I posed as a hitman and infiltrated the Hells Angels – they had strict rules to live by and forced me to seduce women

A former undercover US federal officer who infiltrated the notorious Hells Angels biker gang has revealed the lengths he went to be accepted by the secretive organisation in a new Channel 4 documentary series.

Jay Dobyns, 63, was embedded within the ‘outlaw’ biker group in Arizona between 2001 and 2003.

He posed as a gun-runner and debt collector to gain the trust of biker gangs – but in reality, Jay worked as an undercover operative for the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

The agent detailed how he took illegal drugs, smuggled guns and ammunition for the gang, and even staged a murder to convince the Hells Angels to make him a full member – a goal he admitted was ‘selfish’.

He also had a fake girlfriend, another federal agent named Jenna Maguire, who revealed how women were treated as ‘property’ by the gang members – who could rape and even murder them if they crossed the men.

But the closer Jay got to getting his full Hells Angels patches, the more entangled he became in his dual identity, leading to tensions in his real-life marriage and relationship with his family. 

The documentary series, titled Secrets of the Hells Angels, reveals how the bloodthirsty motorcycle club was in their quest to defend what they saw as their ‘territory’ – particularly against rival motorcycle gang Mongols.

The Hells Angels originated in Fontana, California in 1948 and saw the entire state as their territory. But the Mongols were later founded in 1969 in Montobello, California, and wore a California patch that became the subject of dispute between them and the Hells Angels.

In order to infiltrate the Hells Angels, undercover law enforcement officers first had to establish themselves as part of an existing gang. 

Jay told viewers of how he and other officers ‘extorted’ their way into a smaller gang based in Tijuana, Mexico, and created a charter ‘entirely made up of law enforcement officers’ in an operation called Operation Black Biscuit.

The goal of the ‘incredibly risky’ operation was to gain the trust of the Hells Angels. Jay said: ‘I understood that, as long as they believed my lie, I was safe, but that if I slipped up, there was going to be a price to pay for that.’

Jay said that the ‘biggest challenge’ for him was whether it was possible to be an undercover agent and still ‘maintain your dignity and your integrity… in that world’.

He claimed that at one point, he was told to take cocaine at gunpoint to prove his authenticity. ‘Now, you have to make a choice. Do you want to take a bump of coke? Or do you want a bullet in your brain? It’s not a hard decision.’

Hells Angels were expected to partake in drugs, theft and womanising – but Jay said the latter had become a ‘distraction’ from the operation – particularly as he already had a wife and two children.

‘I was spending as much time trying to defuse women as I was investigating my case,’ Jay claimed. 

The solution to stop women throwing themselves at Jay was to appoint an agent to play his fake girlfriend, he said. His colleague Jenna Maguire, who was described as ‘fearless’, was chosen for the job.

The biggest risk to Jenna was the Hells Angels’ attitude towards women, which treated women as ‘property’, the documentary said.

Jenna said of the group’s clubhouses that women’s bodies were ‘treated like an amusement park’, adding: ‘Sex could be consensual. It could be rape.’

She allowed herself to be ‘trained’ by the Hells Angels’ wives and girlfriends.

‘The old lady training process was quite thorough,’ Jenna said, claiming that she as told to always ‘walk a step behind your old man’, ‘no speaking when he is speaking’, ‘provide his food and drink’, and ‘carry the drugs and his gun’.

Jenna recalled a time during their investigation, a woman named Cynthia Garcia made the fatal mistake of ‘back-talking’ one of the Hells Angels members whilst at the Mesa clubhouse in Arizona.

She was ‘punched in the face and knocked to the ground’ and beaten ‘so badly that they decided they needed to kill her’. 

Cynthia, who was a mother of six, was killed in October 2001. Her death led to a separate operation via an informant, Michael Kramer, who pled guilty to her murder and went to detectives after a crisis of conscience.

By the end of the operation, 51 Hells Angels members were arrested across several states, while two other members who directly involved in Cynthia’s death, Paul Merle Eischeid and Kevin Augustiniak, were sentenced to 19 and 23 years in prison respectively for second-degree murder.

‘Just thinking about what must have been going through her mind, her children, and how terrified she must have been was a very scary reality for me at the time,’ Jenna admitted.

Jay was in the midst of being recruited as a ‘prospect’ for the Hells Angels, but there were rumours circulating that he was an imposter. 

He was locked into the Mesa clubhouse and surrounded by Hells Angels members asking him questions and threatening him with their guns, he said.

Describing the ‘sketchy situation’, Jay said: ‘Your heart’s beating a million miles an hour, but your hand can’t shake.

‘I was accused of being a cop… My cover story had been compromised. I was under the assumption I’d be killed for it. 

‘The Hells Angels had always believed they couldn’t be infiltrated. Their mentality was, a cop cannot run as long and as hard and as fast as he would have to, to gain membership in this club before we can sniff him out.’

However, Jay was let go and told to wear a Hells Angels ‘Prospect’ patch instead of the previous club. Being a ‘prospect’ for the club involved a probationary period of at least one year before he would be given ‘full patch’ membership.

He recalled being given ‘pages and pages of rules’ he had to adhere to in order to become a full member of the Hells Angels.

‘For a group, an organisation that doesn’t want to live by rules, they’ve got a lot of rules,’ he quipped.

‘I was told, “You will give up every single thing in your life that you think is important to you. Your relationships, your money, your house, your motorcycle, your dog, it doesn’t matter what it is. Nothing comes before the Hells Angels”.’

But the demands of the club put a significant strain on Jay’s real family life and tensions rose between him and his real-life wife. 

‘I wanted to be with the Hells Angels more than I wanted to be with my family. I rarely got home. Sometimes not for weeks, sometimes not for months,’ he said.

‘My wife confronted me and she said, “You can’t walk in this house after being gone that long and speak to us like we’re street people”.

‘Then in my defence, I’m like, “Man, I am not a light switch. I can’t turn this off and on. People that do what I do for a living and treat it like a hobby end up dead.”

Jay admitted that he was having to take medication to ‘calm my nerves during the day’, as well as to go to sleep at night. He was also taking ‘diet pills and energy pills’.

‘At one point, I had a big handful of pills in my hand, and I threw them in my mouth and choked them down. Jenna saw me, and she’s like, “Man, you are out of control”.’

Jay’s obsession with becoming a full member of the Hells Angels, which included prospecting for charters all over the state, became a ‘logistical nightmare’ for the ATF.

Jay said that getting his full patch was one of his ‘personal, selfish objectives’ that had nothing to do with the mission he had been working on.

‘I chased getting a Hells Angels patch for entirely selfish reasons. I wanted to get it. I wanted to be able to say that I was the guy who got inside on them when no-one else could.

He told the Hells Angels he would prove himself by killing a member of the Mongols in Mexico.

However, there was reluctance to go ahead with Jay’s plan from his supervisors, who feared he would spark a new gang war if he went ahead with it.

‘I was so focused on the mission that I didn’t really respect that opinion,’ Jay confessed. ‘I was going to do this.’

He was given a gun and instructions on how to commit the murder by the Hells Angels.

However, the ATF staged a murder by using a member of their task force and a Mongols jacket that had been seized.

A homicide detective helped to build the fake crime scene in order to make it appear real – including using ‘bits and pieces and parts from the butcher shop’ such as real blood from livestock and tissue from a lung that was placed around the actor’s head to make it look like he was shot in the head.

Jay showed the bloodied Mongol jacket and photos of the ‘murder’ to members of the Hells Angels – which was enough to convince them to make him a full member of the gang, but the initiation did not take place immediately.

‘I was more gangster than I was a husband or father or federal agent. That’s a very dangerous place to be,’ Jay confessed.

‘My wife had a conversation with me at one point. She said, “You know what? You’re out there saving the world and solving everybody else’s problems, and your own family’s melting down before your eyes”.

‘And it was true. And at the time, I’m not sure if I cared or at least cared as much as I should have.’

According to attorney Kerrie Droban, who appears in the documentary series, the ATF feared Jay was ‘almost at the point of no return’ and that they were ‘losing control of their operative’.

It was decided that the investigation would end before Jay received his full patch. 

Operation Black Biscuit led to the arrest of 36 Hells Angels members and associates, 16 of whom were later indicted on charges ranging from murder to racketeering to drug trafficking.

However, many charges were dismissed despite the evidence and the remaining Hells Angels negotiated a plea deal, which became a source of frustration for Jay and his team.

‘You commit two years of your life in the blood, sweat and tears to watch it fall apart on the steps of the courthouse,’ he said.

‘I wanted to leave a legacy. And there is no legacy to leave. I wanted to finish with a reputation and respect and dignity and admiration. And it wasn’t there.’

The end of the operation also led to death threats against Jay and his family once the truth of his identity was revealed.

He was forced to move ‘every two weeks’ in an effort to find somewhere safe for his family.

‘Black Biscuit has been over for 20 years and I’m still trying to get back to my ordinary life,’ Jay added. 

Jay continued to work as on undercover assignments after that operation ended, adding: ‘I used all those experiences and all those things that I learned from the Hells Angels and tried to continue to put those in play in other investigations.

‘I definitely believe that I was infiltrating the Hells Angels, they were infiltrating me. It is impossible to be immersed in that lifestyle for two years and not be partially impacted by it.

‘I think that doing this job and the way I did it for as long as I did it and having this long-term deep-cover experience with the Hells Angels, I don’t know how it doesn’t change your DNA.

‘How it doesn’t alter how you view yourself and how you view others.’