Scott Payne is a big, intimidating, Harley-riding guy. He’s the perfect choice to infiltrate the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. For him, it’s a dream assignment - getting inside an international criminal organization whose arch-rival is the Hell's Angels. Then, things go bad. Really bad.
Chapter 1: What is the main premise of the episode?
It's on. A federal election is here and party leaders are racing around Canada to convince you to give them your vote. We're seeing a lot of spin, a lot of promises, and a lot of accusations swirling around. And we are here to filter through the noise.
I'm Catherine Cullen, host of The House, and every Saturday we want to slow you down and make sure you're getting the big picture and deep context and everything you need to make politics make sense. Because democracy is a conversation, and we're here for it.
This is a CBC Podcast.
The following episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence. Please take care when listening. Hi there, Higgy?
Yes.
How are you? It's Michelle out of Toronto.
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Chapter 2: Who is Scott Payne and why is he significant?
How are you, Michelle?
I'm good. I just looked up your... This is Higgy. He told me I could call him that. More properly, though.
My name is Thomas Higginbotham, and I was a trooper from 1978 to 2009. I retired in December 2009. I retired as a sergeant.
Higgy, if you can't tell from his accent, is from Massachusetts. In his decades-long career, Higgy worked in Boston and the surrounding area.
Chapter 3: What challenges do undercover officers face?
Ever since I came on in 1978, I seized a lot of stolen motorcycles from various gang members. And I was able to develop information, develop informants.
For a long time, Higgies, Massachusetts was a Hells Angels state. Then, in the early 1990s, their arch rival, a biker gang named the Outlaws, started to inch into the region by absorbing smaller local clubs.
They finally did manage to patch over a club. It was a nomads and some devil's disciples. They patched over a small group in Brockton and they opened up their first clubhouse in Massachusetts. I believe it was 1993. So they were here. Everybody was quite concerned about them.
And where I was assigned to the city... By 2005, Higgy and his team started an investigation into the Taunton, Massachusetts chapter of the Outlaws. Eventually, it would draw in police from the local, state, and federal level. It was called Operation Roadkill.
We tossed it around about the possibility of putting an undercover in, and we kind of agreed that You know, we could try it. Let's see how far the investigation would go. You know, I'm not a big fan of it, but I said, yeah.
And why is it that you normally don't like to have an undercover?
What happens when we bring an undercover into a motorcycle gang, it raises all these other issues. We have to deal with his safety issues. We have to worry about him getting killed or getting assaulted. We have to protect him because he's hanging around without laws, right? And they're arch rivals for the Hells Angels in this violence. So he becomes a target by his association with them.
He's riding with them. He's going to events with them all over the country. He's at their clubhouses, going to parties. This is just me talking, okay? His safety becomes number one. We got to keep him alive and keep him going. And they control his life. If we let him become a club member and he wears colors, they control his life and they control his every movement.
We lose complete control of the investigation and the undercover. You know what I'm saying?
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Chapter 4: How do motorcycle gangs operate and what is their culture?
They have ties to organized crime, racist, white supremacists. They have all of that, and they're close. And I always had an interest in them.
It was kind of weird, but... Why is that, that you had the interest?
Well, I actually, to be honest, when I was young, I actually had a Harley, and I rode. And all they did was steal everybody's bikes. They were notorious motorcycle thieves. But I found, like, the ones that I've got to know... There's something in their lives that brings them to that. They're looking for, like, there's something that they're missing. It's like a brotherhood. You know what I mean?
Or camaraderie. It's just, it's an odd culture in a way, but it is a violent, violent way to live, though.
Right. Higgy and his team have been investigating the Taunton Outlaws club members for more than a year before Scott was brought onto the case.
I was a federal prosecutor in Boston, otherwise known as an assistant U.S. attorney.
Peter Levitt was the state's main lawyer on Operation Roadkill.
I was the chief of the organized crime and gang unit, and we focused on everything from transnational criminal organizations to local street gangs that negatively impacted particular communities. The Crips, the Bloods, the Latin Gangs, the Disciples, a variety of street gangs that had varying levels of organization.
And our focus was on the gangs that typically were engaged in the most violent conduct.
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Chapter 5: What is Operation Roadkill and its objectives?
Please do. To hear the whole story, listen to Fiasco, Iran-Contra, wherever you get your podcasts.
Undercover work can be tedious. It's sometimes hours and days and weeks, and in this case months, of building relationships and dropping breadcrumbs that you hope will amount to something. Scott eventually expanded his legend, that is his undercover story, and hinted that he moved illegal goods, small stuff at first, like power tools, and he made sure they saw him doing that.
Then the outlaws began asking him to sell their stolen property, insurance scams essentially. They would report a motorcycle or car stolen when really they'd offloaded it on to Scott. The outlaws would collect the insurance payout while Scott pretends he's selling the vehicles in Mexico. Once that trust was there, Joe Dogs and his crew escalated it and started talking drugs.
It was a mystique about him because he wasn't around them all the time. He came across as a businessman, flying out here on business, Trying to do a side hustle from Texas. So they bring it up. You must know somebody in the cartels. You must know drug dealers, people that can move weapons or drugs over the line, the country, into the country and out of the country.
As the outlaws' interest grows, all captured on tape, Peter Levitt and his team are building their prosecution. But it's all pretty small potatoes so far. Then there's an opportunity, a plan for a big sting. The outlaws will provide the protection detail, which is basically the security, on a drug deal that Scott is supposedly in on.
40 kilos of cocaine and 1,000 pounds of weed need moving from Mexico to Canada. And that's real drugs, which the FBI doesn't want to lose on the streets of Massachusetts. The night before the deal, Scott gets a call.
Joe Dog says, hey, come on over to the clubhouse. But it was the night they had church. And I'm not allowed in church because I'm not a patch member.
Church is biker slang for closed-door, fully-patched, members-only club meetings. No hangers-on, no probationary members. Scott is told to come back a little later, once the meeting is over. Which is weird, because Joe Dogs had summoned him. But he follows their instructions and kills some time at the bar with a drink.
I get to the clubhouse. And I go inside, and the music's blaring. They pour me a Jack and Coke, you know, door shuts.
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