Top member of Pagan bike gang pleads guilty to new drug charges..

OFF THE WIRE
Man from Ross a repeat offender
A high-ranking member of the Pagans motorcycle gxxg from Ross pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in West Virginia to distributing cocaine in that state and is headed back to prison, where he already spent 10 years for dealing cocaine in the 1990s.

Richard J. Speciale, 49, known as "Big Rick," entered the plea in Clarksburg.

FBI agents said he conspired to distribute cocaine from June 2007, three months after he was released from federal prison on the previous cocaine conviction, to January 2010, when he was arrested by Pittsburgh police and agents with the state attorney general's office.

The investigation that led to his arrest was part of a state grand jury probe of drug-dealing by the Pagans, based in Washington County.

Mr. Speciale went to federal prison in 1998 for cocaine distribution and was released in 2007. He was on federal probation when he was arrested and could face extra prison time for violating the terms of his supervised release.
The terms of his plea deal were sealed, but he faces a minimum term of 10 years on the charges in West Virginia.

The case against him started with a controlled buy on Dec. 7, 2009, in which agents said Mr. Speciale sold drugs to an informant at his house on Peoples Road in Ross.

Then, on Jan. 28, city police and state agents detained him after a traffic stop on Evergreen Road while other agents executed a search warrant at his house that turned up $146,000 in cash, powder cocaine, electronic surveillance equipment, packaging materials and a drug scale.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11077/1132870-54.stm