GR EXCLUSIVE: Pagan’s MC ‘Los Malos’ Leaders Break Bread At N.J. Diner In Wake Of “Cletus” Ayers’ Boss Promotion
July 2, 2025 — New Pagan’s Motorcycle Club National President Clayton (Cletus) Ayers III dined with legendary New Jersey Pagan’s elder statesman Sergio (Cano) Cuevos at a South Jersey restaurant last week, driven to the meal and meeting by Pagan’s MC National Vice-President Hugo (Zorro) Nieves, according to GR sources. Although he is retired, the Puerto Rican-born Cuevas remains highly-influential in Pagan’s shot-calling circles and is often sought for advice from club leadership.
The 85-year old “Cano” Cuevas was the club’s first non-Caucasian and first Latino full-patch member and has served as “Zorro” Nieves’ mentor as Nieves rose through the ranks of the club. Cuevas and Nieves represent the Pagan’s Garden State brigade and “Los Malos” faction (Los Malos means “Bad Guys” in Spanish). Cuevas went down in two consecutive racketeering indictments in 2009 and 2010, respectively that imprisoned dozens of Pagan’s MC bosses, including then-National President David (Black Bart) Barbeito out of Maryland, and were brought in West Virginia and New York just nine months apart. Ayers is a low-key shot caller from the Philadelphia and Reading, Pennsylvania areas with a 2007 drug-trafficking bust under his belt. He beat a DUI case at trial in 2018 and previously served as Sergeant-at-Arms for the Mothership. Earlier reports about his promotion to Pagan’s prez misidentified him as his father (Clayton Jr.) who passed in 2022 and was a Constable and Vietnam-War veteran.
Back in the spring, “Cletus” Ayers, 56, was selected by Pagan’s MC leader Keith (Conan the Barbarian) Richter as the club’s latest interim president, while Richter, 65 and out of the Long Island, New York chapter, deals with parole restrictions for the next three years, fresh off a four-piece in the can on a pair of gun cases. In 2018, Richter and Nieves launched the Blue Wave expansion campaign and in less than a decade has placed Pagan’s chapters in 49 of the 50 states in the U.S., much of the growth taking place with Richter behind bars and using buffers and front bosses to run the ship for him. Ayers is Richter’s third front boss since going away in 2021 and rocks a “Los Malos” patch and bike sticker.
Richter walked free on June 3. He seized power in the Pagan’s in late 2017 in a bloodless coup that pushed out a Harrisburg and Pittsburgh-based club administration, Per GR sources, a small, but vocal slice of old-school Pagan’s don’t agree with Richter and Nieves using so many Latinos and relying so heavily on an alliance with the Hispanic-centered Mongols Motorcycle Club to grow the club, even if it tripled the club’s numbers nationwide (from under 1,000 to more than 3,000 full patches). Informants tell the government that Ayers was a chosen to be Richter’s most-recent front boss in a decision that was made in consensus between Richter and Nieves’ ‘New Order Conan Era’ and the more skeptical older generation.
