July 29, 2019 – Reputed Rhode Island Pagan’s Motorcycle boss Deric (Big Tuna) McGuire was granted bond last week to await trial on a drug and weapons indictment from home instead of behind bars after Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Netti Vogel ruled wiretapped phone conversations he was caught on inadmissible because of a faulty warrant. The burly 34-year old McGuire had been locked up for the past 14 months, the lead defendant in the Operation Patched Out case, a bust that went down in May 2018 and ensnared 57 people. He faces more than 200 counts of drug trafficking and illegal firearm offenses when he goes in front of a jury at a trial expected to begin early next year. McGuire’s cell phone was bugged for almost a year (June 2017-March 2018) as part of the investigation. Some of the conversations intercepted were between McGuire and Pagan’s national president Keith (Conan the Barbarian) Richter discussing Richter’s desire for the Pagan’s to take over the entire east coast and Richter tapping McGuire specifically to head his expansion into the Providence area. “It’s a new age out there brother, it’s the Pagan era now,” Richter is heard telling McGuire on the wire. During the investigation, McGuire traveled to see Richter in Elizabeth, New Jersey with his Thug Riders biker gang where they were all “patched over” to the Pagan’s. On the group’s return to Rhode Island, McGuire opened up the first Pagan’s chapter in the state in the town of Woonsocket. Richter headquarters his affairs out of Long Island, New York. Long-haired with a chiseled physique, Richter, 59, grabbed the reins of the Pagan’s national presidency in 2015. He had previously been the club’s sergeant-at-arms and a chapter boss in Long Island and served a prison bid for trying to kill a New York strip club owner who rebuffed Pagan’s shakedown efforts. According to the federal government, in 2017, Richter issued an expansion mandate to the club, ordering the conquering of new territory and violence against rival clubs like the Hells Angels and the Outlaws.
