How The Hells Angels Actually Works | How Crime Works | Insider 

I wish they sent undercover police to investigate politicians

The book is absolutely brilliant. I read it a few years ago and couldn't put it down. The ATF should be ashamed at what they've done to Jay,he gave up his life for that investigation and they hung him out to dry. A shocking betrayal.

I grew up around hells angels, by the age of 10 i knew the sergeant at arms, treasurer, and president of the local chapter. My father ran around with them for years, he never got patched in, despite it being offered multiple times. He refused because of me. He always told me "Its the clean cut ones you need to watch." The man that wears a button up shirt, with real nice hair and no tattoos in a group of "biker" looking guys is the most dangerous man in the group.

Every time I see this thumbnail, I keep thinking that's Mike Ehrmantraut.

I read this mans book almost 10 years ago. It was a phenomenal book and a great insight both into the friendships formed in the Hell's Angels as well as the failure of the ATF. If I recall correctly, one HA member refused to believe "Bird" was an undercover agent until he took the stand to testify, cuz he considered him a close friend. The book is 100% worth a read.

You can tell it's difficult for him to talk about his family and his betrayal. I feel for him.

The Hells Angels story about how you managed to infiltrate the club is one of the most incredible stories I’ve ever seen. Very few people would have the necessary skills to handle playing a role like that. It’s not like the Hells Angels aren’t cautious and aware that law enforcement is always trying to get in. Just insane to even try it. I can’t imagine how stressful and scary it must have been at times.

around the late 70s early 80s my dad was a mechanic and loved bikes, was driving on the freeway and saw a guy on the side with his bike broken down and was a hells angel. my dad was always friendly to help anyone his entire life and helped this guy get his bike running again. afterwards the guy pulled a gun out and said you gotta come with me and meet some people to make sure your legit and not some undercover. my dad went and they found out pretty quick he was just a regular guy. he ended up hanging out with them alot. he had some sort of vest, i know it wasnt a official but i think it was the ones they give people in "Training" or new members for him to wear when he was around. he went to alot of their parties mainly or just rode for fun with them. he said alot of stuff he saw he didnt want to tell me. he said women were anyones women. at least the onces he experienced. i know there is ones that there are hands off on. around the time i was born they had a big raid in the chapter in our city and he said all the ones he knew were leaving and going to the california chapter to get away from the heat. so my dad burned the vest he had and never went back to anything like that. i would ask why didnt you keep the vest. this was in the 80s when i was wearing jean jackets with heavy metal patches all over them thinking thats the coolest thing. he said it was like wearing a target and if the wrong people ever found it he could get killed. didnt even want anyone to find it ever in his closet. he also didnt own a bike at the time, he had one when he was younger and crashed them. he was actually a horrible rider nearly died once lol. but he said when he was around the angels that he knew they always had a spare bike he could ride with them. they were very giving. weather that was to course him or if they just liked him i dunno. he would help others tune their bikes or fix them. i worked with my dad as a mechanic as i got older and thats just how he was. we had our own family business and often if he saw someone who worked for us or a friend of a friend having issues he would just go over there and start working on their stuff for them and never charged them and would either fix it or tell them what they needed to fix it. sometimes we would spend 14-16 hour days at our shop it was exhausting. time to him didnt matter, he practically lived at work. but he also provided for his kids from his first wife, me, my 2 adopted sisters, and then his 3rd wife he took care of my step bro and step sis and when my step sis had a kid he took care of her kid as well. a few years ago he died broke and crippled with a caine. he only had a trailer and a half paid car. i sold the trailer for 10k and paid the car off with it and kept it.

Just imagine being one of this dudes best friends in the gang ... Thinking you've got one of the greatest bonds with someone and then one day the cops bust in your door and arrest you... Then you realize it was your "best friend" who is a cop that turned you in.

The best PR the Hell's Angels get is from cops like this. Even back in the 60's when Hunter S Thompson wrote about them he admitted that the Hell's Angels weren't that big of a deal until the police and the media started blowing them up and then they grew exponentially. They admitted themselves that they were never as crazy as the cops and media made them sound, but they appreciated all the free advertising.

The writers of Sons of Anarchy TV series really did their home work. Because everything about how the Hells Angels are run including their club and how the cuts are labeled is pretty well spot on with SoA

After reading "no angel" like ten years ago I was astonished to hear about the law suit against dobbins by the atf. But if there was anything i would say more about the book is how apparent it was after reading it that the biggest obstacle dobbins faced was not collecting evidentiary means to convictions, but being bogged down beaurocratic red tape that prevented any real work from being done. Politics and crime are so connected in ways its unbelievable.

My dad (deceased) was a club president (not the angels) during the biker wars of the 70s. I could write a book about what I witnessed and what my dad told me. I remember during High School watching him on the local news with the mayor, chief of police and the president of the rival club. Crazy times.

Bring him for rating Motorcycle Club scenes from Movies and TV shows

Damn the fact he so readily admits his failures. It tells you how much a different man he is today

I saw a solo Hell’s Angel riding early morning once in Colorado Springs years ago. I was literally amazed only having heard of them.

This is the type of journalism we should be seeing on mainstream media. Hopefully there's more to come.

I work security and the last director we had was also an undercover with some biker gangs back in the 80s and 90s. Dude looked normal, but if you looked at him long enough, you’d get this feeling like he was a bad dude that could hurt you. He was really nice though, and took care of us until he left our team.

over 20 years ago my dad found a bunch of hells angels shirts at a flea market he listed a few for sale on ebay and almost instantly was messaged by a member demanding they come pickup the shirts he has(he didn’t list all of them at once so he was able to keep a good bit😳)

The Hell's Angels are so hard to morally assess. They started as veterans that were fucked over returning from war, they don't bother you if you don't bother them, they contribute to society and yet... the killing and drugs and such. I feel like these were good people that were cruelly let down so they lost faith in society and decided to fend for themself(at least in their beginnings). Correct me if I am wrong though, I met one Hell's Angel in my life, I don't know enough to have a solid stance.

I remember this guy , he was one tough wide receiver for the University of Arizona. He would go across the middle catch the ball , get his bell rung and then do it again on the next play . A true football badass.

Friends of mine were hired to play and being soundmen at a hell's angels party if I remember well.....They brought around 15 or 20K$ worth of equipment. At one point things went bad. They told the musicians and techs to go in the basement and shut up (or something like that). They spent quite a lot of time there from what I remember, then they got out (I don't know if they were told not to look around or if everything was clear by then.) They gave the guys 20 to 30 k$ or something like that and asked the "Did you see anything strange last night?" where they all said "nope, I don't remember anything weird" and they all went their own way......I've had weird gigs in my life. That one I'm glad I did not get.

As a professional shoe maker, I was looking for heels angles, but this'll do.

I lived on the same block as the H.A clubhouse in Edmonton. Our neighborhood had a ZERO % crime rate year-round.

My dad was the trauma doctor on for the twin peaks shooting. We were eating at Logan’s roadhouse which is within a 500 yards of twin peaks. It was right after church he heard the ambulances looked at his pager and finished his meal that was the last I saw of him for about 3 days straight. Right across the road is Baylor Scott and white Hillcrest so the drive to the hospital was less than 5 minutes

I've heard similar stories from former undercover officers who worked on cases against the Hell's. In the end it leads to nowhere. An officer can spend well over 2 decades investigating and building up "a case" and then it all gets thrown out of court. They have good lawyers. My old business law professor in college had been a lawyer for them during his younger years. Nowadays the Hell's are mostly involved in money laundering. Where I live it's now illegal for them to wear their patches in public. Just wearing a jacket can land them in prison. So they have gone underground like an SOB. All of their club houses have been demolished. Another thing this guy doesn't mention is that they lure young men into the club through the use of younger woman. The younger women will pretend to just run across them and invite them to a party, "Oh, it's just a party, etc." They're prospecting when they do that. Any ways, I never understood what the big deal was about them. Never cared either. As for this former cop, the whole system is corrupt. He found that out the hard way. I bet law enforcement wasn't there to protect him nor his family after the SHTF. Obviously someone from the inside ratted him out. His fellow gang members were probably more loyal to him then his brothers in blue.

ATF never ceases to make bad calls

The irony of an ATF agents getting pissy about them wanting him to remove his guns.

I actually read "No Angel", great book that I can really recommend ! I ate it right up, couldn't put it down. The way Jay was treated by the ATF was shameful, he gave so much to the case, but he was an asset, nothing more.

The scariest thing about the Hells Angels is the missing apostrophe.

I read his book a few years ago. Great follow up. Tough to hear about his family and the inevitable follow ups and house situation.

I believe this was the most honest interview he has given to this day. It was nice to hear him acknowledge that not all members are criminal drug addicts and the club does do things to help the community. That is very true when it comes to kids. Are there members that participate in criminal activity? Im sure there is just like the general public but you can't lump everyone together.

In the early '90s I had a custom bike shop in SoCal. I had a few HA as customers. I also had a friend that knew an ATF agent. That agent wanted to do an undercover operations like Dobyns did. My friend asked me if I would talk to this guy because he wanted to pick my brain about what I knew about the club. I declined and told me friend I didn't even want to meet this agent, let alone talk about club life. I had to explain to my friend what a dangerous position that would put me in. I don't think the agent ever got involved with the club.

This interview is a great example of how life can get complicated fast. It's also a great example how the ends are justified for the means, and regular people are often run over as a consequence.

Wow, an ATF agent doing something good for the nation? Rare sight.

That was the most clear direct explanation to date! Awesome. And my favorite part is how he subtly defended the angels having had real connections within. Well done

This is badass. Makes me realize how I could NEVER do this. You have to be a rare caliber of man to do this and pull it off at that

I know Jay, and he loves his family as much as any Dad could. Even fathers can make mistakes, but it is how you continue to love that matters. God bless.

Jay is the coolest guy ever! He was my first baseball coach growing up.

Very interesting, and even more rare, believable....Thankyou "Insider". I believe this man is honest and I rarely ever think that.

I remember watching Jay Dobyns talk about this exact experience on the episode of Gangland about The Hells Angels. Good to see he's still around and still speaking on familiar topics!

Another ATF agent that did this was William "Billy" Queen--he infiltrated The Mongols. Interesting book "Under and Alone"

My Dad did this in the 70s after he got back from Vietnam when he was a state narcotics officer and I had some cool photos of him we lost due to one of the many disasters in California. Some wild stories he told me about it.

imagine if he just took the mission to create fire dad or grandpa lore, all jokes aside w guy for risking his family just to help stop these people commit crimes he even betrayed trust created relationships just for justice. Big respect to him

"I wasn't going to kill anyone punching them in the head." I think it's usually the curb on the way down that does that.

Alex Caine's book "Befriend and betray" about his own time as an Hell's Angels undercover is still one of my favourite read. I'm gonna get this one's a go for sure!

my dad was a mechanic all his life, he knew people in there and would do work on their bikes back in the day

Ett stort tack för att ni står upp för yttrandefriheten.

This is why it’s so hard to bring organisations like the Hells Angels down - to get in you have to become like family members, and if you do succeed in doing that, you then have to betray that family - not an easy thing to do when you’ve invested so much to get to that level with them, and the organisation is very smart in having the minimum 365 day prospect period and processes for full membership - makes infiltration damn near impossible!

Yea. I read your book. The operation was a giant jerkoff. I forgot the name of the guy in charge but he seemed like he just wanted the clout of running the op instead of actually trying to build a case. Felt bad for Jay when I read it as it sounded like he was used and kept undercover way too long. I think the biggest arrest I recall from the book was sometime who did tattoos for the club threatening Jay after they pulled Jay out to try and prosecute guys. All that being said, Jay seemed like a pretty solid dude. Tough line of work.

This guy was serving hay makers to make sure they didn't die. Got to appreciate dedication.

Another great interview, salute!

This guy sounds like he honestly enjoyed the outlaw life more than being a fed

I respect the fact that he mentioned the good things he saw them do too

I've read his book, it was amazing.

such a cool insider. thanks for your story

I was at a steakhouse where the Hell's Angels were having a big dinner and I was in the bathroom and I saw one of them come out the stall and went right back to their table he didn't wash his hands

The family has no idea their life will never be the same. Crazy

The most riveting “How Crime Works” by Insider.

Society glorifies and worships Hollywood actors for their betrayals on film but undercover agents have to be considered the best actors in the world because their very lives depend on their performance. Can't imagine the stress his family had to go through because of this case. Thank god there are officers like Jay Dobyns willing to do this dangerous thankless work.

How is this dude still alive and out in public. Surely he is a target for life. This was only 20 years ago. Crazy he signed up for this.

Great piece!

John Malkovich is really going all in on his new biker movie.

Thanks for this great interview. After watching it I've joined the Hells Angel's

This is pretty fascinating and informative. I read Hunter S. Thompson's book back in the day and I've always been interested in the phenomenon of the Hell's Angels. This was a solid interview.

12:52 - if I'm not mistaken this is a shot from the Rolling Stones playing Sympathy for the Devil live.

I enjoyed this, great story. Brave man.

I normally hesitate to watch videos over 15 minutes. This series is an absolute exception

I read his book right after I bought my first Harley in 2009. I wasn’t looking to join a gang, but was curious who is out there and how things go so that I can avoid confrontation with them. It’s a good book, and reading it got me interested in other motorcycle gang books. I wish he had gone into more detail about some things in this video, but maybe he wasn’t asked those questions.

Jay played football for the University of Arizona back in 1982-‘84. He was a great receiver!!! Guys got guys!!!

Love how they just glossed over that he was an ATF agent 😂😂😂

I think he was a hells angel in heart. He was visibly heartbrocken when he mentioned those friendships. Thats what the clubs are for. They are your family.

This wasn't long enough. Awesome content

The hells angels remind me of a group of playground bullies that never fully grew up but instead just became more violent.

I got the same ad 3 times in like 5 minutes watching this video

This man speaks with conviction. Great vid

There is a great show on HULU right now called Gangland and it talks about Joe Falco and how he worked for the ATF infiltrating the Vagos MC then the Outlaws. It's incredible and worth the watch for sure

The first mistake this man made was working for the ATF.

It could be someone else but I think he wrote a book on his experience, it was great!

Great story.This is is the quickest 20 minutes I’ve ever spent. Thanks for sharing

Thank you for your service Sir!

Good to see Mike is well and healthy in Belize.

This was one of the most successful and epic investigations ever with so many ramifications.

I would watch a full 2 hour doc on this

We had some Hell's Angels that used to protect the gas station where I worked for a while. The gas station used to get robbed a lot, and while I don't know if they were being paid for it, we used to have a couple Angels that would sit across the road and guard the place. I always thought of them as community protectors.

I have more respect for these types than cops and politicians. Did time with a heavy in the 81, we played chess for ramen all the time. Was one of the nicest and most stand up guys I had the pleasure of meeting.

One of my stepdads was in the Hell's Angels, him, his dad, and brother. He was only in there for a little bit when I knew him, he wasnt out bad and still maintained a close connection with a lot of members. On the other hand, his brother was out bad a few years later. From what I was told, he was beaten, dragged out to the desert, beat again, then had all his HA tattoos blacked out. And he had a lot of tattoos.

you are now, one of my personal heroes man thank you

I love how obviously uncomfortable he became when talking about how the women are treated. He did not wanna get into that aspect of this.

Very professional channel, makes a good impression

My grandpa's were in that gang. It's super chill

To have the presence of mind to hold up to the scrutiny of the gang consistently....knowing that at any moment, one slip could mean your end...

This was very very interesting to learn.. So much more organized than I realized.. It's insane how deep in these undercovers can and do go..

made me think of the great series, Sons of Anarchy and Mayans MC...real tough stories like this man's

A lot of people forget that people who join the hells angels more often than not don’t join it to commit crimes, they do it to ride, to meet other people like them, and be part of a community that shares a hobby. It’s not all bad, and like Jay said, they do Toy Drives, Community Service, Blood drives, they care about people. I think more people need to be aware of that

I read No Angels few years ago and couldn’t put it down. Fascinating stuff

Phenomenal video report.

This should be a movie

When I was 7years old I was friends with a 12 year old boy whose dad was a Hells Angel. My mother told me to never go to his house, but one day i went anyway. His dad was there sitting on the couch with a woman who wasnt the kids mother. I remember his dad had his jacket on with patches on it. I was scared and realized I should of listened to my mother, but his dad was cool. He picked me up and set me on his bike and let me pretend I was riding it and started telling me how the Hells Angels were the best. I have never forgot that day. I remember telling his dad I wanted to be a Hells Angel when i grew up and he just laughed.

I know a guy who was walking home late one night and had to relieve himself. He came across a potted plant in front of a regular looking building entrance, and went ahead. Turned out to be a clubhouse. He was lucky he could sprint!