LOS ANGELES (AP) – Leaders of the notorious Mexican Mafia “gang of gangs” were charged Wednesday with running a government-like operation to control drug trafficking from inside Los Angeles County jails that included ordering violence against those who didn’t obey.
The U.S. attorney’s office charged 83 people in sweeping racketeering conspiracies that alleged they ran drugs and carried out violent assaults and murders.
“These cases have delivered a major blow to the Mexican Mafia and leaders of many of the street gangs under the control of the organization,” U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said. “By taking out the gang members who control the jails, and by disrupting their communications network, we undermined the Mexican Mafia’s ability to coordinate street gang activity.”
Prosecutors said the gang – an organization of imprisoned Latino street gang leaders who control operations inside and outside California prisons and jails – was able to control smuggling, drug sales and extortion inside the nation’s largest jail system.
Indictments detailed how the gang had begun in Los Angeles in 1950s at a juvenile jail and had grown to an international criminal organization that had a methodical system to communicate from behind bars, control gang territory and collect “taxes” for drug sales through extortion.