Who Are the Outlaws MC?
The Outlaws Motorcycle Club is one of the oldest one-percenter motorcycle clubs in the United States, and it is one of the few whose internal structure is described in a published federal appellate opinion rather than only in folklore. The Justice Department groups it with the Hells Angels, Bandidos and Pagans among the largest American outlaw clubs.
| Field | Documented detail | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 1935, McCook, Illinois | Published club and academic histories, not a contemporaneous record |
| Original name | McCook Outlaws, later Chicago Outlaws | Published histories, exact renaming year not established |
| Center patch | Skull over crossed pistons, called “Charlie” | Consistent description across published accounts |
| Organizational name | American Outlaws Association (AOA) | Used in federal prosecutions |
| Documented reach | 64 US chapters plus chapters in eight other countries | Eleventh Circuit opinion in United States v. Bowman, decided August 20, 2002 |
| Chain of command | Chapter president to regional president to international president | Same opinion |
| Federal classification | Outlaw motorcycle gang | Justice Department gang material, archived |
Two rows there deserve a warning label. The chapter and country counts describe the club during the years covered by the Bowman prosecution, which ended with his removal from the presidency in 1997. They are a court’s recital of the evidence in that case, not a live tally. Nothing in the public record establishes what those numbers are in 2026, and this page does not guess. For the broader frame, our motorcycle clubs complete guide is the cluster reference.
Founding in McCook, Illinois
Published histories, including academic work on outlaw club origins, date the Outlaws to 1935 in McCook, a small village about fifteen miles southwest of downtown Chicago. The club was known as the McCook Outlaws, and the members were men who rode together on the flat roads outside the city.
The 1935 date predates the one-percenter designation and the later three-piece patch convention. The early riding club and the organization documented in later federal cases belong to different periods in motorcycle-club history.
The 1935 date is also the basis for the claim that the Outlaws are older than the Hells Angels by thirteen years, and that comparison holds only if you accept both clubs’ own founding dates at face value. Both come from club history rather than from records anyone can check. It is a reasonable thing to repeat as long as you say where it comes from.
The Name and Center Patch
Academic and club histories say the McCook Outlaws later became the Chicago Outlaws. The sources cited here do not establish an exact renaming year or a reliable year-by-year emblem chronology.
Published accounts commonly call the skull over crossed pistons center patch “Charlie.” It appears in a three-piece layout with the club name above and a location rocker below. The description is visible in published imagery, but the name’s origin and any official symbolic meaning are not established by the court records cited here.
Search results also assign expansions to the abbreviations GFOD and ADIOS. No authenticated club document or court record cited here verifies those expansions, so this page does not decode them. Our guide to what biker patches actually mean explains why club-specific symbol claims require direct evidence.
The AOA: What the Court Records Show
The organization is also known as the American Outlaws Association, and federal prosecutors use that name. Published histories place its reorganization as a national body in the mid-1960s, but the sources cited here do not establish an exact January 1, 1965 date.
The structure itself is not a matter of folklore. The Eleventh Circuit’s opinion in the Bowman case sets it out directly: the United States is divided into five regions, each foreign country counts as a region, chapter presidents report to their regional president, and regional presidents report to the international president. The 2010 federal prosecution in Virginia used the same vocabulary, identifying national president Jack Rosga as a member of the Gold Region, Milwaukee Chapter.
This structure comes from a federal appellate court reciting trial evidence, and it is tied to the period covered by that prosecution rather than presented as a current organization chart.
Two claims repeated online, recognition as the first one-percenter club east of the Mississippi in 1963 and an American Motorcyclist Association ban on the name in 1960, do not trace to a verifiable source and are not treated as part of the chronology.
Independent Gear, No Club Affiliation
Bobber Brothers is not connected to the Outlaws or to any motorcycle club. We write these pages as history. Our patch and accessories collection and biker tees carry our own artwork and do not reproduce any club’s colors, insignia or rockers.
Where the Club Has Been Documented
The honest answer to “where are the Outlaws” is that the public record gives snapshots, not a map.
- Bowman-era record. The Eleventh Circuit opinion recites 64 chapters in the United States and chapters in eight other countries. Those figures describe the organization during the period the prosecution covered, which ran through 1997.
- 2010 federal case. The Eastern District of Virginia prosecution reached the national president and members across multiple states, and used the region naming described above.
- Detroit-area case. A separate federal prosecution produced guilty pleas from fourteen members and associates tied to chapters in the Detroit area, Fort Wayne and Indianapolis.
- Not on the record. We found no primary source establishing the chartering date of any individual foreign chapter, a current country list, or a current chapter count. The commonly repeated dates for first chapters in Canada, France, Scandinavia, Thailand and Australia are not sourced in anything we could reach, so they are gone from this page.
A club’s international footprint changes as chapters open and close. A chartering date repeated across reference sites without a citation is not reliable evidence.
The Bowman opinion supplies one incident-level record of inter-club conflict: the proven racketeering acts included the bombing of Warlocks clubhouses. That supports documented conflict with the Warlocks MC in the period covered by the case. It does not establish a separate rivalry with the Pagans MC or a current territory map.
Harry “Taco” Bowman and the 2001 Conviction
Harry Joseph Bowman, known as “Taco,” was international president of the Outlaws for thirteen years, from 1984 until 1997. He is the most fully documented figure in the club’s history, entirely because of the case against him.
Bowman was indicted in 1997, became a fugitive, was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and was captured in Michigan in 1999. He was convicted at trial on eight counts, and the jury found thirteen racketeering acts proven, including murders, bombings, kidnappings and drug distribution. He received concurrent life sentences on the two lead counts, with twenty-year terms on other counts running concurrently. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed on August 20, 2002.
Bowman remained imprisoned after the conviction and died on March 3, 2019. His obituary records the death at Federal Medical Center Butner in North Carolina. The conviction and sentence remain part of the public record, but he is not currently serving that sentence.
Jack Rosga and the 2010 Virginia Case
The later federal case involved another national leader and provides a separate record of the organization’s structure.
On December 21, 2010, a federal jury in the Eastern District of Virginia found Jack Rosga, known as “Milwaukee Jack,” then 53 and the national president of the American Outlaws Association, guilty of conspiring to engage in racketeering activity and conspiring to commit violence in aid of racketeering. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The investigation behind it charged 27 people, of whom 20 either pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial. The Justice Department’s account describes trial evidence portraying the organization as operating with a defined, multi-level chain of command running up to Rosga. The case was announced by the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and the ATF Special Agent in Charge.
Two framing points belong with both convictions. A jury finding about named leaders and members is a finding about those people and that conduct, not about everyone who has worn the patch or attended a public run. And a charge is an allegation until a court resolves it, which is a distinction the coverage of these cases routinely blurs in both directions.
Structure and Membership: Sourced Versus Assumed
The chain of command above is sourced. Most of what else gets published about this club’s internal life is not.
Court records support a chapter officer tier, a regional tier and an international president. Federal opinions across several outlaw clubs describe a probationary period before a member wears full colors, and a chapter officer set that commonly includes a president, vice president, sergeant-at-arms, road captain and secretary or treasurer. That is a general pattern in the case law, not a verified copy of this club’s bylaws.
What this page does not publish: current officer names below the leaders already convicted in open court, chapter locations, clubhouse addresses, dues, prospect requirements, meeting obligations or internal discipline. Those specifics circulate widely, none of them are traceable to an authenticated club document, and assembling them serves no historical purpose.
The commonly repeated rule that members must ride American-made motorcycles is not established by an authenticated club document or by the court records cited here, so this page does not present it as a membership requirement.
Rivalry Claims Require Incident-Level Sources
The Outlaws and Hells Angels are frequently described as rivals, but a general label is not a substitute for dated court or police records. This page does not use an unverified patch-abbreviation expansion as proof of a continuing conflict.
What we are not publishing is a running incident list, a territory map, or claims about which club currently holds influence in which region. Those need incident-level court or police sources, and the versions in circulation are assembled from forum lore. Rivalry maps are the least reliable material written about these clubs and the most likely to describe living people as being at war.
Our roundup of the best-known American motorcycle clubs keeps the same discipline, and our Mongols MC history works through how a similar rivalry claim survives decades of repetition without ever acquiring a source.
Later Public Records
Later official records document people identified as Outlaws members without supplying a current club-wide census. In July 2025, Tasmania Police announced drug charges against two people it identified as club members. Those charges were allegations at filing. In March 2026, a federal defendant identified in court records as an Outlaws member pleaded guilty to arson by means of an explosive causing injury after a February 2025 incident in Florida.
Neither record establishes how many chapters exist today, how many members wear the patch, or in which countries the club currently operates. The wider culture these clubs came out of is better documented than any current club-wide census.
Sources
- United States v. Bowman, 11th Circuit (decided August 20, 2002) - Appellate opinion in the Harry Bowman racketeering case. Source for his tenure as international president from 1984 to 1997, the counts of conviction, the concurrent life sentences, the five-region structure, the chain of command, and the recital of 64 US chapters plus chapters in eight other countries
- Harry Joseph Bowman obituary - Published obituary documenting Bowman’s March 3, 2019 death in federal custody
- Outlaws Motorcycle Gang Members Found Guilty - Justice Department release on the December 21, 2010 verdict against national president Jack Rosga in the Eastern District of Virginia, including the charges and the Gold Region, Milwaukee Chapter identification
- Outlaws Motorcycle National President Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison - Justice Department release on the Rosga sentence and the totals of 27 charged and 20 convicted or pleaded guilty
- Fourteen Motorcycle Gang Leaders and Members Plead Guilty in Detroit - Justice Department release covering guilty pleas tied to Detroit-area, Fort Wayne and Indianapolis chapters
- Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs - Archived Justice Department overview of outlaw motorcycle gang classification, used for the classification claim and its archived status
- Two members of Outlaws Motorcycle Club charged with drug offences - Tasmania Police, July 2025. Source for the dated charges and club identifications
- Pensacola Member of Outlaws Motorcycle Club Pleads Guilty to Arson - U.S. Attorney, Northern District of Florida, March 2026. Source for the guilty plea and the distinction between the admitted offense and wider club membership
- Dulaney, William L. “A Brief History of Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs.” International Journal of Motorcycle Studies, 2005 - Academic history used for the 1935 McCook founding account and the early naming
- Quinn, James F. “Angels, Bandidos, Outlaws, and Pagans: The Evolution of Organized Crime Among the Big Four 1%er Motorcycle Clubs.” Deviant Behavior, vol. 22, 2001 - Academic analysis of the four largest clubs, used for general organizational patterns
