Kingsmen Motorcycle Club Member Pleads Guilty To Rico Conspiracy

Topics:  Kingsmen

U.S. Attorney’s Office
Western District of New York
8 August 2016

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Barbara Burns
PHONE: (716) 843-5817
FAX: (716) 551-3051

BUFFALO, N.Y.-U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul Jr. announced today that Emmett Green, 45, of Delevan, N.Y., pleaded guilty to RICO conspiracy before U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Wolford. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

“For the first time in this prosecution, a member of the Kingsmen Motorcycle Club has acknowledged that his former group is nothing other than a criminal front, engaging in such crimes as drug distribution, firearms sales, committing violence, and promoting prostitution,” said U.S. Attorney Hochul. “Any member of this or any other criminal organization who engages in similar criminal conduct should expect that they too will be brought to justice in the near future.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph M. Tripi, who is handling the case, stated that the defendant admitted being a member of the Kingsmen Motorcycle Club (KMC), a criminal organization which engaged in such unlawful purposes as distribution of controlled substances, maintaining premises for use and distribution of controlled substances, possession, use and sale of firearms, sales of untaxed cigarettes, and promoting prostitution. The KMC sought to preserve and protect their power, territory, and reputation through intimidation, violence, threats of violence, assaults, attempted murder and murders, and was involved in placing victims, potential victims, potential witnesses, and others in fear of the enterprise, its members, and associates, through violence and threats of violence.

Green further admitted that the Kingsmen operated by a strict chain of command and, at one point, the defendant was the Regional President of New York State serving under the direction of Kingsmen National President, David Pirk. Green also admitted that the Kingsmen disciplined non-compliant members. On December 2014, the defendant and co-defendant Robert Osborne, Jr., and others, assaulted a former Kingsmen for breaking club rules by punching the victim repeatedly in the body and chest and knocking him to the ground.

Green is one of 17 defendants arrested in this case and the first to be convicted. Other acts of alleged violence by the Kingsmen include the murders of KMC members Paul Maue and Daniel "DJ" Szymanski who were murdered behind the North Tonawanda KMC Chapter clubhouse on September 6, 2014.

The plea is the culmination of the an investigation led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Safe Streets Task Force, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Adam S. Cohen. Assisting in the investigation: the FBI Knoxville, TN, and Jacksonville, FL Field Offices, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, the Erie County Sheriff’s Office, the Buffalo Police Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the New York State Police, the Olean Police Department, the Lancaster Police Department, the Amherst Police Department, the Town of Tonawanda Police Department, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority Police, the Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s Department, and the Hamburg Police Department.

Sentencing will be scheduled at a later date before Judge Wolford.