Judges find no conduct issues in Vagos case
Two federal judges Friday refused to dismiss drug cases against former Vagos motorcycle gang leaders because of outrageous government misconduct by the lead undercover agent.
In one case, U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon rejected the findings of U.S. Magistrate Judge Cam Ferenbach and ruled that the agent, Agostino Brancato, did not violate the rights of defendant Jeremy Halgat during alleged 2012 cocaine transactions in an undercover investigation of the motorcycle gang.
In the other case, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey also found Brancato did not commit misconduct in an undercover sting at a Searchlight airstrip in March 2013 in which Halgat and another gang leader at the time, Anthony McCall, were recruited to serve on a protection team for what they thought was a 10-kilogram shipment of cocaine being flown into Southern Nevada.
Both Halgat, 36, a former Vagos sergeant-at-arms, and McCall, 56, the former president of the Sin City Vagos chapter, must now stand trial on drug and weapons charges.
Gordon and Dorsey held a rare joint hearing in November to examine evidence of possible government misconduct in the two cases.
Brancato, a deputized agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was the star witness during the three-day hearing.
“At this stage, the evidence presented during the hearing on Halgat’s motion convinces me that the government did not engage in outrageous conduct,” Gordon wrote in his decision.
In July, Ferenbach sided with Halgat’s defense lawyer, Melanie Hill, and issued a written recommendation concluding outrageous government conduct had occurred against Halgat. Ferenbach blamed the wrongdoing on Brancato, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who had infiltrated the motorcycle gang on behalf of the ATF.
Ferenbach concluded that Brancato manufactured the cocaine case against Halgat, though Halgat had no criminal record and repeatedly told the agent in secretly recorded conversations that he did not want to traffic drugs.
Ferenbach did not hold an evidentiary hearing before deciding that the cocaine trafficking case needed to be dismissed.
Gordon reached a different conclusion after hearing the evidence in court. He found that Brancato did not do anything improper during his lengthy undercover role and that Halgat was a willing participant in the drug transactions.
Gordon said he found no evidence that Brancato “exerted heavy pressure” on Halgat or “coerced” him into participating.
“Rather, it appears that Brancato raised the issue, Halgat agreed to make introductions and Halgat eventually decided to take the bait and involve himself in the transactions,” Gordon wrote. “There is nothing outrageous about such conduct.”
Dorsey said she came to the same conclusion in her case.
“Brancato repeatedly told the defendants that the choice was theirs,” she wrote.
But Dorsey said she “clung to no illusion” that the airstrip ruse took drugs off the street, and she “questioned the wisdom” of the government’s use of “reverse-sting operations.”
“At best, the operation may have prevented the defendants from providing or continuing to provide their armed protection services in a real-life drug courier transaction, and it took guns out of the hands of McCall, a convicted felon,” Dorsey said.
“Whether this result was worth the effort the government put into this elaborate ruse, I cannot say.”
But the judge said she was confident that the government’s conduct during the sting did not violate the “universal sense of justice.”
Brancato was the lead undercover agent in Operation Pure Luck, a three-year joint investigation led by the ATF into drug and illegal weapons dealing by members of motorcycle gangs, primarily the Vagos club.
The investigation was launched in April 2010 with the secret help of a Vagos gang member, and two years later Brancato became a full-fledged member of the Vagos club while working undercover.
More than two dozen motorcycle gang members were charged with drug and weapons trafficking in a series of federal and state indictments in 2013 in the high-profile investigation.
Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135. Follow @JGermanRJ on Twitter.
