Richard Mayrand, a former member of the former Nomads and close to the late warrior leader of the Hells Angels Maurice Boucher, was arrested by border services agents on February 28 in Montreal.
Posted at 5:58 p.m.
The exact circumstances of his arrest are unknown, but the 58-year-old former biker allegedly failed to declare a sum of $10,000 or more, as required by law.
His arrest became known on Wednesday as he was formally charged with failing to report to a customs officer the importation of currency of a value equal to or greater than that required by the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act.
Mayrand was released on a promise to appear at the Montreal courthouse on September 13. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is leading the investigation.
an influential member
During the 90s, Richard Mayrand, a member of the defunct Nomads section, was considered one of the most influential Hells Angels in Quebec.
He was part of the close guard of Maurice Boucher, who recently died of natural causes, and had notably been involved in peace negotiations with the Rock Machine at the end of the biker war which left 160 dead and as many injured between 1994 and 2002.
Arrested in Operation Spring 2001, Mayrand pleaded guilty to counts of conspiracy to murder, drug trafficking and gangsterism, and was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2004.
He was released at two-thirds of his sentence in 2014, but his parole was suspended the following year for breaching the conditions.
In 2016, he convinced parole boarders to re-release him by testifying openly.
Mayrand spent 25 years with the Hells Angels and he joined their ranks even though they killed his brother during the famous Lennoxville shootings in 1985.
He said he left the organization and erased his tattoos in 2009.
Bodybuilder and former Mr. Canada, Mayrand said he struggled to find a job after his statutory release in 2014.
He said he was a part-time railway repairer, bricklayer and trainer, before becoming a driver for an aid organization for the poor.
“This (criminal) life, I don’t want it anymore. I have children and grandchildren. My children waited for me for 14 years. That’s enough. We have food in the fridge, I don’t need more than that,” Mayrand said during the hearing.
In peripheral
Absent for a few years, the name of Richard Mayrand seems to have resurfaced in criminal and police circles lately.
A source told The Press that the former biker was seen in a clandestine fitness room in the east of Montreal, frequented by influential individuals of organized crime, at the height of the pandemic of COVID-19.
Mayrand would also have been present during the first hike of the Hells Angels which took place last spring, on the south shore of Montreal, at the invitation of the members of the South section. He reportedly arrived on a motorcycle with gang leader Gregory Woolley and Hells Angels South Section member Patrick Lock.
Sources even say that Richard Mayrand, who would be close to the members of the Hells Angels of Montreal, would have liked to rejoin the ranks of the organization, but that it would have been refused to him.
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