chapters in 16 U.S. states. Club membership is predominantly white and Hispanic. The Bandidos are supplied with drugs by Los Zetas, and have also associated with the Outlaws in criminal ventures. The Bandidos' rivals include the Cossacks, the Hells Angels, the Mongols the Kinfolk, and the Vagos. 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. 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). A court-authorized wiretap was used at the Bandidos' Little Rock chapter clubhouse as part of the investigation. 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. 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. 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. 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 remained 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. Three high-ranking Bandidos members were among 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. 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. Louisiana. The Bandidos have a strong presence in Louisiana. The club's Louisiana faction, 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. The Louisiana Bandidos have also been involved in stealing Harley-Davidson motorcycles and shipping them to various locations overseas. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. The Vernon Parish Sheriff's Office began investigating an influx of motorcycle gang members and a subsequent turf war between the Bandidos and the Mongols in 2018. A joint investigation into the Bandidos and Los Solitarios motorcycle clubs by Fort Polk officials, and state and local law enforcement agencies, which followed an assault on members of the Mongols at a business in Vernon Parish on September 11, 2021, resulted in  the arrests of James Larry Birdsong, Christopher William Moore and James Allen Snyder Jr. on various charges on October 7, 2021. Montana. The Missoula Bandidos chapter has allegedly been involved in an interstate drug distrabution pipeline with the club's chapters in Gillette, Wyoming, Rapid City, South Dakota, and Denver, Colorado. Bandidos member Joe Cancellare was imprisoned for his role in two assaults involving shotguns in Missoula in 1994. 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. 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 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (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. Missoula chapter president Bernard Russell Ortman was apprehended in Lubbock, Texas. Several Missoula Bandidos were charged with the kidnapping of an individual that took place in May 2003. In April 2006, Ortman and another chapter member, Dale Granmo, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kidnap. 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. 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. 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. 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. Bandidos sergeant-at-arms Thomas "Mañana" Giles and club hangaround Michael John Vickery were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (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. Giles and Vickery allegedly sold heroin and methamphetamine to a confidential informant on four occasions between September 8 and September 29, 2017. 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. Oklahoma. The Bandidos' first chapter in Oklahoma was established in Tulsa in May 1997, with Edward Winterhalder appointed as its founding president. The club also has a  presence in Oklahoma City, Lawton, Shawnee, Elk City, Poteau and Bartlesville, and is involved in gunrunning, retail-level drug distribution and human trafficking, often in conjunction with Mexican drug cartels. Fifteen people were arrested and charged with misdemeanor obstructing justice after members of the Bandidos and the Mongols were involved in a brawl in Shawnee on December 20, 2009. 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. Texas. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) classifies the Bandidos as  a criminal street gang. As of 2008, there are 672 club members in the state. Early incidents. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Shootings of James W. Kerr Jr. and John H. Wood Jr.. 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. 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. 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. Bandidos members were named by Chagra as the men he contracted to kill Kerr, although no one has ever been tried in that shooting. Conflict with the Banshees. 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. 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. Hanson, Adams Otis Fisher and Raymond Douglas Shirley, president of the Longview chapter, served as government witnesses. Drug trafficking. 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. Twelve arrests were reported in the Houston–Corpus Christi area, where the club's "mother chapter" is based. The operation, coordinated by the Justice Department and involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (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. An investigation into the Bandidos' involvement in methamphetamine and  PCP trafficking had commenced sixteen months prior. 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. 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. 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. Johnston died at the age of seventy-two on January 27, 2020. 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. Smith was convicted of possession with intent to deliver the drugs, and was sentenced to thirty-seven years in prison in April 2002. 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 500 grams of cocaine. The trio had previously engaged in a narcotics transaction with undercover agents. 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. Murder of Roberto Lara. 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. 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. Murder of Robert Quiroga. 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. Merla was sentenced to forty years in prison. "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. 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. Murder of Anthony Benesh. 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. On March 7, 2017 federal authorities announced that four members of the Bandidos gang had been arrested and charged with Benesh's murder. Conflict with the Cossacks. 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. 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. 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. 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. The cases against Povendo and Stover were dismissed in August 2015 and October 2018, respectively. 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. 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. On May17, 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. 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. 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. 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. Conflicts with other gangs. 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 in East El  Paso on August 3, 2016. A man was injured after being hit on the head with a baseball bat and an extendable baton. 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. In June 2021, charges against Decarlo, Heradia and Robert Farrell Grant III, sergeant-at-arms of the Bandidos support club Brass Knuckles MC, were dismissed by the El Paso County District Attorney's Office. Javier Gonzalez, vice-president of the Kinfolk'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., who was shot seven times on July 30, 2017 and died on August 3. 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. 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. A Bandidos member suffered gunshot wounds to the leg and arm after members of the Bandidos and Kinfolk exchanged gunfire at a Lubbock bar on November 12, 2020. Bandidos member Alfredo Paez, and Kinfolk members Danny Lee Gollihugh and Michael Roberts were indicted on January 5, 2021 on charges of engaging in organized criminal activity. Lubbock Kinfolk chapter president Gollihugh pleaded guilty in July 2021 to possession of an unregistered firearm, and was sentenced on November 4 to seven years in federal prison . Other incidents. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Marquez was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison in October 2008. Bandidos member Benito "Chamuco" Lopez III was arrested on October 4, 2019 after authorities identified him as the caretaker of a stash house for illegal aliens in Los Ebanos. Lopez pleaded guilty to his role in a conspiracy to transport undocumented aliens on February 3, 2020 and was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison on February 2, 2021. Washington. There are fourteen Bandidos chapters in Washington. The club is involved in methamphetamine distribution and violent crime in the state . 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. Those arrested included club officers Jack Edward Sekora, George Irving Sherman and John Jerome Francis. The arrests followed a sixteen-month investigation of the Bandidos MC that involved the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). 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. 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. Eighteen of those charged pleaded guilty, including international president George Wegers, Bellingham chapter president Glenn Merrit and Missoula chapter president Bernard Ortman. 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. 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. 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. There is a $20,000 reward for information leading to conviction in the Careaga family murder.