VENTURA, Calif. — A national Hells Angels leader, who for two decades cultivated the image of an upstanding citizen, has been accused of heading a criminal gang whose activities include the sale of drugs to high school students.
The indictment and arrest of George Gus Christie Jr., his two adult children and 25 others Friday night tarnishes his long campaign to portray the motorcycle gang as free-spirited but law-abiding citizens harassed by law enforcement.
Instead, prosecutors say, Christie assembled a drug distribution network that relied on young Hells Angels operatives — or "HA Cub Scouts" — to sell drugs to teenagers as they left four middle and high school campuses in Ventura and Ojai, north of Los Angeles.
While the Hells Angels have generally fallen from public view in recent years, they have been a growing presence in Ventura.
Christie hosted the Angels 50th anniversary celebration here in 1998 and angered police and public officials by posing for a group photo with hundreds of bikers on the steps of City Hall.
The Ventura chapter tripled its size to about 20 members, recruiting young street toughs who roared around downtown Ventura on flame-emblazoned Harley-Davidsons. The group engaged in a flurry of criminal activity that prompted investigations by police, sheriff's intelligence officers and the district attorney's organized crime unit.
It took eight months to present to the current case to the grand jury, which indicted the suspects on 132 separate criminal counts on Friday.
Investigators arrested 24 of 28 suspects — including nine Hells Angels — in sweeps in Ventura and Orange counties Friday night, ending a four-year investigation. Officers acted on eight Ventura County Grand Jury indictments for theft, fraud, tax evasion, firearms possession, drug sales to minors and the use of a street gang in a criminal conspiracy.
"An organized criminal enterprise has been stopped from selling drugs to our children and victimizing other citizens through violence, theft, fraud and intimidation," District Attorney Michael Bradbury said in a written release Saturday.
Christie has denied any wrongdoing.
He could not be reached Saturday. Earlier last week, anticipating the indictments, he said: "I'll save my comments for the courtroom. My lawyer and I will handle everything in the courtroom."
Christie is represented by Barry Tarlow of Los Angeles, a high-profile former federal prosecutor who gained Christie's acquittal in the 1987 federal murder-for-hire case.
The indictments represent the first time Christie, 53, the reputed heir to Ralph Sonny Barger as the Angels' top leader nationwide, has been charged with a serious crime since a Los Angeles jury acquitted him 14 years ago.
Since the early 1980s, the Angels have presented Christie as a representative of a new generation of members who are law-abiding and raise money for charities .
After running a leg in the Olympic Torch relay in 1984, he spoke in college and high school classes about the ethics of prosecutors and journalists. He hosted a fund-raiser for an Oxnard children's museum in 1997. He even sold his life's story to Hollywood as a tale of a modern-day folk hero who withstood the abuse of power by federal authorities.
Christie is regularly seen at his tattoo and body-piercing parlor on Main Street, talking on the sidewalk with Angels, tattooed employees and hangers-on.
He is calm and precise in his speech. Acquaintances describe him as smart and articulate — even gentlemanly — and nearly always in control of himself and those around him.
While Christie was the prosecutors' chief target, their case also includes his 24-year-old son, George Gus Christie III, and 29-year-old daughter, Moriya Christie, a Ventura attorney who represents Hells Angels in court. Altogether, the family faces nearly four dozen criminal charges.
The senior Christie is charged with 23 criminal offenses that carry potential penalties of 15 to 20 years in prison.
Prosecutors say he not only oversees a criminal gang that peddled drugs to teen-agers but that he carried a gun while committing crimes, evaded employee taxes, stole valuable property and hid large amounts of money in secret bank accounts.
As part of the current investigation, undercover agents bought drugs 25 times from Hells Angels or their associates, sheriff's investigators said in 1999 after arresting several club members. Suspects typically peddled plastic bags containing two or three Valium pills to teen-agers for $1 a pill, or sold so-called designer drugs — Vicodin for $3 a tablet and Ecstasy for $20 a tablet, investigators said.
Charges were delayed as prosecutors tried to weave an array of alleged crimes into a single conspiracy case.
Of the 24 named suspects — four were not identified because they had not been arrested — Christie, his son, William "Gunner" Wolf, 30, and Leonardo Martinis, 33, are being held on $1 million bail. So is Joshua Adams, 23, of Ventura. Five of the suspects were already in jail or prison for crimes ranging from assault with a deadly weapon to drug sales.
Authorities say the Hells Angels case is massive, involving tens of thousands of pages of evidence, much of it seized during raids over the last three years.
Early in the investigation, in May 1998, authorities arrested Christie on suspicion of narcotics possession and his estranged wife, Cheryl Christie, a bookkeeper for the Angels, on suspicion of possessing drugs for sale.
The initial raids focused on whether Christie had paid taxes for employees at his tattoo parlor.
In raids in 1998 and 1999, the Sheriff's Department arrested nine club members, most on drug-related charges. No charges were filed until Friday. Over 16 months, authorities said they seized $27,000 in cash, drugs valued at $364,000 and 15 weapons, including a 'sniper rifle,' a semiautomatic shotgun, a sawed-off shotgun, a hunter's rifle with a bayonet and a machete.