Michael Dollard Plante (born 6 January 1967) was a police informer within the Hells Angels East End Vancouver chapter.
[1] Plante claims to have been inspired into becoming an informer within the ranks of the Hells Angels by reading the 1996 book Into the Abyss by Yves Lavigne, which is a biography of Anthony Tait.
[8] The Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer Bob Paulson told the journalists William Marsden and Julian Sher: "The East End chapter is the most senior, the most powerful.
[5] Potts brought along Plante for moral support when met his sponsor, the "full patch" Hells Angel Lloyd "Louie" Robinsonn, to explain that his bikers vest had been stolen.
[14] Appalled at the prospect of becoming a murderer, especially since the issue at stake was merely a leather bikers vest, Plante contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and stated he wanted to become an informer.
"[15] After his release from the Surrey Pretrial Center where he had held on charges of extortion and assault in July 2003, Plante contacted the Mountie Douglas Collins about becoming an informer.
[14] The intention behind Operation E-Pandora was to gather enough evidence to expose the Hells Angels as a criminal syndicate that merely posed as a motorcycle club.
[16] In the fall of 2003 Plante met in a motel room with the Mountie Bob Paulson about signing the contract to become an agent source informer.
[15] Plante recorded Punko as telling him that the Hells Angel Gino Zumpano "took a walk" with Clayton Roueche, the leader of the United Nations gang.
[20] Plante recorded that the Hells Angel David Giles, a "full patch" member of the East End chapter, had been hired by Roueche to beat up two of his drug dealers whom he suspected of stealing from his gang.
"[22] On 6 September 2004, Plante received a phone call telling him to go to the 8 Rinks sports center in Burnaby to meet Lising and another Hells Angel associate Nima Ghavami.
[23] Upon arriving, Plante was told by Lising to deliver a pound of methamphetamine wrapped in a paper bag to the counter of a popular deli at a mall in Vancouver.
[23] Later that day, Plante received a text from Lising telling him to go to a restaurant in Hope where he was to sit at a particular table and read a newspaper to meet a drug dealer from Kelowna who was to give him $10, 000 in cash.
[22] On 15 October 2004, Plante while working as a bouncer at the Brandi's Exotic Nightclub was badly beaten up by the professional wrestler Ion Croitoru who had joined the United Nations gang.
[24] Brandi's had become Canada's best known strip-club in 2003 when the actor Ben Affleck was said to have been given a lap-dance there by the stripper Tammy Morris, an incident that led to his fiancée Jennifer Lopez breaking off their engagement.
[25] After the Affleck incident, which was covered extensively by the international media, Brandi's became the most popular strip club in Canada and was a major tourist attraction in the Lower Mainland.
[26] Plante was notably enraged that neither his supposed "brothers" in the Hells Angels nor his police handlers intervened while Croitoru had beaten him up.
[22] The information provided by Plante gave the Mounties sufficient evidence to persuade a judge to authorize the bugging of the clubhouse of the Hells Angels East End chapter in Kelowna.
[35] On 15 July 2005, the RCMP stormed into the clubhouse of the East End chapter with warrants for the arrest of 16 Hells Angels based on the evidence collected by Plante.
"[15] The defense lawyers for the accused noted that Plante had committed many crimes as an informer such as numerous assaults and painted him as a criminal who only turned Crown's evidence to avoid prison time.
You can traffic in certain drugs and commit certain other crimes, but only after they have the approval of an exemption signed off by a senior officer in the police force involved in the investigation.
[50] The evidence collected by Plante was so strong that three Hells Angels associates, namely Jason Brown, Chad Barrroby and Wissam Mohammad Ayach made plea bargains with the Crown on charges of gangsterism and trafficking in methamphetamine in exchange for lesser prison sentences.
[53] Justice Daphne Smith rejected that defense as she ruled Ayach in the tapes presented by the Crown came across as a "violent gangster" who was not traumatized in the least.
"[35] Chad Barroby also faced charges of selling 26 ounces of cocaine to Plante in October 2004 for $28, 000 dollars, for which he was convicted of and received a light sentence of 18 months of house arrest by Justice Peter Leask.
[54] Besides for his choice of courtroom language, Justice Leask has been accused of having a strong pro-defense bias in cases involving the Hells Angels with a marked tendency to exclude evidence that the Crown wished to present.
[55] Likewise, Justice Leask has been noted for his tendency to impose the lightest possible sentences on the Hells Angels that are convicted in trials presided over by him.
[56] The Crown Attorneys involved in prosecuting the E-Pandora cases felt that Justice Leask was biased in the favor of the defense and that they would have stood a better chance of obtaining convictions if the trials were presided over by another judge.
[63] Punko was convicted of weapons charges and of counselling violence on the basis of a tape where he was recorded ordering Plante to burn down a house in Surrey.
[65] In November 2009, the defense counsel asked for Justice Leask to "estopped" (stop from proceeding) the E-Pandora charges against the Hells Angels East End chapter as an institution for gangsterism and criminal conspiracy as the Crown alleged that the Hells Angels were a criminal organization that masqueraded as a motorcycle club.
[19] In 2018, he testified for the Crown at a civil forfeiture case where the province of British Columbia sought to seize three clubhouses belonging to the Hells Angels in East Vancouver, Nanaimo and Kelowna as the proceeds of crime.