Federal judge rules arrested Outlaws Motorcycle Club leader must remain in jail
Patrick Lakamp Buffalo News Buffalo New York January 3, 2024
https://buffalonews.com/news/local/crime-courts/federal-judge-rules-arrested-outlaws-motorcycle-club-leader-must-remain-in-jail/article_9157a382-aa65-11ee-b21f-ab95d72c18ea.htmlhn
John Ermin, who has been identified by federal prosecutors as international president of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, must remain in custody as his firearms case proceeds in court, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
Chief U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Wolford reversed a magistrate judge’s December order that had set conditions for his release.
The charge that Ermin faces – a single count of possessing firearms while being a recreational user of marijuana – does not typically prompt prosecutors to seek detention, Wolford said, but she added, “the posture of this case is unique.”
Ermin’s role with the Outlaws; his ties to Peter Gerace Jr. as general manager of Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club, a strip club in Cheektowaga; and his possible involvement in the death of a federal witness were factors in her ruling, she said.
Ermin, 54, of Lancaster, has not been charged with any crimes directly linked to the Outlaws, Pharaoh’s or the death of that witness, Crystal Quinn, the judge said. But the judge said she was not constrained to consider only the pending charge against him.
“It is not unreasonable to conclude that (Ermin) had a role in Quinn’s death,” Wolford said.
Wolford said she was not prepared to reach that conclusion based on the evidence disclosed by the government, which it has not fully revealed.
But Wolford said she doesn’t have to make that conclusion to keep him in custody at this point.
“The question is not whether (Ermin) has obstructed justice, but rather whether the government has established by clear and convincing evidence that (he) would present a risk of obstruction of justice if released, for which no conditions can reasonably protect,” she wrote in her decision. “The court concludes that the government has plainly met its burden.”
For a decade Ermin has worked as general manager at Pharaoh’s for its owner Gerace, who federal authorities have accused of bribing a Drug Enforcement Administration agent and conspiring to engage in drug trafficking and sex trafficking at Pharaoh’s.
Gerace’s charges include maintaining Pharaoh’s as a drug-involved premises where vulnerable young women were exploited through their drug addictions and coerced into engaging in commercial sex acts. Retired DEA agent Joseph Bongiovanni is awaiting trial on charges of accepting more than $250,000 in bribes from Gerace and other drug dealers who he thought were associated with organized crime.
But it was the death of Quinn, a former exotic dancer who had agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, that prosecutors emphasized in their effort to keep Ermin in custody as his case proceeds.
“You know, one of the things Crystal Quinn stated before she died, while she was a government cooperator, was that she was afraid the Outlaws would kill her as a result of her cooperation,” Tripi said during a court proceeding last month. “It seems like her fears … were well founded.”
Attorney George Muscato, who represents Ermin, argued before Wolford that the government has offered no proof Ermin poses a danger to witnesses in the Pharaoh’s case.
Wolford spent seven hours at three court proceedings listening to Tripi and defense attorneys make their arguments for or against keeping Ermin and co-defendant Scott J. Barnes, also an Outlaws Motorcycle Club member, in custody.
“Considering the totality of the evidence proffered by the government over the two days of arguments, the court easily concludes that (Ermin) presents both a risk of danger and flight risk, and no conditions could reasonably protect against those risks,” she wrote in her order Wednesday.
The judge also granted the government’s appeal to keep Barnes locked up as his case proceeds.
Two other motorcycle club members arrested with Ermin and Barnes have been released with conditions:
• Michael Roncone, who was president of the Rare Breed Motorcycle Club, based in Wellsville.
• Paul Raslawsky, a member of the Outlaws and a cook at Pharaoh’s.
Wolford’s 34-page decision addressed Quinn’s death.
After Quinn testified before a grand jury, Gerace was indicted last year on an additional charge, witness tampering. The government told Wolford that Gerace knew about Quinn’s cooperation based on the prosecution’s case during Gerace’s detention hearing on March 24 and March 27, 2023, before U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr.
Gerace had been released with conditions after his 2021 indictment on drug trafficking and sex trafficking at Pharaoh’s. But Sinatra revoked his release after the witness tampering charge.
Shortly after Sinatra detained Gerace – on April 4, 2023 – Ermin visited Gerace at the Niagara County jail, and he visited him again on July 6, 2023.
Less than a month after the second visit, Quinn was dead, prosecutors told Wolford.
“According to the government, Gerace was ‘furious’ about the fact that he had been detained, he complained about Quinn, and he threatened that he had a long reach and people who could tie up his loose ends,” Wolford said in her ruling Wednesday.
In mid-July 2023, Quinn reconnected with Simon Gogolack, a friend from high school whom she had not seen in about 10 years, prosecutors have said.
Prosecutors said Gogolack was attempting to lure Quinn to Wellsville, where he lived.
“At around the same time, he was communicating with a drug dealer offering up his services as a hitman,” Wolford said in her decision. “Gogolack was successful in his efforts to convince Quinn to visit Wellsville.”
Upon their arrival on July 27, 2023, they went to a poker game run by the Rare Breed Motorcycle Club, a support club of the Outlaws.
At the poker game, Gogolack connected with Howard Hinkle, who has connections to the Rare Breed club.
On Aug. 1, Gogolack called 911 to report Quinn had died in his home. First responders arrived at the scene to find her dead of an overdose. Authorities believe she had been dead 24 to 36 hours before his 911 call.
An indictment in September added two kidnapping and six witness tampering charges against Gogolack, 39, a previously convicted drug dealer, who had already been indicted on narcotics and firearms charges after Quinn turned up dead in his home.
Prosecutors said she was found to have 400 times a lethal dose of fentanyl in her system. Quinn, prosecutors say, was murdered, but her death was staged to look like an overdose.
Muscato said Ermin has no criminal record and there was nothing illegal about the long guns found in his home.
As for any connection to crimes by Outlaws or at Pharaoh’s, “if they had anything solid against Mr. Ermin, they would have indicted him,” Muscato told the judge at the Dec. 27 hearing in Rochester.
Quinn’s death had nothing to do with Ermin, Muscato said.
“Ms. Quinn was a drug addict,” he said. “That’s sad. She got mixed up with drugs with her friend from high school, Mr. Gogolack.”
The judge Wednesday ruled the government had established her death occurred under suspicious circumstances and was likely the result of foul play.
“While the foul play may have been undertaken by Gogolack and Hinkle, neither of those individuals had any apparent motive to harm Quinn,” Wolford said in her decision. “But Gerace plainly did – and it seems likely that bikers were involved in the circumstances surrounding Quinn’s death. Given (Ermin’s) role with the Outlaws, his close connections with Gerace, the timing of his jail visits to Gerace, the evidence that (he) was scrupulously monitoring the proceedings against Gerace, the rats left for Quinn once she started cooperating with the government – the same animal whose skeleton hangs with a noose at the Outlaws clubhouse – the Outlaws disdain for snitches, and Quinn’s expressed fear of the Outlaws, it is not unreasonable to conclude that defendant had a role in Quinn’s death.”
Wolford said Ermin “controls legions of members who are willing to engage in threats of violence over issues as insignificant as whether a member of a rival motorcycle gang is wearing clothing viewed as disrespectful by the Outlaws Motorcycle Club.”
“With a network as wide and vast as the Outlaws that includes convicted felons and a deep reach within the Bureau of Prisons and around the world – reflected by the financial donations received by (Ermin) while hospitalized in 2020 with Covid – it is apparent that (he) would have resources available to assist with any flight that could not be adequately addressed through reasonable conditions,” the judge said.