OFF THE WIRE
HAMILTON SPECTATOR
A federal prosecutor is seeking eight years in prison for a former president of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club who was nabbed in a police sting last year.
Andre Watteel, of Cambridge, pleaded guilty Monday to one count of trafficking that embodied 28 separate sales of cocaine between March 3 and Sept. 28, 2009.
The total quantity was just under a kilogram and ranged from 65 per cent to 83 per cent pure cocaine.
Watteel, 57, also pleaded guilty to possessing $60,270 in proceeds of crime generated by his drug trafficking.
The sales, which were for one or two ounces of cocaine at a time, were made to a police agent who was known to Watteel and who was posing as a prospective member of the Hells Angels.
Defence lawyer Jaime Stephenson will ask Ontario Court Justice John Takach to impose a sentence of three to four years in prison. Double credit for nine months of pretrial custody would have to be subtracted from both her position and that of prosecutor Brad Reitz.
Watteel was arrested Dec. 15, 2009, along with five Hamilton members of the Hells Angels and one from Nanticoke.
Project Manchester, led by the Ontario Provincial Police joint forces biker enforcement unit, targeted nine homes and commercial properties.
Reitz said the activities of the agent were closely monitored through extensive physical and electronic surveillance.
During the operation, the agent purchased drugs from the bikers on 45 occasions with a total of $109,370 in money provided to him by the police. He bought cocaine 38 times, totalling 64 ounces, as well as other drugs.
Watteel, a full-patch member of the Hells Angels, was a long-time associate of the agent and a main target of the police sting.
The Brazillian-born biker, a former veteran of the Satans Choice Motorcycle Club, was a major player in negotiating the “patch over” of that club when the Hells Angels took over in Ontario in late 2000. Watteel was a senior member of the Angels’ Kitchener chapter and then its Niagara chapter.
In one audiotaped conversation with the agent, Watteel rejected the undercover operator’s request for quantities larger than an ounce or two of cocaine.
Watteel: “I don’t want to get busted, but if I get busted with something small...”
Agent: “Mmm hmm.”
Watteel: “Slap on the wrist and I go home... You know I’m too old, I’m 56 years old. I don’t wanna (expletive deleted) be looking at five to 10 ... years.”
The sentence hearing continues on Nov. 12.
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