Prosecutor: Arrested Outlaws leader had motive to kill Pharaoh's witness

But that is not the only reminder against ratting out fellow members who prize loyalty to the club. Patches, stickers and T-shirts say “snitches are a dying breed” and “snitches get stitches.”

Those items were among the weapons, cash and signed swastika flag found by federal agents who recently searched biker clubhouses and members’ homes as part of a federal investigation into witness tampering in the Pharaoh’s strip club case. John Ermin, the club’s president and one of four bikers now facing charges as a result of the searches, doesn’t even need to wear a shirt to drive home a stark message. He has tattooed on his stomach the abbreviation for God Forgives, Outlaws Don’t.

The imagery and club credo help explain why former exotic dancer Crystal Quinn feared for her safety, a federal prosecutor said, after she agreed to cooperate in the federal government’s sex- and drug-trafficking case against Peter Gerace Jr., who has employed members of the Outlaws at his Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club in Cheektowaga.

Prosecutors have long been concerned about witness tampering in the case, especially since one cooperator was assaulted in 2019 and then later someone left dead rats on two cars outside the Depew home where Quinn was staying. Quinn’s death from an overdose of fentanyl last summer in Wellsville ratcheted up the investigation and triggered the search warrants for the biker clubhouses and homes. Quinn, 37, died in Simon P. Gogolack’s Wellsville home under what federal authorities call “highly suspicious circumstances.” Gogolack told authorities that Howard Hinkle Jr. told Quinn days before she died “that there was money on her head.” Gogolack and Hinkle have been detained on narcotics and firearms charges stemming from the searches of their homes, with Gogolack facing additional kidnapping and witness tampering charges.

Items seized from the Outlaws clubhouse and homes lead to the unmistakable conclusion that members of the club will harm informants, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi said in court last week.

“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. “It seems like her fears ... were well founded.”

‘Silence any witness’

Ermin, the general manager of Pharaoh’s, was charged with possessing 15 firearms while being a user of a controlled substance.

Three others were charged after the searches:

• Scott J. Barnes, who lives at the Northumberland clubhouse and has been described by prosecutors as a national enforcer for the Outlaws, was charged with unlawfully possessing a loaded Glock 17 pistol.
• Michael Roncone, president of the Rare Breed Motorcycle Club in Wellsville, was charged as an unlawful user of a controlled substance in possession of a firearm after FBI agents found 29 firearms and cocaine in his Lancaster home and the Wellsville clubhouse.
• Paul Raslawsky, a member of the Outlaws and a cook at Pharaoh’s, faces a charge of using a controlled substance in possession of a firearm based on a 2021 search of his Cheektowaga home.

The criminal complaints against them do not mention Pharaoh’s.

But federal prosecutors have said in previous court filings that the Outlaws Motorcycle Club provides security at Pharaoh’s.

At a detention hearing Wednesday, Tripi connected the motorcycle club members to the federal case against Gerace and Joseph Bongiovanni.

Federal authorities accuse Gerace of bribing Bongiovanni, at the time a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, and conspiring to engage in drug- and sex-trafficking at the Cheektowaga strip club. 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.

Prosecutors charged the now-retired Bongiovanni with accepting $250,000 in bribes from drug dealers whom he thought were associated with Italian organized crime and shielding them from arrest, as well as providing them with information about investigations and cooperating sources.

Both have pleaded not guilty.

“There are allegations of corruption, drug distribution, sex trafficking through force, fraud and coercion,” Tripi said about Pharaoh’s during Ermin’s detention hearing. “Mr. Ermin’s employed at Pharaoh’s as the manager and several other Outlaws are employed there as well. So they have a very significant interest in anyone who might incriminate them vis-a-vis the conduct occurring at Pharaoh’s or elsewhere.

“This defendant was highly motivated to potentially silence any witnesses against Mr. Gerace,” Tripi said of Ermin.

Tripi warned U.S. Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr. that Ermin poses a danger to witnesses in the Pharaoh’s case.

But Ermin’s lawyer said the government has not offered proof of that.

“Have they pointed to this court one single witness that my client has intimidated?” asked attorney George Muscato. “No, they haven’t, because they know he hasn’t.”

Prosecutors lack proof connecting Ermin to Quinn’s death, Muscato said.

“They just want to throw it out there and say that’s good enough that you should detain him for that,” Muscato told the judge.

Schroeder did not order Ermin or Barnes detained, but allowed both to be released with restrictions. Schroeder, however, stayed his orders for one day, giving the U.S. Attorney’s Office time to appeal them to U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr., which it did. Sinatra has stayed both releases until he can review Schroeder’s orders.

A ‘good’ Pharaoh’s manager

Tripi described the Outlaws Motorcycle Club as a racist, paramilitary organization that is highly structured and dangerous.

The club has been involved for decades in racketeering, murders, drug trafficking and prostitution, Tripi said.

Ermin and Barnes are particularly dangerous, he said.

“They’re not just any regular criminals charged with a (firearms) offense,” he said. “They are ranking members of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. You have a national president at the very top, and right under that you have a national enforcer.”

A signed swastika flag that hangs on a wall in the Northumberland Avenue clubhouse includes Ermin’s signature, Tripi said.

Muscato, the defense lawyer, offered a less-menacing portrayal of Ermin.

Ermin has no criminal record.

“They want to say to you, well, he’s dangerous,” Muscato told the magistrate judge. “He’s a flight risk. He’s this, he’s that. So they throw everything out at this court in an effort to try to convince you that this man is something other than what he is.”

Ermin has a legal right to possess his firearms, mostly shotguns, which he uses for hunting, he said. The FBI agents found gummies infused with marijuana and a small amount of leafy marijuana, legal in the state, he said.

Ermin has managed Pharaoh’s for about 10 years, working his way up to that job after years of doing maintenance work and other jobs there for $10 an hour, Muscato said.

He went to work at the strip club to get off Social Security disability after a motorcycle crash seriously injured him on May 12, 2000.

Ermin’s then-37-year-old wife, Doreen, died from her injuries in the crash just outside Pittsburgh.

“He went on Social Security disability, but he doesn’t want to be a slug in this world,” Muscato said. “He went and got a job that paid him enough money, and he’s been a good manager over all these years at Pharaoh’s.”

As for as being leader of what the U.S. Justice Department called a transnational criminal organization, “he must be a lousy president because he has absolutely no criminal record,” Muscato said.

“Where is the bad-guy stuff that he did?” Muscato asked. “They don’t have anything here.”

Tripi said Ermin has managed Pharaoh’s “for a very good chunk of the time it has been maintained as a drug premises, that there’s been sex trafficking occurring there and there’s been Outlaws selling drugs there as will be shown at a federal trial.”

‘Guilt by association’

Barnes, 55, is a union electrician who moved to Buffalo from New Hampshire in 2021.

“That’s shortly after Gerace was charged in the superseding indictment and after it became clear that law enforcement had a spotlight on Pharaoh’s,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Cooper said in court.

Cooper pointed to “the Nazi and white supremacy stuff all over the clubhouse” as an indication of the danger Barnes poses.

Barnes was injured last spring when he fell off his motorcycle after hitting a pothole, said attorney David Cotter, who represents Barnes.

“He has had two wickedly major back surgeries within the past nine months,” Cotter said.

The FBI began surveilling the Outlaws clubhouse on Nov. 6 and arrested Barnes on Dec. 7.

“What is missing from the criminal complaint is any allegation of any other criminal activity by Mr. Barnes during that period of time,” Cotter said.

As for the pistol that agents found in the clubhouse, the criminal complaint says it was near his belongings.

“It doesn’t say it’s in his pocket,” Cotter said. “It doesn’t say it has his DNA.”

The magistrate judge declined to detain Ermin and Barnes as their cases proceed, saying most of what he heard dealt more with Pharaoh’s than their charges.

“It’s almost an argument of guilt by association,” said Schroeder.

Schroeder declined prosecutors’ request to ban Ermin and Barnes from Pharaoh’s or the Outlaws clubhouse.