Bad Boys

Biker gang reformer? A little like taming lions, maybe. But El Presidente George figured to bring it off. The burly, goateed leader of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club promised peace for thunder road, vowing to steer the international organization toward a kinder, gentler reputation. Biker life ought to be more about chrome and oxygen and the open road, and less about indictments, he thought, having first fantasized about two-wheeling when he was a kid. Each day he'd walk past his neighbor's shiny Harley Davidson, wondering what it was like to slide in the saddle, open the throttle, and fly away.

Appointed in 1998 by club leaders as president of the 2,400-member Bandidos Motorcycle Club, George Wegers, now 53, did launch a mini-revolution, putting an end to such warm biker traditions as pissing all over new members to make them feel wanted. Routine beatings, to show love and impart discipline, were also banned. He felt that the Bandidos nation, effectively operating out of Wegers' Harley shop on State Street in Bellingham, could probably do with a little less speed, too–the kind that's ingested, inhaled, or injected. At weekly church sessions, as chapter meets are called, Wegers ordained that the Bandidos, who favor Spanish titles and whose club colors feature a well-armed, pot-bellied Mexican, didn't need no stinkin' badges flooding through the clubhouse doors.

Yet in the end, there was the reputed good guy yakking away on the phone on April 28, 2005, stumbling down the path of imprisoned presidentes before him: "Make sure anybody, everybody, knows that we're not talking to these people, and not talking to those people means not having any conversation with those people. . . . Them feds, ATF."

Christopher Horlock, 44, a Bandidos national officer from Rapid City, S.D., listened quietly on the other end of the line as Wegers explained that U.S. agents were nosing around a Montana kidnapping case involving club members.

"All right, boss," Horlock said finally, agreeing to conspire to tamper with witnesses in a federal investigation. "I'll get it all straightened away." Click.

Ultimately nabbed in a 19-count indictment, Wegers and 27 other Bandidos and associates were paraded into federal court last summer, later striking plea deals. Many were bearded and balding, some were in their 60s, prompting a courtroom media artist to stop Wegers' attorney, Jeffrey Lustick, and say, "They look like a bunch of ol' grandpas." Wegers himself has heart problems and high blood pressure and regularly saw three different doctors. Divorced, with a grown son, two grandkids, and other family in Whatcom and Skagit counties, "George is intelligent, good humored, and just loved biking," says Lustick.

Nonetheless, officials called the bust part of a takedown of dangerous motorcycle gangs in the Northwest. And it's true that under Wegers' control of a bureaucracy of local and national leaders, the Bandidos grew their membership and influence and were close to overtaking the Hells Angels as the world's largest outlaw biker club. But Wegers also reputedly harped on reform to everyone—impressionable hang-arounds, eager bikers-in-waiting, and seasoned full-patch members. Members could still do their hairy-man thing, riding Harleys (the mandatory brand) through town with the ol' ladies on board, drinking beer, and raising hell, just as long it never attracted more than a few patrol units. A minor larceny here and there could be balanced by a charity run. Otherwise, stay out of the papers was Wegers' mantra.

More than 60 bikers and co-conspirators in two countries have been arrested from Vancouver, B.C., to Missoula, Mont., to Tacoma in the past year. In the United States, many charges stemmed from the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The busts included the Bandidos' rivals, the Hells Angels, whose West Coast president, Smilin' Rick Fabel of Spokane, and four other Washington bikers were arrested in February on charges of murder and racketeering. Fabel, 48, who ran the Angels' empire from Nebraska to California, is also federally charged along with six other state Angels in a deadly 2002 biker melee at Harrah's Hotel and Casino in Laughlin, Nev., which brought a total of 42 West Coast Angels indictments. In Vancouver, 28 Hells Angels face racketeering and gunrunning charges.

Canada, perhaps even more than the States, has been plagued by biker violence, including the April drug-deal murders of eight Bandidos in southern Ontario, essentially wiping out the local chapter. Mostly unknown to Americans, the Canadian Hells Angels and a Bandidos offshoot, the Rock Machine, have engaged in bloody battles around Quebec that have left more than 165 bikers and bystanders dead since the 1990s.

How does one reform that sort of behavior?

Friends insist George Wegers had only good intentions when he took over the Bandidos. A former cohort, ex-Bandidos national officer Edward Winterhalder, who has written a book about the club, says Wegers thought the Bandidos needed more members who simply were "men of respect, not pieces of shit." Notes attorney Lustick: "One of the things we emphasized in the plea talks were aspects of how George Wegers has reformed the club. We were able to point to certain documents in the record, showing that federal agents recognized that George was known as a peacemaker." But if Wegers in fact set out to guide the club away from meth and violence, he nonetheless ended up running "an organized criminal enterprise that virtually held communities hostage," said U.S. Attorney John McKay when announcing the indictments last year.