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Law enforcement officers investigate the home of Ruben Cavazos, former national president of the Mongol motorcycle gang (AP Photo/Ric Francis)
Rejected for their ethnicity from the biker gang Hell's Angels in the 1970s, a group of Latinos formed their own called The Mongols, as the story is told according to the LA Times reporting on today's massive raid of the gang.
This morning, over 1,000 officers across Southern California and in five different states arrested around 38 alleged Mongol members under federal racketeering charges. And that's not all, the government seeks to trademark the group's name and branding. "Not only are we going after the Mongols' motorcycles, we're going after their very identity," U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien told the Times. "We are using all the tools at our disposal to crush this violent gang."
The gang was infiltrated by four undercover ATF agents who mostly gathered the intel along with four paid informants for today's indictment. Arrested members in the Los Angeles area are expected to appear in court today.
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This is a hell of a way to promote "Sons of Anarchy."
If you read the LATimes article, sounds like this gang was run with more sophistication and organization than Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Freddy and Fannie. Sadly - they don't get a bailout.
Damn, damn, damn.
This is going to get ugly.
Am I the only one who's strangely sad about this? In recent years, seeing a Mongol at an after-hours club was kind of like seeing a grizzly in the wild. You know they're dangerous, but you feel lucky, even honored, to come into proximity.
Once a couple years ago, a friend was in town, and we decided to head down to Amoeba right as a Mongol funeral procession was working its way down Sunset Blvd. The literally hundreds, if not thousands, of bikes coming down the street, the members wearing their patches and all their finery, made me oddly proud to be living in L.A.
Of course, I've probably seen every Roger Corman biker movie from the sixties, so perhaps I'm just a biker enthusiast.
@Dan Collins - you might like Hell Ride then, it was okay, but I felt like I would appreciate it a bit more if I were a biker enthusiast.