B.C. Hells Angels in disarray after exit of key member, arrests and clubhouse losses (2024)

It has been a challenging year for B.C. Hells Angels.

Not only are three of their former clubhouses about to be sold off by the B.C. government this spring, but there has been an exodus from the Kelowna chapter.

Damiano Dipopolo, a former Kelowna chapter president, was kicked out of the Hells Angels last fall. Some of his chapter-mates followed him voluntarily.

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And in January, Damion Ryan, a B.C. native and full-patch member of the Hells Angels, was charged with being part of an unsuccessful murder-for-hire plot in the U.S. targeting two Iranian dissidents living there.

Ryan, who is part of the Wolfpack gang alliance, is currently in a Manitoba jail, awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges in that province, as well as firearms charges in Ontario. It is not known if the U.S. has applied yet for his extradition.

The indictment in the case says Ryan was working for Iranian drug lord Naji Zindashti — on orders from the Iranian regime — when he was allegedly recorded on an encrypted device agreeing to put together a team to do the hit for $350,000 US, plus $20,000 in expenses.

Ryan was most recently a member of the Hells Angels Attica chapter in Greece, but Postmedia has learned he has left that biker gang for the closer-to-home Haney chapter, of which his uncle is a long-time member.

Other B.C. Hells Angels have been charged, convicted or sentenced to jail for various offences over the last year.

Sgt. Brenda Winpenny, of the anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, said in a recent interview that some of the older Hells Angels — who have been part of the gang since it started in B.C. in July 1983 — don’t see eye-to-eye with some of the club’s newer members.

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“These older guys are calling these new guys coming in the new gangster-bikers, who are creating turmoil within the B.C. Hells Angels,” she said. “What’s happening now shows the dysfunction of the aging leadership.”

Some of the younger Hells Angels and their associates have been mired in the long-running province-wide gang conflict. Ryan, for example, has been targeted twice by would-be hitmen and escaped. Before his 2022 arrest on the Manitoba charges, CFSEU had included Ryan in a public warning related to the gang conflict.

Also included in the public warnings was Hells Angels associate Andy St. Pierre. He as later shot and wounded in December 2023 in the parking lot of a Superstore in Mission. No one has been charged.

While Mission RCMP did not identify St. Pierre by name, they said he “is known to police and is believed to have ties to the B.C. gang conflict.”

Postmedia has also learned that since the East End, Kelowna and Nanaimo clubhouses were seized by the director of civil forfeiture a year ago this week, the bikers have been looking for places to lease to hold their weekly “church” meetings.

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Last October, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear a Hells Angel appeal of the seizures.

Civil Forfeiture Office executive-director Phil Tawtel recently told Postmedia that he anticipated “liquidating the properties in the spring.”

Dipopolo was one of the Hells Angels defendants in a 16-year court battle over the clubhouses, which the B.C. government argued had been used for criminal activities.

No one from the Hells Angels responded to a request for comment Tuesday. Dipopolo earlier declined an interview request through one of his contacts.

The bikers are still expected to hold their annual rides, which are mandatory for members, beginning next month in East Vancouver.

Winpenny said that even with the issues facing the Hells Angels, “they are one of the most powerful organized crime groups, not only in B.C., but nationally and internationally with connections all over the world.”

“We’re not naive to think that this current turmoil will affect their ability to continue to operate their criminal enterprises,” she said.

kbolan@postmedia.com

X.com/kbolan

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