How the Mexican Mafia Wields Power beyond Prison #LaEme

Mexican Mafia, God, family — in that order.

That’s how one expert described the power and influence the notorious prison gang, also known as “La Eme,” holds over people in prison or county jail, as well as those on the outside.

In a 2007 article published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, writer Tony Rafael — who spent years researching the Mexican Mafia — explained in an interview how the gang’s leaders give orders to members of Hispanic or Latino street gangs that could include harassing, assaulting or killing others on its behalf.

Failure to follow orders is usually punished, often violently.

“When you click up with a gang that’s loyal to the Mexican Mafia, the Mexican Mafia comes before God, your family, and your friends going all the way back to childhood,” said Rafael, who published a book on the subject in 2009 (The Mexican Mafia). “When they tell you to do something, you gotta do it.”

It will be interesting to see how that notion plays in San Diego Superior Court, where 20 people are facing charges related to their alleged association with the prison gang.

Twelve men and eight women stand accused of various felonies after a three-year investigation, dubbed “Operation Emero,” conducted by a multi-agency gang task force. The investigation was led by the Sheriff’s Department, FBI and a special services unit of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Some of the defendants pleaded not guilty this week in San Diego Superior Court to charges including extortion, kidnapping, assault likely to produce great bodily injury, drug possession for sale and conspiracy to commit assault, arson, robbery and torture.

Others, including defendants now in prison on other convictions, are expected to be arraigned over the next few weeks.

Felix Aguirre, a retired San Diego police detective who conducts training and information sessions on gangs, said the Mexican Mafia is one of several prison gangs that thrive in correctional institutions in California and across the country.

“It basically controls everything from prostitution to drugs — a lot of the criminal activities within the institutions,” he said.

When someone is sent to prison, it’s typical for that person to seek out a group of inmates he can identify with — usually other members of the same race — for protection and safety, Aguirre said. Those who associate with the Mexican Mafia may eventually be told to “put in work” for the gang, either inside a prison or jail, or out on the streets.

The “carnales,” loosely translated from Spanish as “brothers,” are the leaders of the organization, the “shot-callers,” Aguirre said. Below them are the “comrades,” the second-tier leaders, and then the crew members or associates who carry out their orders. They also tend to rely on women — perhaps wives or girlfriends of the carnales — to communicate their directives on the street.

The gang is known to take a “tax” from anyone carrying out other criminal activities in areas claimed by the prison gang. In other words, if dealers are selling drugs in Mexican Mafia territory, they have to pay a percentage to the gang. If they don’t, the gang will still find a way to collect.

“The consequences are assault, violent robberies … They take what they want,” Aguirre said.

Prosecutors in San Diego County haven’t revealed many details about the new case, but have said the defendants operated in two groups, one of which was led by federal prisoner Jose Alberto “Bat” Marquez, the other by California death row inmate Ronaldo Ayala.

Neither is charged in the San Diego case, presumably because both men are expected to spend the rest of their lives locked away from the rest of society. But their names appear multiple times throughout the 40-page complaint in a long list of “overt acts” prosecutors included to support the charges.

Among them, Marquez is accused of directing a female defendant to give an inmate “knuckles” over a drug debt. On another occasion, Marquez told the same defendant to slap a woman and collect the money she owed him, according to prosecutors.

They say Ayala used a contraband cellphone to make calls from death row, including one in which he authorized the stabbing of an inmate at Centinela state prison in Imperial County in April.

Thanks to Dana Littlefield.

The @realDonaldTrump to Liberate our Towns and Destroy the Murderous MS-13 Gang Animals

President Trump sounded the alarm Friday over the violence being inflicted on American neighborhoods by MS-13, vowing to “liberate our towns” from the murderous gang's grip as part of an escalating crackdown by his administration.

The defeat of the latest ObamaCare repeal bill in his rear-view, Trump traveled to Long Island to talk about the gang's atrocities and rally support for his immigration enforcement policies.

“[MS-13 has] transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into blood stained killing fields. They’re animals. We cannot tolerate as a society the spilling of innocent, young, wonderful vibrant people,” Trump said.

The president spoke in plain language to describe the brutality of MS-13 gang members, who have murdered 17 people in Long Island since Jan. 16. The gang, which has Central American ties, is also active in the Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles areas.

"We cannot accept this violence one day more," Trump said.

As he did throughout the 2016 political campaign, Trump also railed against timid politicians who have failed to enforce immigration laws and looked the other way as violent gangs crossed the border. “They are there right now because of weak political leadership ... and in many cases police who are not allowed to do their job because they have a pathetic mayor or a mayor who does not know what’s going on,” Trump said.

After noting the gang members prefer knives over guns because victims experience more suffering, Trump delivered a message to members. “We will find you, we will arrest you, we will jail you and we will deport you,” Trump said to applause from the audience of law enforcement officials. He vowed to "destroy the vile criminal cartel, MS-13, and many other gangs."

The visit came after the Senate early Friday morning narrowly defeated the latest ObamaCare replacement bill, in a blow to one of Trump's top campaign promises. But the president brushed off the loss and called on Congress to meet his spending demands to hire as many as 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and 5,000 new Customs and Border Patrol officers.

The administration also is pushing to boosting funding for more administrative law judges and to begin building the border wall.

The House this week voted to allocate $1.6 billion for a border wall.

Trump’s speech coincided with an announcement on Friday that two MS-13 gang members had been arrested in connection with the May murder of a man in Queens.

In June, New York State and federal law enforcement officials disclosed that as part of Operation Matador -- a joint federal-state initiative -- a total of 45 individuals with confirmed gang affiliations were arrested, including 39 affiliated with MS-13.

With Trump in MS-13’s domestic epicenter, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was delivering the administration’s message in El Salvador, where the violent gang is rooted.

“MS-13 is based here in El Salvador, but its tentacles reach across Central America, Europe, and through 40 U.S. states, and to within yards of the U.S. Capitol,” he said in remarks to graduates of the International Law Enforcement Academy.

The administration has taken an aggressive approach toward combating gangs, including establishing a Department of Justice Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety in February. A month later, Sessions issued a memo to all federal prosecutors placing a priority on prosecuting violent criminals.

Sessions was in the country to highlight joint efforts that have contributed to the arrest of 113 suspected MS-13 gang members. According to the Justice Department, an additional 593 gang members were charged Thursday, including many MS-13 members.

Touhy vs. Capone: The Chicago Outfit’s Biggest Frame Job

Touhy vs. Capone: The Chicago Outfit's Biggest Frame Job.

When beat cop Don Herion and his partner responded to shots fired on December 16, 1959, they didn’t know that they had heard the final, fatal salvo in one of the most contorted conflicts in the history of organized crime. A canny bootlegger, Roger Touhy had survived a gang war with Al Capone, false imprisonment for a faked kidnapping, a prison break and recapture. His story dragged in all the notorious men of his day: Frank Nitti, John “Jake the Barber” Factor, Mayor Cermak, Melvin Purvis, J. Edgar Hoover, Baby Face Nelson, Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert, FDR and JFK. As Touhy’s life was ending on his sister’s front porch, Herion’s quest to unravel the tangle of events that led to his assassination had just begun.

A native of the Windy City, Don Herion joined the Chicago Police Department in 1955. On a cold winter night in 1959, he was called to the scene of Roger Touhy’s murder. Herion retired after forty-eight years on the job, including two years of undercover work for the Chicago Crime Commission. He is the author of Pay, Quit, or Die: Chicago Mob Ultimatum, and The Chicago Way.

Touhy vs. Capone: The Chicago Outfit's Biggest Frame Job.

Using Witness Protection Programs to Break the Mob

It must be one of the worst choices to have to make; to choose between decades behind bars or a life in hiding. But that is what confronts accused drug mule Cassie Sainsbury, now languishing in a Colombian prison. She has been asked to either inform on the people who supplied the cocaine found in her luggage at an airport back in April this year and go into witness protection, or spend 30 years in a Colombian jail.

Witsec: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program.

If she takes the deal to turn informant she will be joining a long list of people who testified against organised criminals only to lose their identity and liberty under witness protection. Programs to protect people who testify against organised criminals only came into existence in the 1960s and ’70s, even though the need for such a program goes back centuries.

Intimidation of witnesses is at least as old as courts, but it was only in the 19th and early 20th centuries that laws were passed against tampering with witnesses or that witnesses were detained so that they couldn’t be intimidated or killed.

In the US in the late 19th and early 20th century the Black Hand gangs, formed among Italian migrants, often scared away people from reporting crimes or testifying against gang members. In Chicago between 1910 and 1920, police were able to secure prosecutions in 21 per cent of homicides, but in cases relating to Black Hand killings they could only secure convictions in 4 per cent of cases.

The Black Hand: Terror by Letter in Chicago.

In the 1920s and ’30s people such as Chicago mob boss Al Capone were able to literally get away with murder by threatening or killing witnesses. But when authorities found bookkeeping ledgers meticulously detailing Capone’s ill-gotten profits, Leslie (some sources say Louis) Shumway, one of the men responsible for keeping the ledgers, was hidden away and brought to court under police guard. He became a material witness in a case for tax evasion. Capone was convicted in 1931 and sent to prison, after which police broke his control of his crime organisation, freeing Shumway of any fear of retribution. Shumway lived the rest of his life in seclusion but by the ’40s Capone was losing his mind due to late stage syphilis. Capone died in 1947 in Florida and Shumway died in 1964, also in Florida.

In 1963, mobster Joe Valachi testified at a US senate hearing about the dealings and structure of the mob. Valachi, who was already in prison, had organised his own protection. (In 1962 he beat to death an inmate he thought had been sent to collect a $100,000 bounty put out by mob boss Vito Genovese.) Valachi died in prison of a heart attack in 1971. Valachi Papers by Peter Maas.

The US Justice Department’s Gerald Shur, frustrated by not being able to get people to testify in big organised crime cases pushed for a more formal system of looking after witnesses.

In 1970 the Organised Crime Control Act provided for the relocation and protection of witnesses, a role that was taken on by the US Marshals Service under the orders of the US Attorney-General.

Since then thousands of people have entered the Federal Witness Protection Program, or Witness Security Program (WITSEC for short).

Some of the more notorious people given protection include New York City mobster Henry Hill, who was arrested in 1980 on a narcotics charge but turned informant and his testimony helped secure 50 convictions. His story was told in the book Wise Guy: Life in a Mafia Family, by Nicholas Pileggi and later turned into the award-winning Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas (4K Ultra HD) [Blu-ray].



Hill was thrown out of witness protection after he repeatedly revealed his true identity to neighbours. He died in 2012 from heart problems.

Sicilian-born mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta also made headlines in 1992 when he became the first major crime boss to turn informant. He testified into links between organised crime and politicians in Italy. He died while in WITSEC in the US in 2000.

A national witness protection program was also established Australia in 1990 under the Australian Federal Police. It gained notoriety when Reginald “Mick” O’Brien, a small-time criminal with links to crime boss Robert Trimbole, became a protected witness.

O’Brien had been arrested in relation to the importation of cannabis resin, but had made a deal with the National Crime Authority to give evidence against Trimbole. When the NCA became dissatisfied with the quality of his evidence he was dropped from witness protection. O’Brien was shot dead in Granville in January 1992. No one has ever been convicted of his murder.

Thanks to Troy Lennon.

Motor City Mafia by @burneystweets Takes You inside the Belly of the Beast

Motor City Mafia: A Century of Organized Crime in Detroit (Images of America), chronicles the storied and hallowed gangland history of the notorious Detroit underworld.

Scott M. Burnstein takes the reader inside the belly of the beast, tracking the bloodshed, exploits, and leadership of the southeast Michigan crime syndicate as never before seen in print. Through a stunning array of rare archival photographs and images, Motor City Mafia captures Detroit's most infamous past, from its inception in the early part of the 20th century, through the years when the iconic Purple Gang ruled the city's streets during Prohibition, through the 1930s and the formation of the local Italian mafia, and the Detroit crime family's glory days in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, all the way to the downfall of the area's mob reign in the 1980s and 1990s.

Family Secrets Mob Book by @JeffCoen is Indispensable to Know How Chicago Truly Works

If you're interested in understanding the real Chicago—and there can be no serious understanding of this completely political city without examining the Chicago Outfit—then you'll soon have a great new book on your shelves:

"Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob" (Chicago Review Press) by Chicago Tribune federal courts reporter Jeff Coen.

Yes, Coen is a colleague of mine who is well-respected in our newsroom. But the reason I recommend this book is that I've followed Coen's work chronicling this case. His careful eye and clean writing style have produced years of compelling Tribune stories and now this authoritative account of one of the most amazing Chicago Outfit cases in history.

It involves the FBI's turning of Chicago Outfit hit man Nicholas Calabrese into a top witness and informer. Calabrese's access and insight into unsolved murders, offered up at trial by the expert killer and brother of a Chinatown Crew boss, were more than astounding. And, in a creepy but necessary way, illuminating.

Calabrese, a deadly though perpetually terrified hit man, testified against the bosses about more than 18 gangland murders in the federal Family Secrets case. Now mob bosses including his brother Frank, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo and Jimmy Marcello, and fellow hit man Paul Schiro will spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Later this week an Outfit messenger boy—Anthony Doyle, a former Chicago police officer who worked in the evidence section and who visited Frank Calabrese in prison to discuss the FBI's interest in an old bloody glove—also will be sentenced.

From the witness stand, Doyle gave Chicago one of my favorite words, "chumbolone," the Chinatown Crew's slang for idiot or fool. He deserves a long sentence. Federal mob watchers consider him to be close to the Outfit's current overall reputed street boss, Frank "Toots" Caruso.

Outfit helpers like Doyle, placed in sensitive government posts, in politics, in law enforcement, in the judiciary, in city inspection and business licensing bureaucracies, have long allowed the Outfit to form the base of the iron triangle that runs things.

"Doyle was one of the most interesting aspects of the case," Coen told me this week. "Here you have a police officer as a mole telling the Outfit when evidence in a murder was being sought by the FBI. I don't think the public is aware of the effort that goes into placing people in low-key clerical positions that give them great access, people that can fly under the radar."

Doyle learned the FBI was interested in a glove worn by Nick Calabrese in the murder of John Fecarotta, who himself received an Outfit death sentence for botching the 1986 burial of brothers Tony and Michael Spilotro.

"If Nick doesn't drop that glove, the FBI doesn't have the physical evidence to tell him he'd be going away forever," Coen said. "Without the glove, they wouldn't have Nick."

Nick's testimony involved the planning and surveillance of his victims, and the final end that came to them, either by a remote-controlled car bomb on a suburban highway ramp, or shotguns from a van along a country road near Joliet, or the laying on of hands and feet and ropes in a suburban basement.

The movie "Casino" depicted Outfit brothers Tony and Michael Spilotro beaten to death in an Indiana cornfield. That's how many of us thought they were killed, until Family Secrets revealed that they were actually beaten and strangled in a Bensenville basement.

In the gangster movies, the hit men are usually the roughest characters. But Calabrese wasn't a movie hit man, he was a real one, so frightened that he wet himself during his first killing.

On the witness stand and in the book, he comes off like what he is, a nerd of homicide, a man plagued by a sickening fear that settled on him at the first one and became like a second skin, and he found one way to deal with that fear—meticulous planning.

"He was nothing like a movie hit man," Coen said. "During testimony, he looked like somebody you'd bump into at a store in your neighborhood. But if the bosses pointed him at somebody, they could sleep, knowing the murder would be done."

On my shelf, there are books I consider to be indispensable to truly knowing how Chicago works. There is:

• Clout: Mayor Daley and His City
  by Len O'Connor,
• Captive City : The Startling Truth about Chicago and the Mafia
  by Ovid Demaris
• The Outfit
  by Gus Russo

And now, there is Jeff Coen's Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob.


Thanks to John Kass

After Passage of Controversial Conspiracy Law, Japan Joins @UN Organized Crime Convention

Japan has joined an international convention for tackling transnational organized crime after putting into force a law penalizing the planning of a range of crimes.

Tokyo submitted to the United Nations in New York an instrument of acceptance of the U.N. Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, becoming the 188th signatory. Japan is the only country in the Group of Seven that has yet to ratify the convention, despite having signed it in 2000.

The move on Tuesday came after the controversial conspiracy law took effect earlier in the day. The government insists it will help thwart terrorism while critics say the enhanced police power could lead to the suppression of civil liberties.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has framed the law as an essential tool for tackling terrorism in the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, saying it was necessary to ratify the treaty. But opponents, including legal experts, have warned that the definition of terrorist groups and other organized criminal groups is vague, leaving room for anyone to be punished.

The U.N. convention calls on member countries to legislate a ban on organized crime and money laundering, and to cooperate in probes and on the extradition of suspects.

Raquel Dodge, Top Prosecutor Nominee, Vows to Fight Organized Crime

Brazil's Senate on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to approve President Michel Temer's pick to head the Prosecutor-General's Office after she vowed to make fighting organized crime a top priority.

Senators voted 74-1 to promote deputy prosecutor Raquel Dodge, clearing the way for her to replace current top prosecutor Rodrigo Janot in September. One lawmaker abstained.

Dodge had won approval from a Senate committee earlier on Wednesday.

Prior to the approval, Dodge said Brazil must step up the fight against organized crime, making sure that plea and leniency deals are used as instruments to help bring justice and not benefit leaders of criminal organizations.

She also called on prosecutors to stick to the law when negotiating plea bargain deals, noting that secrecy must be maintained and full immunity should not be given to leaders of criminal groups.

Thanks to Reuters.

A Mob of His Own: Mad Sam DeStefano and the Chicago Mob's "Juice" Rackets

The true story of one of Chicago's most sadistic murderers who killed for power, money and pleasure. Sam "Mad Dog" DeStefano controlled the flow of money on Chicago's streets backed by the Chicago mob, he became a multimillionaire by squeezing the "juice" out of his victims. This book details the life of Mad Sam and describes the sick methods he used to kill. This book also explores Chicago's Italian mob and what was commonly known as the "juice" rackets, loan sharking, and shylocking.

A Mob of His Own: Mad Sam DeStefano and the Chicago Mob's "Juice" Rackets, explains the rackets in full detail as well as the men who made a living at killing and destroying lives.

5 #GangsterDisciples Gang Members Sentenced to A Total of 111+ Years in Federal Prison

The "Gangster Disciples" Chief of Security involved in the violent shooting that occurred at Hillview Apartments was sentenced to 263 months in federal prison. Lawrence J. Laurenzi, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, announced the sentence.

As Chief of Security, Edwin Carvin aka "Ren," was responsible for ensuring the security of fellow gang members and providing protection from law enforcement or rival gangs. The Gangster Disciples are a violent criminal gang which began in the Chicago, Illinois area. In the 1970’s, the leaders of two different Chicago-based gangs, the Black Disciples and the Supreme Gangsters, aligned their respective groups and created the Gangster Disciples.

Once united, the Gangster Disciples began recruiting heavily in Chicago, within Illinois jails and prisons, and throughout the United States. By the mid-1980’s, the group had spread throughout the Midwestern and Eastern United States. The Gangster Disciples are active in approximately 35 states including Tennessee.

According to information presented at sentencing, on June 21, 2014, Florence Anthony, a member of the Gangster Disciples, got into an altercation with a group of individuals at the Hillview Apartments located in Memphis, Tennessee. Anthony reported the confrontation to her Gangster Disciples chain-of-command. Based on Anthony’s report, the Gangster Disciples chain-of-command issued orders to retaliate against those responsible for the attack on Anthony and her children.

At approximately 10:30 p.m., Carvin and four other members of the Gangster Disciples returned to the Hillview Apartments to retaliate against what were identified as rival gang members. Each individual was armed with firearms and proceeded on foot through the apartments shooting four juveniles and one adult male. All five victims survived, but some sustained serious bodily injuries.

The defendants and their respective sentences:

Florence Anthony, aka "Nikki," 135 months;
Edwin Carvin, aka "Ren," 263 months;
Robert Mallory, aka "Rambo," 292 months;
Brandon Milton, aka "Lil Folk," 262 months;
Erik Reese, aka "E," 382 months

Jane Byrne's Chicago

By the end of her first meeting with the late mayor Richard J. Daley, Jane Byrne had been questioned, berated, and told she might, one day, reach the House but probably not the Senate-and she had also reduced him to tears. That would be but the first of many altercations in her pioneering political career.

My Chicago, is the story of Jane Byrne's rise from young campaign worker to the mayor's office, all within the bruising arena of Chicago politics. Part sociopolitical history, part memoir, it begins with a history of the city and her early life, before she enters politics as a paid staff member of JFK's presidential campaign and, soon after, begins service in the Chicago Machine, but not of it.

Her view from the inside allows Byrne to sketch portraits of Daley, for whom she eventually worked, members of the Kennedy family, and Presidents Carter and Reagan. And, of course, it provides a fascinating perspective on the battle to succeed Daley, which ended with her own triumph over the Machine and a controversial term as mayor, which saw her begin development across the city and (famously) move into the Cabrini-Green housing project. The first memoir by a Chicago mayor in two generations, My Chicago is a valuable history as well as an entertaining look at no-holds-barred city politics.

2 Sex Money Murder Gang Members Convicted In Connection With Murder Of Rival Gang Member

Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that a federal jury found COREY BROWN guilty of murder in aid of racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder in aid of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, and firearms charges, and found JOSNEL RODRIGUEZ guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in aid of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy.  

Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said:  “As a unanimous jury found after trial, Corey Brown ordered the murder of Vincent Davis, a rival gang member, and Josnel Rodriguez participated in that murder. Sex Money Murder has terrorized residents of the Bronx with years of drug dealing, gang violence, and murder. This prosecution ensures that Brown and Rodriguez will no longer be able to do so. We will continue to be relentless in working to make our communities safer by investigating and prosecuting gang violence.”  

According to the allegations in the Indictment and the evidence presented in court during the trial:

Between 2011 and 2016, BROWN and RODRIGUEZ were members of Sex Money Murder, a gang that operates mainly in and around several housing developments in the Bronx, New York. Sex Money Murder (“SMM”) members enriched themselves by selling drugs, such as crack cocaine, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, and engaged in acts of violence, including murder.  BROWN, who was a leader of Sex Money Murder, ordered the murder of fellow gang member Vincent Davis.  On or about July 15, 2012, JOSNEL RODRIGUEZ and another SMM member participated in the murder of Vincent Davis, in the vicinity of 566 Pugsley Avenue, Bronx, New York, in order to maintain, and increase, their standing within SMM.