Latest news with #MexicanMafia
CBS News
19-06-2025
- CBS News
Mexican Mafia members charged in murder conspiracy of rapper, LA County DA says
Los Angeles prosecutors charged 19 alleged members and associates of the Mexican Mafia with a years-long conspiracy to murder a rapper, according to the FBI. The FBI and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department investigators said the conspiracy began in December 2022 after the rapper slighted the criminal syndicate. The plan to kill the man involved several high-ranking associates of the Mexican Mafia incarcerated in the LA County Jail, according to the FBI. "This investigation highlights the far-reaching and violent influence of criminal gang organizations operating behind bars to orchestrate attacks that endanger the safety of those in our custody and in our communities," said Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna. After a Mexican Mafia member sanctioned the killing, an armed associate allegedly went to the victims' home after another alleged co-conspirator used social media to track down the rapper's location. FBI investigators said the criminal syndicate couldn't find the rapper at his family's home because he was incarcerated in the LA County Jail. Once they learned he was in the facility, Mexican Mafia members in the jail allegedly tried to kill the victim. While he was hospitalized, the rapper survived the attack and authorities released him from jail days later. The suspects allegedly continued the murder conspiracy after the rapper was freed. "We will not tolerate organized crime using our jails and prisons as a haven for violence," LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said. "When individuals on the outside conspire with those inside to carry out attacks, they threaten the safety and integrity of our correctional system." While 18 of the alleged Mexican Mafia members have been apprehended, the FBI said one of the suspects, Joshua Euan, 37, remains at large. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is urged to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit a tip at
Fox News
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
White House deputy chief of staff rails against reporters over MS-13, TdA coverage
President Donald Trump had to "shame" most media into covering stories of MS-13 and Tren de Aragua violence in the U.S., White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said Thursday, accusing some outlets of trying to "shill" for one accused MS-13 member. Miller railed against reporters during a scheduled White House briefing when he was asked about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the suspected MS-13 gang member being held in El Salvador after the Trump administration deported him from the U.S. Miller said evidence has shown Abrego Garcia has a history of violence, including "repeated threats and assaults against his spouse" and "had repeated documented human trafficking and human smuggling offenses." He cited an MS-13 tattoo on Abrego Garcia's knuckles as some evidence of his "extensively documented membership in MS-13." Miller blasted the Biden administration for "importing" violent "illegals" into the country, saying the former president let two Tren de Aragua members go on supervised release before they were arrested in the sexual assault and murder of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray in June 2024. "Most of your papers never covered her story when it happened, to the extent that you covered it at all, it was because President Trump forced you to cover it by highlighting it repeatedly over and over again," Miller said. "He had to shame you into covering it." "And each and every one of you that sides over and over again with these MS-13 terrorists, to the extent that you had the financial means to do so, you all choose to live in condos or homes or houses as far away from these kinds of gangbangers as you possibly can," he continued. Miller said that if he had offered the reporters present at the briefing a rent-free home with no taxes, but next-door to MS-13, Mexican Mafia or Sinaloa Cartel members, he believed the reporters would pass. "I couldn't pay you to live there," Miller said. "But yet you, with your coverage, are trying to force innocent Americans to have these people as their neighbors and that one day their daughter may be abducted from their home and raped and murdered," he continued. "So you're not going to get an ounce of sympathy from this administration or President Trump for the terrorists who've invaded our homes in our country."
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Yahoo
Aryan Brotherhood case raises a question: How to stop killings ordered from state prisons
As witness after witness testified that three Aryan Brotherhood members directed drug deals, shakedowns and murders from their California prison cells, the question was not whether prosecutors would convict them — but whether doing so would prevent future crimes. Kenneth Johnson, Francis Clement and John Stinson were already serving life sentences in the state system when a federal jury in Fresno convicted them last week of racketeering and other offenses. Read more: Witness says he killed for the Aryan Brotherhood, divulges secrets of L.A.'s underworld During the trial, prosecutors made clear that California prisons are flooded with contraband cellphones, which gang leaders use to control rackets inside and outside their lockups. Witnesses testified to enjoying the use of phones and drugs smuggled in using drones or by corrupt staff. Authorities seized 4,109 phones across the California prison system in 2023, the most recent year for which data were available, according to a prison spokeswoman. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons offers stricter conditions. High-risk inmates are held in a so-called super-maximum security facility in Colorado where they have virtually no access to one another or the outside world. Despite the convictions of Johnson, Clement and Stinson, it remains unclear whether they will leave California. They are currently held at the Fresno County Jail. Stinson's attorney, Kenneth Reed, said that he does not expect his client to go to federal prison after he is sentenced in May. Reed noted three other Aryan Brotherhood members — who were also state prisoners serving life sentences — were found guilty of racketeering last year in a trial in Sacramento, but haven't entered federal custody. Stinson, 70, has been serving a federal life term concurrent to his state life sentence since he was first convicted of racketeering in 2007 by a Los Angeles jury. At both the Los Angeles and Fresno trials, witnesses testified that Stinson sat on a three-man "commission" that arbitrates disputes within the Aryan Brotherhood, a group of about 30 men who control many white inmates in the California and federal prison systems. Authorities once tried to break up prison gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood, Mexican Mafia and Nuestra Familia by convicting their leaders in federal court, then banishing them to places like ADX Florence in Colorado. Sometimes called "the Alcatraz of the Rockies," the maximum-security prison holds convicted drug cartel leaders, terrorists, escape artists and other high-profile prisoners who the federal government has deemed pose the highest risk to the public and other inmates. Read more: Mexican Mafia leader offered to ensure protection for El Chapo in U.S. prison, feds say The prison is what Scott Kernan had in mind in 2018 when, as secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, he asked a top U.S. Bureau of Prisons official to take custody of eight "extremely dangerous" prisoners. In a letter filed in court, Kernan said the inmates included members of the Aryan Brotherhood and Mexican Mafia. Before they were indicted, the California corrections chief wanted the federal prison system's assurance that it would be willing to accept prisoners who required "the most restrictive confinement conditions available." It's unclear how federal prison officials responded, but prosecutors brought indictments against all eight inmates in 2019. All but one, who was killed while awaiting trial, were convicted of racketeering. None have been taken to federal prison, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said. The spokesman, Donald Murphy, said he wouldn't discuss the status of inmates who weren't in the agency's custody. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California, which tried the Fresno and Sacramento cases, declined to comment. Read more: California inmate recruited 'wives' to spread fentanyl across Alaska, feds say In the Sacramento case, one of the defendants, Brant Daniel, is now trying to withdraw his guilty plea, saying he only admitted to murder because he thought he'd be sent to federal prison. Daniel, 50, didn't say in his motion why he wants to be in federal prison. One potential factor: Authorities uncovered a plot by other Aryan Brotherhood members to murder him, prosecutors wrote in court documents. At Daniel's plea hearing, U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller said she could not order the federal prison system to accept a state prisoner, according to a transcript of the proceeding. The deputy attorney general of the U.S. Justice Department must approve it, Mueller said. At the hearing, Jason Hitt, an assistant U.S. attorney in Sacramento, said he was working a "behind-the-scenes process" to get Daniel into federal custody. It didn't happen. Nine months after the hearing, Hitt said in court papers that federal officials refused to take Daniel. Their decision was "part of a confidential, internal deliberative Department of Justice decision-making process that is not subject to review," Hitt wrote. Daniel remains at California State Prison, Sacramento, as a judge weighs whether to let him take back his guilty plea. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
