White power biker gang was police sting

• Tweet

ORLANDO, Fla., July 29 (UPI) -- A so-called white supremacist motorcycle gang in Florida was actually created by law-enforcement officers as a sting, court records said.

The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel said Sunday the club, known as the 1st SS Kavallerie Brigade Motorcycle Division, was created in St. Cloud in 2007 to lure in white supremacists and outlaw bikers suspected of having violent intentions.

The phony gang was part of an overall push against white supremacists and members of motorcycle clubs with allegedly similar racist leanings. The newspaper said the overall investigation netted 20 arrests over the years.

"The underlying aspect through all of it was that they were obtaining explosives and explosives expertise, and they intended to use them to kill people in the United States," Orange-Osceola State Attorney Lawson Lamar told the Sentinel. "We have a duty to stop what they were doing."

Records showed the Kavallerie "club" came about when an undercover Orange County sheriff's deputy proposed the idea in an e-mail to August Kreis, a leader of the Aryan Nation who had expressed interest in organizing a Nazi-oriented motorcycle crew to act as a militant arm for white supremacists nationwide.

The club operated out of building in St. Cloud the FBI outfitted with hidden cameras and microphones, which the Sentinel said captured allegedly incriminating statements. It also served as a meeting place between unsuspecting club leaders and undercover agents posing as explosives experts.