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Inside the Mangols Motorcycle Club | Full Documentary — Transcript

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0:03Born in 1969, 10 Vietnam veterans walked
0:06away from a rejection [music] that would
0:08change the history of America's outlaw
0:10motorcycle world forever. Turned away by
0:13the Hell's Angels because of their
0:14ethnicity, they created the Mongols
0:16Motorcycle Club. And within decades,
0:19that club would become one of the most
0:20powerful and controversial outlaw
0:22organizations in [music] the United
0:24States. The Mongols fought the Hell's
0:26Angels for control of California,
0:28survived years of violence, and
0:31eventually expanded into roughly [music]
0:3228 countries with an estimated 3,000 to
0:355,000 members. Then in 2008, Operation
0:39Black Rain unleashed more than 1,000
0:42federal agents across six states, backed
0:45by 110 arrest and 160 search warrants.
0:48Four undercover agents had infiltrated
0:50the club from within. But the government
0:53wanted something even [music] bigger.
0:54The Mongols name, their patch, and their
0:57identity itself. Chapter 1 turned away
1:00at the door. By the late 1960s, [music]
1:02the template for what an outlaw
1:04motorcycle club looked like had already
1:06been firmly established on the American
1:08West Coast, and this documentary series
1:11has spent an entire featurelength
1:12episode examining the organization that
1:15[music] built that template, the Hell's
1:17Angels. Born out of the restlessness of
1:19World War II veterans who couldn't quite
1:21find their way back into ordinary
1:23civilian life. 20 years later, a new
1:26generation of American servicemen was
1:28coming home from an entirely different
1:30war, carrying the same restlessness, the
1:32same need for brotherhood and structure
1:35that civilian society didn't seem able
1:37to offer. And many of them reached for
1:39[music] exactly the same solution their
1:41father's generation had, motorcycles,
1:44and the promise of a club that would
1:46take them in completely. A group of
1:48these returning Vietnam veterans based
1:50in the workingclass, heavily Hispanic
1:52communities of East Los Angeles
1:55approached the Hell's Angels seeking
1:57membership. They were turned away.
1:59According to multiple documented [music]
2:01historical accounts of the period, the
2:03Hell's Angels at that time did not
2:06accept [music] Hispanic or
2:07African-American members. an
2:09exclusionary membership policy that
2:11whatever else you make of the broader
2:13Hell's Angels [music] story, this
2:14documentary series has already traced in
2:17detail represents one of the uglier,
2:19less frequently discussed [music]
2:21threads in that organization's early
2:23history. For the men who found
2:25themselves rejected at the clubhouse
2:26door specifically because of their
2:28ethnicity, the response wasn't to give
2:30up on the brotherhood they were looking
2:32for. It was to build one of their own
2:35from scratch, specifically designed
2:37around the opposite principle. On
2:39December 5th, 1969 in Montabelloo,
2:42California, just east of downtown Los
2:45Angeles, 10 founding members
2:47incorporated the [music] Mongols
2:48Motorcycle Club. The founding roster
2:50included men like Alfonso Big Alice, who
2:53served as the club's [music] first
2:55sergeant at arms. A group whose
2:57backgrounds, according to most
2:58documented accounts, reflected exactly
3:01the community that had shaped [music]
3:02the club's founding purpose. Young
3:05Hispanic men, many of them combat
3:07veterans [music] looking for the same
3:09total unconditional brotherhood that
3:11Sunny Barger's generation had found on
3:13[music] the opposite side of the same
3:15war scarred American post-war landscape.
3:18just 20 years and one very different war
3:21apart. Chapter 2. A warrior on a
3:24chopper. For their name and their
3:26central emblem, the club's founders
3:29reached deliberately into [music]
3:30history, specifically into the legacy of
3:33the Mongol Empire and its most [music]
3:35famous conqueror, Genghask Khan. It's
3:38worth sitting with that choice for a
3:40moment because it represents something
3:42genuinely pointed and intentional. At a
3:44time when the club's founders [music]
3:46had just been explicitly rejected by an
3:48already dominant organization on racial
3:50grounds, they chose to name [music]
3:52themselves after one of history's most
3:53feared, most successful military forces.
3:57A group whose entire historical
3:58reputation [music]
3:59was built on conquering territory that
4:02supposedly stronger, more established
4:04powers believed was theirs to hold
4:06indefinitely. The patch itself became
4:08genuinely iconic within outlaw
4:11motorcycle culture. A stylized Mongol
4:13warrior rendered with sunglasses and a
4:16ponytail riding a chopper rather than a
4:19horse. A deliberate almost playful
4:21updating of Genghaskhan's mounted
4:23cavalry for the American highway.
4:26Alongside the character logo, the club
4:28registered the stylized Mongols wordark
4:31and a combined version merging both
4:33[music] elements. intellectual property
4:35that would decades later become the
4:38subject of one of the [music] strangest
4:39legal battles in the entire history of
4:41American organized crime prosecution.
4:44Covered in [music] detail later in this
4:46documentary, the club also built its own
4:49specific internal motto and tradition
4:51around loyalty and combat honor. [music]
4:53Respect few, fear none. And according to
4:57multiple documented sources on the
4:59club's internal culture, that motto
5:01carried a specifically [music] earned
5:03significance that went well beyond a
5:05slogan stitched onto a patch. Members
5:08who killed a member of the Hell's
5:09Angels, the club's most significant
5:11[music] and most enduring rival, earned
5:13the right to have that exact phrase
5:15tattooed permanently onto their bodies.
5:18A visible permanent marker of the
5:20specific violence that had defined so
5:22much of the two organizations [music]
5:24shared history. That detail alone tells
5:26you almost everything you need to know
5:29about the trajectory this documentary is
5:31about to trace. The rivalry between the
5:34Mongols and the Hell's Angels wasn't
5:36background tension the [music] way some
5:37interclub rivalries covered elsewhere in
5:40this series eventually settled into. It
5:42was for a significant stretch of both
5:45[music] organizations history. An active
5:48ongoing war, one fought over one of the
5:51most valuable pieces of outlaw
5:53motorcycle territory in the entire
5:55world, Southern [music] California.
5:58Chapter 3. The War for the Highway.
6:01Through the 1970s and into the 1980s,
6:04the Mongols [music] fought a sustained
6:06territorial war against the Hell's
6:08Angels for control of Southern
6:10California. A conflict this documentary
6:13series has already touched on [music]
6:14from the Hell's Angels own perspective,
6:16but one that reads very differently from
6:18the Mongols [music] side of the ledger.
6:20Because for the Mongols, this wasn't a
6:22war over expanding into someone else's
6:25established territory. It was a war over
6:27the right to exist at all in the region
6:29they called home. The Hell's Angels,
6:32already the dominant outlaw motorcycle
6:34presence across California by the time
6:36the Mongols formed [music] in 1969,
6:39weren't inclined to simply seed ground
6:41to a new upstart rival, particularly one
6:44that had been founded in significant
6:46part as a direct response to their own
6:48exclusionary membership policies. The
6:51resulting conflict produced years of
6:53documented violence between the two
6:55organizations, playing out across
6:57Southern California's [music] highways,
6:59bars, and rally gatherings throughout
7:02the 1970s.
7:03Eventually, [music] according to
7:05multiple documented accounts of the
7:07period, the two organizations reached a
7:09truce, one with genuinely specific,
7:12carefully negotiated terms that reveal
7:14just how seriously both sides treated
7:16the underlying territorial stakes. Under
7:19the agreement, [music] the Mongols
7:21retained the right to wear the
7:22California bottom rocker, the geographic
7:25identifier patch that outlaw motorcycle
7:27clubs [music] used to mark their home
7:29territory, but were specifically
7:31forbidden from expanding their
7:32operations into Northern California,
7:35which would remain exclusively [music]
7:36Hell's Angels territory. It's a
7:39genuinely fascinating piece of outlaw
7:41motorcycle diplomacy functioning almost
7:44like a formal treaty between two
7:46sovereign states dividing a contested
7:49region along an agreed border. And once
7:52that northern California restriction
7:54removed the immediate pressure of open
7:56warfare, the Mongols were [music] free
7:58to expand aggressively across the rest
8:00of the American Southwest, pushing into
8:02new states, opening new chapters, and
8:05building the foundation for what would
8:07eventually become a genuinely
8:09international organization stretching
8:12across dozens of countries. Chapter 4.
8:15Building an army, not just a club. As
8:18the Mongols expanded [music] through the
8:20final decades of the 20th century, they
8:23developed a recruitment philosophy that
8:25set them apart in genuinely significant
8:27ways from some of the more traditional
8:30workingclass veteran recruitment
8:32patterns. This documentary series
8:34[music] has traced across clubs like the
8:36Hell's Angels, the Sons of Silence, and
8:39the Outlaws. According to documented
8:42research into the club's membership
8:43patterns, the Mongols specifically
8:46recruited from populations [music]
8:47other clubs had historically been more
8:49hesitant to draw from. Active [music]
8:52street gang members, individuals
8:54recently released from prison, and men
8:56who had been cast out or rejected by
8:59other motorcycle clubs entirely. It's a
9:02genuinely deliberate strategy and one
9:04that reflects the specific Southern
9:06California criminal ecosystem. The
9:08Mongols operated within a landscape
9:11where street gang culture, prison
9:13culture, and outlaw motorcycle culture
9:15existed in far closer proximity and with
9:18far more overlapping membership than the
9:20more geographically isolated rural and
9:23small town settings [music]
9:24that produced clubs like the Pagans or
9:26the Sons of Silence. The path into full
9:29[music] membership followed a structure
9:30that will by now feel genuinely familiar
9:33to anyone who's followed this
9:35documentary [music]
9:35series across its previous nine entries.
9:38Interested men would begin by
9:40associating informally with the club.
9:42And if that association progressed
9:44satisfactorily, they'd be promoted to
9:46[music] prospect status, a probationary
9:48period during which any full patched
9:50member could give a prospect an order,
9:52and the prospect was expected to comply
9:54without question or hesitation. It's the
9:57same fundamental testing and trust
9:59building structure this series has now
10:01documented across the Outlaws, the
10:03Pagans, and virtually every other major
10:06club it's covered. Deliberately designed
10:09to weed out anyone whose commitment
10:11wasn't absolute while simultaneously
10:13making it as difficult as possible for
10:15undercover law enforcement to
10:17successfully infiltrate [music] the
10:19organization. That last point would
10:21eventually prove to be one of the great
10:23bitter ironies of the entire Mongols
10:26story. Because despite [music] this
10:28carefully constructed trust- testing
10:30membership pipeline, federal law
10:32enforcement would eventually succeed in
10:34placing not just one but four separate
10:37undercover agents through the entire
10:39process, each earning genuine full
10:42patched membership inside the
10:43organization they were secretly working
10:45to [music] dismantle. Chapter 5. Blood
10:48in the Casino. This documentary series
10:51has already covered one version of the
10:52events that unfolded at Hara's Casino in
10:55Laughlin, Nevada on April 27th, 2002
10:58during its examination of the Hell's
11:00Angels. But that earlier telling focused
11:02primarily on the Hell's Angel's own
11:04experience of that night. It's worth
11:06returning to the same incident now from
11:09the Mongols side [music] of the story
11:11because the fallout from that single
11:13casino brawl shaped this club's
11:15trajectory [music] for the following
11:16decade in ways the earlier entry in this
11:19series couldn't [music] fully capture.
11:21The confrontation erupted during a
11:23motorcycle rally inside a crowded casino
11:26floor full of ordinary gamblers and
11:28tourists, and it escalated within
11:30moments into a shooting and stabbing
11:32melee, partially captured on the
11:34casino's own security cameras. Multiple
11:37people died in the violence. In the
11:39years of prosecution that followed, the
11:41Laughlin brawl became a genuine
11:43watershed moment in how federal and
11:45state authorities [music] approached
11:47prosecuting outlaw motorcycle club
11:49violence. Evidence gathered from that
11:52single night's casino surveillance
11:53footage would go on to support
11:55prosecutions [music]
11:56stretching years into the future. Roger
11:59Penny, a former Mongols national [music]
12:01president who by the time of later
12:03reporting had left the club entirely,
12:06was among those who ended up serving
12:07probation directly connected to his role
12:10in the Laughlin violence. in a detail
12:12that offers a genuinely important, more
12:15nuanced perspective on how the club's
12:17own former leadership understood what
12:19had gone wrong. Penny would later tell
12:21reporters something that complicates
12:24[music] the simple narrative of an
12:25organization defined purely by
12:27uncontrolled violence. He specifically
12:30argued that the club in the years
12:32following Laughlin had actually been on
12:34the verge of cleaning up their act.
12:37Genuine internal reform [music] efforts
12:39that in his own account were later
12:41derailed entirely by the specific
12:43leadership choices of the man who would
12:46go on to define the Mongols most
12:48consequential [music] and most
12:49self-destructive era. That man's name
12:52was Reuben Kavasos. And understanding
12:55his rise and his catastrophic fall is
12:58essential to understanding almost
13:00[music] everything that happened to the
13:01Mongols motorcycle club over the
13:03following 15 years. Chapter 6. Doc takes
13:07control. Reuben Kavasos [music]
13:09carried a nickname that reflected his
13:11actual day job in a way that genuinely
13:13surprises people encountering this story
13:15for the first time. He worked as a CAT
13:18scan technician at the University of
13:20Southern California Medical Center. a
13:22legitimate skilled medical profession
13:24that existed entirely alongside and for
13:27years largely hidden from his rise to
13:31become the single most [music] powerful
13:32and most consequential leader in
13:34Mongol's history. Everyone in the club
13:36simply knew him as Doc. Kavazos became
13:39the Mongols national president in 2002,
13:42the same year as the Laughlin Brawl, and
13:45his ambitions for the organization by
13:47every documented account of his tenure
13:50were genuinely large in scale. Under his
13:52leadership, the club's membership
13:54[music] grew significantly, expanding
13:57well beyond its traditional recruitment
13:59base through exactly the kind of
14:01aggressive street gang [music]
14:02recruitment strategy discussed in the
14:04previous chapter. A strategy that,
14:07according to multiple former members who
14:09spoke to journalists after Kavasos's
14:12eventual downfall, provoked real
14:14internal disgust from the club's more
14:16traditional old school biker membership,
14:19who felt the organization's core
14:21identity was being diluted and
14:23destabilized by an influx of members
14:26whose primary loyalty had originally
14:29been to entirely different [music]
14:30street gangs. in a detail that captures
14:33something genuinely revealing about
14:35Kavazos's specific personal ambitions
14:38and that would later be cited by his own
14:40former club brothers as a symptom of
14:42exactly what eventually went wrong.
14:44Kavazos authored and published a full
14:46memoir of his life and leadership titled
14:49Honor Few, Fear None: The Life and Times
14:52of a Mongol released by the major
14:55publisher Harper Collins in June 2008.
14:57It's a genuinely unusual step for the
15:00sitting national president of an active
15:02outlaw motorcycle club to take,
15:04publishing a mainstream commercial
15:06memoir, quoting [music] exactly the kind
15:08of public visibility and personal
15:10celebrity that most outlaw club
15:11leadership across virtually every
15:14organization this documentary series has
15:16covered has traditionally worked hard to
15:18avoid. That same appetite for personal
15:21fame and outsized power, according to
15:23multiple documented accounts from former
15:25club members, would go on to become the
15:28single most consequential factor in
15:30triggering the federal investigation
15:32that ultimately brought down not just
15:34Kavasos himself, but very nearly the
15:37entire organizational structure of the
15:39Mongols motorcycle club as it existed at
15:42that time. Chapter 7, A President's
15:45Blood. Before this documentary moves
15:47into the full scope of the federal
15:49investigation that eventually toppled
15:51Kavasos, it's worth pausing on one
15:54specific act of violence from this same
15:56era that illustrates just how seriously
15:58the ongoing rivalry with the Hell's
16:00Angels continued to [music] escalate
16:03even as internal problems were quietly
16:05building within the Mongols own
16:06leadership. [music] In 2008, a Mongols
16:10member named Christopher Abblelet was
16:12convicted of murdering Mark Papa
16:14Gardado, who held the position of Hell's
16:17Angels chapter president at the time of
16:19his death. It's a killing that fits
16:21squarely within the broader pattern this
16:23documentary series has now traced across
16:26multiple entries. targeted assassination
16:29of rival club leadership functioning as
16:32both retaliation for specific grievances
16:34and as a genuine strategic effort to
16:37destabilize an opposing organization by
16:40removing [music] its actual command
16:41structure. Gardado's death represents
16:44one more entry in a rivalry between the
16:46Mongols and the Hell's Angels that by
16:482008 had already produced decades of
16:50documented casualties on both sides. A
16:53conflict this documentary series [music]
16:55has now examined from multiple angles
16:57across its Hell's Angels entry. And this
17:00current examination of the Mongols
17:01themselves and one that much like the
17:04pagans Hell's [music] Angels feud
17:06covered several entries earlier in this
17:07series shows genuinely little sign of a
17:10permanent lasting resolution even
17:12decades after its origins. Chapter 8.
17:16Four agents, three years, one badge
17:19under leather. By the mid200s, federal
17:22law enforcement had identified the
17:24Mongols as a priority target,
17:26significant enough to justify one of the
17:28most ambitious undercover operations
17:30ever mounted against an American outlaw
17:33motorcycle club. A three-year
17:35investigation that would come to be
17:37known as Operation Black Rain. What set
17:40this particular [music] operation apart
17:41from even the sophisticated patient
17:44infiltration efforts this documentary
17:46series has already documented against
17:48the pagans and the sons of silence in
17:50earlier entries was its sheer scale.
17:53Rather than a single undercover agent
17:55slowly working his way into one specific
17:58chapter, the ATF successfully placed
18:00four separate agents inside the Mongols
18:03organization. [music] Each of them
18:05ultimately earning genuine full patched
18:07membership status, meaning each agent
18:10had successfully navigated the club's
18:12entire trust testing prospect process,
18:15been formally voted in by existing
18:17membership and received the actual
18:19Mongols patch, all while secretly
18:22reporting everything back to federal
18:23investigators. [music]
18:25It's genuinely difficult to overstate
18:27how significant an intelligence
18:29gathering achievement that represents.
18:31Placing one agent through a club's full
18:33membership vetting [music] process, as
18:35documented against the Sons of Silence
18:37in this series's earlier entry, already
18:40represents a remarkable multi-year law
18:43enforcement commitment. Successfully
18:45placing four separate agents through
18:47that same process simultaneously inside
18:50the same organization meant federal
18:53investigators were accumulating a level
18:55of granular firsthand multissource
18:58intelligence about the Mongols actual
19:00day-to-day [music] criminal operations
19:03that few outlaw motorcycle club
19:05investigations anywhere in the world
19:07have ever achieved. That intelligence
19:09gathering effort culminated in the
19:11pre-dawn raids. This documentary opened
19:14with more than a thousand agents, six
19:17states, 110 arrest warrants, and 160
19:21search warrants executed simultaneously
19:24on October 21st, 2008. [music]
19:26Investigators seized 71 firearms, an
19:30explosive device, and narcotics,
19:32including more than six lbs of
19:34methamphetamine during the coordinated
19:36operation. And among those arrested that
19:38morning was the man whose leadership
19:41had, according to virtually every
19:43documented account of this period, made
19:46the entire investigation possible in the
19:48first place. Reuben Doc Kavazos himself
19:51arrested at his 2,760q
19:54ft home in West Coina, [music]
19:56California, where he lived alongside his
19:58son Ruben Lil Rubes Kavazos Jr. and his
20:02brother Al the Suit Cavazos.
20:05Chapter nine. the president who became
20:08an informant. Kavazos's own internal
20:10standing within the Mongols had actually
20:12already collapsed before the federal
20:14raids even took place on August 30th,
20:172008, [music]
20:18nearly 2 months before Operation Black
20:20Rains culminating raids. Cavazos was
20:23formally voted out of the club during a
20:25meeting in Vernon, California, with the
20:27majority of the membership concluding,
20:30according to the club's own later public
20:32statements, that he had been stealing
20:34from the organization and had recklessly
20:36provoked an unnecessary dangerous
20:39conflict with the Mexican [music] mafia,
20:41one of the most powerful and most
20:43dangerous criminal organizations
20:45operating across the same Southern
20:47California territory the Mongols called
20:49home. That internal expulsion, arriving
20:52just weeks before the federal indictment
20:54became public, meant Cavazos entered his
20:57[music] own legal reckoning, already
20:59formally cast out of the very
21:01organization [music] he'd spent 6 years
21:03leading and reshaping. And what
21:05followed, according to the Mongols own
21:08subsequent public statements,
21:10represented what many members considered
21:12the single greatest betrayal in the
21:14club's [music] entire history. Kavasos
21:18ultimately pleaded guilty to
21:19racketeering charges, received a 14-year
21:22prison sentence, and according to
21:25accounts the Mongols [music] themselves
21:27have publicly maintained since, became a
21:30cooperating government informant,
21:32[music] providing federal prosecutors
21:34with exactly the kind of detailed
21:36insider testimony about the
21:38organization's internal structure and
21:41criminal enterprise that would prove
21:43instrumental in [music] the historic
21:45prosecution still to Um, there's a
21:47genuinely striking irony worth sitting
21:49with here. One that echoes a pattern
21:51this documentary series has now traced
21:53[music] across multiple organizations.
21:56The same man who had published a
21:57mainstream memoir titled Honor Few, Fear
22:00None, celebrating and mythologizing his
22:03own leadership of an organization built
22:05explicitly around total unconditional
22:08brotherhood loyalty ultimately became
22:10the government's own star cooperating
22:12witness against [music] that same
22:13brotherhood. It's a betrayal that in its
22:16scale and its symbolism arguably exceeds
22:19even Salvatore Cadeta's eventual
22:21defection to the Hell's Angels covered
22:23[music] in this series's Rock Machine
22:25entry. Because Cadeta, whatever else you
22:28make of his choice, had at least
22:29switched to fight for a different flag.
22:32Kavazo switched to help [music] the
22:33government that was actively trying to
22:35dismantle his own former organization's
22:37entire legal existence. [music]
22:39Chapter 10. The jacket off your back.
22:42Now, this documentary arrives at the
22:44thread that makes the Mongols story
22:46genuinely unlike anything else covered
22:48across this entire 10-p part documentary
22:50[music] series. Because the federal
22:52government's ambitions in the wake of
22:54Operation Black Rain extended well
22:56[music] beyond simply prosecuting
22:58individual members for individual
23:00crimes, federal prosecutors wanted to
23:03use the RICO acts forfeite [music]
23:04provisions to seize the Mongols
23:06collective trademark rights themselves.
23:08the actual patch, the name, the entire
23:11intellectual property identity of the
23:13organization. The Justice Department's
23:16own public statements at the time made
23:18the ambition explicit [music] and
23:20unmistakable. Prosecutors sought a court
23:22order that would prevent Mongols members
23:24from using or displaying the club's name
23:27entirely. And in a detail striking
23:30enough that it bears repeating in the
23:31government's [music] own words,
23:33officials stated publicly that if the
23:35court granted the request, then any law
23:38enforcement officer who encountered a
23:40Mongol wearing his patch would be
23:42legally authorized to stop that member
23:45and in the government's own phrasing,
23:47[music] literally take the jacket right
23:49off his back. It's worth pausing on just
23:52how unprecedented that request actually
23:54was within American legal history. No
23:58outlaw motorcycle club anywhere in the
24:00country, not the Hell's Angels, not the
24:02Pagans, not the [music] Outlaws, none of
24:05the seven other American and
24:06international clubs this documentary
24:08series has already examined in detail,
24:11had ever faced a federal effort
24:12specifically [music]
24:13targeting its collective trademark and
24:15intellectual property rights. rather
24:17[music] than simply prosecuting
24:18individual members and seizing
24:20individually connected criminal
24:22proceeds. This was an attempt to
24:24dismantle the organization's actual
24:26brand identity itself, treating the
24:28patch not merely as evidence of criminal
24:30[music] association, but as a weapon the
24:33government believed it had the legal
24:34authority to physically [music] seize
24:36and permanently retire. Judge Florence
24:39Marie Cooper of the US District Court
24:41did initially issue an injunction along
24:43these lines prohibiting the use of the
24:46Mongol logo by club members, their
24:48families, and their broader associates,
24:51treating the symbol itself in the
24:53court's own initial reasoning as a
24:55direct instrument used to advance the
24:57organization's ongoing criminal
24:59enterprise. The Mongols responded with
25:02organized public protests specifically
25:04against the federal lawsuit targeting
25:07their logo. A genuinely unusual site, an
25:10outlaw motorcycle club organizing public
25:13demonstrations in defense of what
25:15amounted to a First Amendment [music]
25:17and trademark rights argument. Chapter
25:2011. The entity itself goes on trial. The
25:23legal battle over the Mongols trademark
25:25rights took nearly a full decade to
25:27reach its most significant milestone. In
25:30December 2018, following what multiple
25:32legal sources [music] describe as a
25:34genuinely decadel long prosecution
25:36effort, a federal jury delivered a
25:39verdict unlike almost anything this
25:41documentary series has previously
25:42documented. It convicted not just
25:45individual Mongols members, 77 of whom
25:48had already been convicted across the
25:50broader investigation, but the
25:52organization itself [music] formally
25:54identified in court documents as Mongol
25:56Nation, an unincorporated association
25:59[music] comprising the club's official
26:01Full Patch membership. The jury's
26:03verdict found Mongol Nation guilty of
26:06substantive RICO violations and RICO
26:08conspiracy, a conviction of the entity
26:11itself, distinct [music] from and in
26:13addition to the individual convictions
26:16of its human members. As part of that
26:18verdict, the jury ordered Mongol Nation
26:21to pay a $500,000 [music]
26:23fine and to forfeit a substantial
26:25stockpile of tangible property federal
26:28agents [music] had seized during their
26:29raids. vests, guns, and ammunition
26:33connected to the organization's
26:35documented criminal enterprise. And in
26:37the verdict this entire documentary has
26:40been building [music] toward, the jury
26:41went one step further, deciding that the
26:44club should also forfeit its trademarked
26:46patch itself. The cartoon Mongol Warrior
26:49riding a chopper directly over to the
26:51federal [music] government. It's
26:53genuinely worth understanding just how
26:55extraordinary this represents as a piece
26:57of [music] American legal history. This
27:00wasn't simply a jury finding individual
27:02Mongols members guilty of specific
27:04crimes. Drug trafficking, assault,
27:07murder, the kinds of charges this
27:09documentary series has now documented
27:12across virtually every club it's
27:14covered. This was a jury formally
27:16declaring that the organization's own
27:18trademarked identity, its actual
27:20registered intellectual property, should
27:23be seized and transferred to the United
27:25States government, effectively
27:27attempting to make it illegal for the
27:28Mongols as an organization to continue
27:31existing under their own established
27:33name and symbol. But the jury's verdict,
27:36as it turned out, wasn't the final word
27:39on the matter. That question would take
27:41five more years and two separate rounds
27:44of federal appellet review to genuinely
27:47resolve. Chapter 12. The Constitution
27:50steps in. US District Judge David O.
27:53Carter, presiding over the case in its
27:56postverdict phase, delivered a ruling
27:58that surprised many observers who had
28:00assumed the jury's forfeite verdict
28:02would simply be implemented as written.
28:04Carter specifically declined to order
28:06forfeite of the trademarked marks
28:08themselves. Even though the jury had
28:10explicitly [music] voted for exactly
28:12that outcome, citing two distinct
28:14constitutional concerns that echo in
28:17genuinely fascinating ways the kind of
28:19separation of powers and individual
28:21rights arguments this documentary series
28:24has already examined in detail during
28:26its coverage of the Australians landmark
28:28constitutional case. Carter's reasoning
28:31centered on the first and eth amendments
28:33to the US constitution. Under the first
28:36amendment, he found that seizing the
28:38marks would violate Mongols members
28:40protected rights to display their own
28:41chosen symbols and freely associate with
28:44one another. A genuine free speech and
28:47free [music] association concern applied
28:49here to an organization the same court
28:52had just formally convicted of operating
28:54as a criminal racketeering enterprise.
28:56Under the ETH amendment's prohibition
28:58against excessive fines, Carter
29:00specifically noted that the trademarked
29:03marks held what he described as immense
29:05tangible [music] value to Mongols
29:07members, meaning that seizing them
29:09entirely would represent [music] a
29:11disproportionate excessive punishment
29:13relative to the underlying offense, even
29:16accounting for the jury's own RICO
29:18conviction. Federal prosecutors didn't
29:20simply accept this outcome. They
29:22returned with a modified forfeite
29:24request, proposing an alternative.
29:27[music] Rather than transferring full
29:28ownership of the marks to the government
29:30outright, Mongol Nation would instead
29:33forfeit its [music] exclusive rights to
29:34the marks specifically, meaning the
29:37organization could no longer legally
29:38prevent other people or businesses from
29:41using the same symbols, even
29:43commercially, even though the marks
29:45themselves would never formally vest in
29:47or transfer to the United States
29:49government. Judge Carter denied this
29:52modified request as well on the same
29:54fundamental first and eth amendment
29:56grounds that had driven his original
29:57ruling. Both sides appealed the
30:00resulting judgment to the 9th circuit
30:02court of appeals, one of the most
30:03[music] influential appellet courts in
30:05the entire United States federal court
30:07system with jurisdiction covering
30:09California and much of the American
30:11West. The Mongols for their part argued
30:14the underlying 2018 RICO conviction
30:17itself [music] should be thrown out
30:18entirely on the technical legal grounds
30:21that Mongol nation as an unincorporated
30:24association rather than an individual
30:26human being didn't actually qualify as
30:29an indictable person under the specific
30:31[music] language of the RICO statute.
30:33The government meanwhile pressed its
30:35case that Judge Carter had aired in
30:37refusing to order the Marx's forfeite.
30:40Chapter 13. The 9inth Circuit's answer.
30:44On January 6th, 2023, more than four
30:47years after the original jury verdict
30:50and nearly 15 years after Operation
30:52Black Rain's original pre-dawn raids
30:54first set this entire legal saga in
30:56motion, the 9inth Circuit Court of
30:58Appeals issued its ruling. Authored by
31:00Circuit Judge Holly Thomas, an appointee
31:03of President Joe [music] Biden, writing
31:05for a unanimous three judge panel. The
31:07court's ruling was genuinely
31:09deliberately narrower than either the
31:11Mongols or the government had
31:12specifically hoped for. On one hand, the
31:15panel firmly [music] rejected the
31:17Mongols challenge to the underlying 2018
31:19conviction, upholding the jury's finding
31:22that Mongol nation had operated as what
31:24Judge Thomas' opinion specifically
31:26described as a violent drug [music]
31:29trafficking organization in clear
31:31violation of federal RICO statutes. The
31:34Mongols did not win a reversal of their
31:36core criminal conviction as an
31:37organization. But on the trademark
31:39forfeite question, the specific issue
31:42this entire documentary has been
31:43building toward, the Ninth Circuit sided
31:46decisively with the Mongols, though
31:48notably for reasons that had almost
31:50nothing to do with the First or Eth
31:52amendment arguments Judge Carter had
31:54originally relied on. Instead, the
31:56appellet panel rested its decision on a
31:59much more technical, purely statutory
32:01reading of the RICO Act's actual
32:03forefeite mechanism. As Judge Thomas's
32:06opinion explained, Rico's forfeite
32:08provision requires an actual transfer of
32:10legal title to the government, as the
32:13specific mechanism by which forfeite
32:15legally occurs. The statute's own
32:17language mandates that a defendant shall
32:19forfeit [music] property connected to a
32:21RICO violation, but that forfeite under
32:24the plain text of the law functions
32:26specifically as a transfer of ownership,
32:28[music] not as a tool for simply
32:30extinguishing or erasing a right
32:32entirely. The problem with what federal
32:34prosecutors had actually requested.
32:36First, the full trademark itself, later
32:39just the exclusive enforcement [music]
32:41rights attached to it was that in both
32:43versions, the government was never
32:45actually seeking to take ownership of
32:47the marks for itself. It wanted the
32:49Mongols rights simply extinguished,
32:52effectively turning the marks into
32:53public property nobody [music] could
32:55exclusively control without the
32:58government ever formally accepting legal
33:00title to them. Judge Thomas's opinion
33:03characterized [music] this specific
33:04legal maneuver in strikingly blunt terms
33:08because RICO [music] provides no
33:09statutory mechanism for forfeite without
33:12an accompanying transfer of title. What
33:14the government was actually asking for
33:17amounted to, in the court's own words, a
33:20legal impossibility.
33:22Chapter 14. What the ruling actually
33:25means. It's worth sitting with what the
33:28[music] Ninth Circuit's ruling actually
33:30accomplished and what it deliberately
33:32left unresolved because the distinction
33:34matters a great deal for understanding
33:36[music] this case's genuine legal
33:38significance. The court didn't rule that
33:41outlaw motorcycle club trademarks are
33:43permanently categorically protected from
33:45any government seizure under any
33:47circumstances. It ruled [music]
33:49something considerably narrower and more
33:51technical that RICO specifically as
33:54currently written doesn't provide the
33:56legal mechanism the government tried to
33:58use in this particular case. A properly
34:01drafted statute or a differently
34:03structured forfeite request that did
34:06involve an actual transfer [music] of
34:07title to the government might
34:09theoretically produce a different
34:11outcome in some future case. A
34:13possibility the ruling explicitly left
34:15open rather than foreclosing. Following
34:18the ruling, Steven Stubs, general
34:20counsel for the Mongols, issued a
34:22[music] public statement describing the
34:24outcome as what he called a victory not
34:26only for the Mongols motorcycle club,
34:28but for all motorcycle clubs, [music]
34:30freedom and America. A framing that
34:33positioned the ruling not merely as a
34:35narrow technical [music] legal win for
34:36one specific organization, but as a
34:39genuinely significant precedent
34:41protecting intellectual property and
34:44associational rights for any
34:45organization, criminal or otherwise,
34:48that might someday face a similarly
34:50aggressive [music] government forfeite
34:52effort. That framing genuinely deserves
34:55to be taken seriously, independent of
34:58whatever you think of the Mongols own
35:00extensively documented criminal history.
35:02This documentary series has now examined
35:05across 10 separate [music] entries a
35:07remarkable range of legal strategies
35:09different governments around the world
35:11have employed in their attempts to
35:13dismantle outlaw motorcycle clubs.
35:15American RICO prosecutions [music]
35:17targeting individual leadership.
35:19Australian ministerial immigration
35:21discretion targeting Alex Vela. South
35:24Australian anti-association legislation
35:27ultimately struck down in the fin's
35:29landmark constitutional case. The
35:31Mongols trademark battle represents a
35:33genuinely distinct category from all of
35:35them. The only case in this entire
35:37documentary series where a government
35:39specifically attempted to seize and
35:41outlaw motorcycle club's [music] actual
35:42intellectual property, its brand
35:45identity itself, and where that specific
35:47attempt was ultimately definitively
35:49rejected by one of the country's most
35:51influential federal appellet courts,
35:53even as the underlying criminal
35:54conviction of the organization itself
35:56was [music] simultaneously fully upheld.
35:59Chapter 15. A world map, one patch at a
36:03time. While the trademark litigation
36:05slowly worked its way through the
36:07American federal court system across
36:09more than a decade, the Mongols actual
36:11international footprint continued
36:13expanding, well beyond the borders of
36:15the United States entirely. By current
36:17[music] estimates, the club maintains
36:20chapters across roughly 28 to 29
36:23countries worldwide, with total
36:25membership estimated at somewhere
36:27between 3,000 [music]
36:28and 5,000 members globally. figures that
36:31place the Mongols among the largest and
36:33most geographically extensive outlaw
36:36motorcycle organizations [music]
36:37examined anywhere in this documentary
36:40series. That international expansion
36:43connects directly to threads. This
36:45documentary series has already traced in
36:47detail across two of its previous
36:49[music] entries. The Mongols absorption
36:51of the majority of the Australian
36:53Fininks membership in October 2013,
36:56covered extensively in this series
36:58immediately preceding entry, represents
37:00one of the club's most consequential
37:02single international expansion [music]
37:03events, instantly establishing a
37:06substantial ready-made Australian
37:08presence built on the Frink's own four
37:10decade regional history and
37:12infrastructure rather than requiring the
37:14Mongols to build entirely new chapters
37:16and recruitment [music] pipelines from
37:18scratch in unfamiliar territory.
37:20The Mongols are formally classified as
37:22an organized crime group by multiple
37:24national and international law
37:26enforcement bodies, including the United
37:28States Department of Justice, the
37:30Australian Federal Police, and Europole,
37:33the European Union's own law enforcement
37:36coordination agency, whose specific
37:38inclusion of the Mongols in its own
37:40organized crime assessments, underscores
37:43just how thoroughly the club's criminal
37:45footprint [music] has expanded beyond
37:47its original Southern California
37:49origins.
37:50into a genuinely continent spanning
37:52concern for law enforcement agencies
37:54operating on entirely different legal
37:56and cultural frameworks [music] than the
37:58American RICO focused prosecutorial
38:01strategy. This documentary has spent so
38:03much of its runtime examining. Chapter
38:0616, The Allies and [music] the Enemies.
38:10Understanding the Mongols current
38:11position within the broader outlaw
38:13motorcycle and organized crime landscape
38:16requires understanding [music] a
38:17genuinely complex web of alliances and
38:19rivalries that this documentary series
38:22has across its previous nine entries
38:25shown to be one of the defining
38:26structural [music] features of this
38:28entire subculture worldwide. According
38:30to documented sourcing on the club's
38:32current relationships, the Mongols
38:34maintain significant working alliances
38:37with the Mexican mafia, the same
38:39organization Ruben Kavasos was
38:41specifically accused of recklessly
38:42[music] provoking conflict with during
38:44his own controversial tenure, suggesting
38:47that whatever damage Kvasos's leadership
38:49caused in the short term, the underlying
38:52relationship between the two
38:53organizations ultimately proved durable
38:56enough to [music] survive that specific
38:57period of tension. The club's documented
39:00allies also include the Nazi lowriters,
39:02the Nortenos and Sereno street gang
39:05networks, Nestra Familia, the Tijana
39:08Cartel, and [music] in a detail that
39:10connects directly back to this
39:12documentary series of own coverage of
39:13the Pagans several [music] entries
39:15earlier, the Pagans Motorcycle Club
39:17itself, suggesting a genuine, if
39:20geographically distant, cross-country
39:22alliance between two [music]
39:23organizations this series has now
39:25covered independently. On the opposing
39:27side of that ledger, the Mongols
39:29documented rivals include the Bondidos,
39:32the despite, or perhaps because of the
39:362013 absorption [music] of most of that
39:38organization's own membership,
39:40suggesting the small remnant faction
39:42[music] that revived the independent Fin
39:45identity in Australia retained genuine
39:47hostility toward the larger organization
39:50that [music] had effectively swallowed
39:52their former club, the Hell's Angels,
39:54whose decadesl long rival rivalry with
39:56the Mongols has already been extensively
39:58documented across multiple chapters of
40:00this current [music] entry. The Iron
40:02Order Motorcycle Club, New Zealand's
40:04Mongrel Mob, the Outlaws, and the Vagos.
40:08It's a genuinely extensive rivals list,
40:11reflecting an organization that has over
40:14more than five decades of [music]
40:15continuous operation, accumulated
40:18conflicts across virtually every major
40:20outlaw motorcycle club this documentary
40:23series has examined, [music]
40:24plus several additional organizations
40:27entirely outside this series's own
40:29scope. Chapter 17. The violence that
40:33keeps coming. The Mongols documented
40:35history of serious violence hasn't
40:37remained confined to the club's own
40:39internal rivalries [music] and the
40:41broader federal prosecution efforts
40:43already covered across this documentary.
40:45In one of the more recent genuinely
40:47alarming individual cases [music]
40:49connected to the organization, a man
40:51named David Martinez was charged [music]
40:54with the fatal shooting of Pomona Police
40:56SWAT team member Sha Diamond. After
40:58investigators connected Martinez to the
41:00Mongols Montabelloo chapter, the club's
41:03original founding location, more than 5
41:05decades after that first [music] 1969
41:08incorporation, the presiding judge added
41:10a specific gang enhancement allegation
41:12to the underlying murder charge, a legal
41:15mechanism that if Martinez is ultimately
41:17convicted, would expose him to potential
41:20capital punishment, specifically because
41:22of his documented club affiliation. That
41:25case illustrates [music] something this
41:26documentary series has now traced
41:28repeatedly across virtually every
41:30organization it [music] has examined.
41:33Even as an outlaw motorcycle club's most
41:35senior leadership faces sustained
41:37prosecution. And even as landmark legal
41:40battles over trademark rights and
41:42constitutional protections work their
41:44way through the [music] highest levels
41:45of the federal court system. Individual
41:48members connected to these organizations
41:50continue generating exactly the kind of
41:53serious, sometimes fatal violence that
41:55first attracted sustained law
41:57enforcement attention [music] in the
41:58first place. A pattern that shows no
42:01sign of meaningfully changing,
42:02regardless of how any individual legal
42:05battle, however [music] historically
42:07significant, is ultimately resolved.
42:09It's worth noting in fairness to the
42:12broader complexity this documentary
42:14series has tried [music] to maintain
42:15throughout its examination of every club
42:17it's covered that a formal law
42:19enforcement gang enhancement allegation
42:21connected to a specific individual
42:23defendant is a legal characterization
42:26made within an active ongoing
42:28prosecution not by itself proof of
42:31organizational responsibility for that
42:33individual's alleged actions but the
42:35pattern itself repeated across case
42:38after pace. Club after club, entry after
42:41entry in this documentary series remains
42:44genuinely consistent. These
42:46organizations, whatever genuine
42:48brotherhood and belonging they offer the
42:50men who join them, continue producing
42:53individual members whose documented
42:55conduct causes real, serious, sometimes
42:58fatal harm to people entirely outside
43:00the outlaw motorcycle world altogether.
43:03Chapter 18. The Brotherhood argument
43:07built from exclusion. As with every
43:09other club covered across this 10-p part
43:11documentary series, it would be a
43:13genuine disservice to leave you with the
43:15impression that the Mongols exist
43:17[music] purely as a vehicle for the drug
43:19trafficking, the Rico convictions, and
43:22the sustained rivalry violence
43:24documented across the previous 17
43:26chapters. [music]
43:27But the Mongols specific origin story
43:30offers something this documentary series
43:32hasn't quite encountered [music] with
43:34this level of clarity anywhere else. A
43:37brotherhood built quite explicitly and
43:39quite directly out of exclusion where
43:42the Hell's Angels emerged from World War
43:45II veterans general post-war
43:47restlessness and the pagans emerged from
43:49workingclass mid-Atlantic recruitment
43:52and the rebels grew through decades of
43:54patient townbytown Australian expansion.
43:58The Mongols founding is inseparable from
44:00a single specific documented [music] act
44:04of racial rejection. Vietnam veterans
44:07turned away from an already established
44:09organization specifically because of
44:11their ethnicity, who responded not by
44:14abandoning the idea of outlaw motorcycle
44:16[music] brotherhood entirely, but by
44:18building their own version of it,
44:20deliberately open to exactly the kind of
44:23men other organizations had shut out.
44:25that doesn't erase Mark Gardado's murder
44:28or the Laughlin Casino bloodshed or
44:30Ruben Cavazos's memoir writing informant
44:34turning betrayal of the very brotherhood
44:35he'd once led or Shaun Diamond's death
44:38at the hands of a man connected to the
44:40club's own founding chapter. But it's
44:43the same honest complicated [music]
44:44truth this entire documentary series
44:47keeps returning to entry after entry,
44:50club after club. These are organizations
44:53built [music] and sustained by human
44:54beings responding to genuine social
44:56needs, belonging, structure, loyalty,
44:59[music]
45:00respect through methods that have again
45:03and again produced [music] both real
45:05brotherhood and real serious sometimes
45:08fatal harm. The Mongols specific [music]
45:10version of that story simply makes the
45:12underlying human need, the desire for a
45:15place to belong when the existing doors
45:17are explicitly closed to you more
45:19visible and more explicit than almost
45:21any other club this documentary series
45:23has examined. Chapter 19. A case study
45:27in institutional [music] survival. 10
45:30entries into this documentary series.
45:32The Mongols story offers a genuinely
45:35useful final case study in the broader
45:37pattern of institutional resilience.
45:40This project has now traced across nine
45:41[music] previous organizations spanning
45:44five continents and nearly a century of
45:47combined outlaw motorcycle history.
45:49Unlike the rock machine, which was
45:51functionally destroyed and had to be
45:53rebuilt almost entirely from scratch by
45:55a new generation, or the Fin, who
45:58strategically dissolved their own formal
46:00organizational identity specifically to
46:02escape targeted legislation. The Mongols
46:05survived what might be the single most
46:07[music] existential legal threat, any
46:09outlaw motorcycle club, in this entire
46:11documentary series has faced a
46:14coordinated [music] federal effort
46:15specifically designed to seize the
46:17organization's own trademarked identity,
46:20backed by a jury verdict, a district
46:22court's initial engagement with the
46:24request, and a full RICO conviction of
46:26the entity itself, and came out the
46:28other side of that 15-year legal battle
46:31with its name, its patch, and its formal
46:34legal [music] existence. ance fully
46:35intact. That outcome wasn't inevitable,
46:38and it wasn't primarily a triumph of
46:40outlaw motorcycle [music] club
46:42solidarity or criminal sophistication in
46:45the way this documentary series has more
46:47typically framed institutional survival
46:49across its [music] previous entries. It
46:51was more precisely a triumph of specific
46:55technical statutory interpretation. A
46:58federal appellet court ruling that the
47:00government's own chosen legal tool,
47:02however creative and however aggressive
47:05its underlying intent, simply didn't
47:07contain [music] the specific mechanism
47:09prosecutors needed to accomplish what
47:11they were trying to do. The Mongols
47:13didn't outfight the federal government.
47:15They outlasted a legal strategy [music]
47:17that in the end ran up against the
47:20actual text of the statute Congress had
47:22written decades earlier for an entirely
47:24different purpose. Chapter 20. Where the
47:28story stands now. As of recent
47:30assessments, the Mongols Motorcycle Club
47:33remains one of the largest, most
47:34internationally [music]
47:35distributed, and most extensively
47:37prosecuted outlaw motorcycle
47:39organizations examined anywhere across
47:41this documentary series. [music] An
47:43estimated 3,000 to 5,000 members spread
47:46across 28 to 29 countries, formerly
47:49headquartered in West Coina, California,
47:51just a short drive from the Montabelloo
47:53site where 10 rejected Vietnam veterans
47:56first incorporated the club back in
47:58December [music] 1969. The trademark
48:00litigation that defined so much of this
48:02documentary's runtime reached its final
48:05resolution in January 2023 with the
48:08Ninth Circuit's ruling standing as of
48:11this documentary's production as the
48:14definitive answer to a question no
48:16government had ever previously asked a
48:18federal court to resolve whether Rico's
48:21forfeite provisions could be used to
48:23seize an entire organization's
48:25intellectual property identity. The
48:27answer, at least under the specific
48:30statutory language currently on the
48:32books, was no. Even as the underlying
48:35criminal conviction of Mongol Nation as
48:37an entity and of dozens of its
48:39individual members across more than a
48:41decade of sustained federal prosecution
48:44remains fully intact. 56 years after 10
48:47Vietnam veterans were turned away from a
48:49clubhouse door because of the color of
48:51their skin, the Mongols remain exactly
48:54what their entire history suggests. They
48:56were always going to become an
48:58organization built on the specific
49:00documented experience of exclusion that
49:03grew large enough, wealthy enough, and
49:05legally significant enough that the
49:08government of the United States
49:09eventually tried to erase its very name
49:11from existence and failed. They fought
49:14the Hell's Angels for the California
49:16highways and won a treaty. They survived
49:19their own president, becoming a
49:21government informant against them. They
49:24survived a three-year undercover
49:26operation that put four federal badges
49:29underneath four Mongols patches. And
49:31they survived the only attempt any
49:34government has ever made anywhere in the
49:36world to seize an outlaw motorcycle
49:39club's own trademarked identity and
49:41erase it from the map entirely. walking
49:43out of a Ninth Circuit courtroom in
49:45January 2023 with their name, their
49:48patch, and their brotherhood fully
49:50intact. The engine still running, it has
49:54been since a rejection at a Hell's
49:56Angels clubhouse door in 1969 turned
49:59into one of the most legally
50:01consequential outlaw motorcycle
50:03organizations in American history.
50:05Narrator: VO. Thanks for watching this
50:08deep dive into the only outlaw
50:10motorcycle club the federal government
50:12ever tried to erase from existence and
50:15the fight that decided whether they
50:16could. If this documentary earned it,
50:19subscribe and let us know in the
50:21comments which club story you want us to
50:23uncover next. 10 clubs down across five
50:27continents now. the Hell's Angels, the
50:29Common Cherrow, the Pagans, the Black
50:32Oulans, the Sons of Silence, the
50:34Outlaws, the Rebels, the Rock Machine,
50:37the Fininss, and now the Mongols. And
50:40this world just keeps getting deeper,
50:43stranger, and more legally complicated
50:45the further we ride into

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