Danny Roman, AKA Popeye, a Leader of the Mexican Mafia is Whacked in Prison by Bad Hombres

Danny Roman, a Mexican Mafia member who controlled swaths of South Los Angeles from various prison cells throughout California, was stabbed to death Wednesday at a substance abuse treatment facility in Corcoran, the state prison system said Thursday.

Danny Roman, AKA Popeye" a Leader of the Mexican Mafia is Whacked in Prison

Around 11 a.m., two inmates — Raul Alvarado and Edward Cisneros — began stabbing Roman in the body and face, according to a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Roman, 64, was taken to the prison’s medical facility and pronounced dead.

Alvarado, 47, is a Mexican Mafia member from Lennox known as “Spy,” according to a source who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity. The source said Alvarado and Cisneros attacked Roman on the facility’s yard.

Alvarado is serving a life sentence for murder and has been in state custody since 1994, according to the corrections department. Cisneros, 31, is also serving a life sentence for murder and has been incarcerated since 2013. The two men have been placed in segregated housing while the corrections department and the Kings County district attorney investigate Roman’s killing.

Roman had been a state prisoner since 1985, when he began serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder, the department said.

Roman, known as “Popeye,” was the leader of Harpys, a Latino street gang in South Central Los Angeles. On May 16, 1988, three years after entering the state prison system, Roman was inducted into the Mexican Mafia, a Los Angeles police detective wrote in an affidavit seeking court permission to intercept Roman’s daughter’s phone calls.

The Mexican Mafia is a criminal syndicate of about 140 members, most of them incarcerated, which controls virtually every Latino street gang in Southern California.

As a member of the syndicate, authorities said in court documents, Roman was authorized to collect narcotics and extortion proceeds from not just his own gang but a panoply of others in South Los Angeles: 38th Street, 36th Street, Primera Flats, Playboys and East Side Trece, among others.

By 2012, Roman controlled a territory in South Los Angeles bordered by Alameda Street to the east, Western Avenue to the west, Washington Boulevard to the north and Imperial Highway to the south, according to a federal indictment charging 18 Harpys members and associates, including Roman’s daughter, Vianna, with racketeering, drug trafficking and various violent crimes.

Prosecutors painted Vianna Roman as her father’s surrogate, visiting him at a maximum-security wing in Pelican Bay State Prison and relaying orders to underlings in Los Angeles to extort, assault and kill. She pleaded guilty in 2014 to racketeering, drug trafficking and firearms offenses and is serving a 15-year sentence at a federal prison in Victorville.

Inside her market on Compton Avenue, Villamar Tortilleria y Carniceria, Vianna Roman met with her father’s lieutenants, discussed gangland politics and collected extortion payments, or “taxes,” LAPD Det. Richard Jaramillo wrote in an affidavit seeking a judge’s approval to tap her phone.

Gang members called it “the meat shop.” On the 25th of every month, Danny Roman’s emissaries collected $5,000 to $6,000 from 15 gangs in South Los Angeles and turned it over at the meat shop, Jaramillo wrote, citing intelligence from turncoats within Roman’s organization. Several informants told law enforcement that people had been “tortured, assaulted and murdered” inside the meat shop, the affidavit said.

A particularly rich prize for the Romans, Jaramillo wrote, was the Alameda Swap Meet, at the intersection of Alameda Street and Vernon Avenue in South Los Angeles. Extorting vendors at the flea market “generates an extreme amount of revenue for the Mexican Mafia,” Jaramillo wrote.

By 2012, the indictment charging his daughter said, Danny Roman had gained the exclusive right to shake down the swap meet. An underling drew up a list of resistant vendors, identifying the outstanding extortion payments as “union dues,” the indictment said.

Those who didn’t pay or contacted the police were evicted from the market or assaulted, according to the indictment. One Harpys member vowed to kill any vendor who cooperated with law enforcement, it said.

Danny Roman’s underlings, who couldn’t send money to his prison account without arousing suspicion, used fake names and enlisted girlfriends and wives to kick up his cut, Jaramillo wrote.

Before his daughter’s indictment, prison officials seized $24,000 from Danny Roman’s inmate trust account, suspecting it came from extortion and drug trafficking, the affidavit said. Prisoners can use money from their accounts to buy items at the commissary, such as snacks and hygiene products, that range in price from 25 cents to a few dollars.

Thanks to Matthew Ormseth.

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The #COVID19 Pandemic is Making Meth Twice as Expensive, Mexican Cartels Stockpile Drugs and Cash, Crime Expected to Increase

The COVID-19 pandemic is making meth more expensive in much of the U.S.

Travel restrictions at U.S.-Mexico border crossings and abroad have made it harder for cartels to move drugs and drug profits without detection, according to agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

"There’s been stockpiling of drugs and money on both sides of the Southwest border, and money laundering activity has decreased,” said J. Todd Scott, special agent in charge of the DEA's Louisville Field Division. “People, in general, aren’t moving; stuff isn’t moving," he said. "Cartels function best when they can kind of move undercover, move with the legitimate commerce.”

Travel restrictions to and from China have also slowed the importation of precursor chemicals, which cartels use to make meth and fentanyl. Cartels, in turn, have slowed the amount of meth sent to America.

To lessen the financial blow, cartels have inflated the price of drugs, especially meth, according to drug agents across the country. “About half of our field divisions are reporting price increases at the retail level of meth and increases for fentanyl" across the country, said Scott, who directs agents and intelligence analysts in Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. “There’s less of it out there, they’re gonna charge more."

In Los Angeles, a major hub for Mexican cartels, meth prices have doubled. At the end of last year, a trafficker could buy a pound at wholesale from a cartel associate for $900. But then prices began to rise, climbing to $1,800 to $2,000 per pound, said Bill Bodner, special agent in charge of the DEA's Los Angeles Field Division.

The street-level price of fentanyl and crystal methamphetamine, called "ice," have  increased in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, said Vic Brown, executive director of Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task forces. State lockdowns and the recommended reduction of travel have slowed drug trafficking along interstate corridors as well, he said. “With methamphetamine, we’re seeing prices have gone up across the state of New Mexico,” said Will Glaspy, head of High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task forces in the Southwest Border New Mexico Region.

In the DEA New England Field Division —which also includes Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island and New Hampshire — investigators noticed slight price increases for fentanyl and cocaine at the end of May, but no increase for meth in their region, said division spokesman Timothy Desmond. The virus hasn't hampered drug sales, he said.

The coronavirus also has impacted Mexican cartels' global business.

The cartels have struggled to get drugs in and money out of Australia, said Kevin Merkel, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Australia attaché. This is now the most sought-after illicit drug market with users willing to pay a much higher price for top-quality Mexican meth than American buyers. "As businesses are having to adjust, every arm of cartels are having to adjust," Merkel said.

Meth prices started to climb in Australia in May and have doubled in some areas, the drug agent said. A kilo of meth used to cost between $90,000 to $130,000 but is now garnering up to $200,000, he said. Cocaine, harder to get during the pandemic, followed a similar spike. With dealers paying more, they're passing that additional cost to users.

In East and Southeast Asia, the supply of meth and other synthetic opioids has swelled, causing prices to fall, according to a May report of the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime. "While the world has shifted its attention to the COVID-19 pandemic, all indications are that production and trafficking of synthetic drugs and chemicals continue at record levels in the region," Jeremy Douglas, UNODC Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said mid-May.

As people who are addicted scramble to pay more for their fix, agents predict an increase in car, garage and home burglaries as well as thefts. "I would be very surprised if over the next three to four months, we didn’t see property crimes go up," said Bodner, head of LA drug agents. "When prices go up, addicts have to pay, and they have to get the money from somewhere."

The money paid for drugs is stockpiling in the U.S. and Australia, as cartels are leery of getting caught during a time of reduced travel.

During a 10-week period beginning in March, drug agents in the Los Angeles area seized $10 million in drug money, Bodner said. That's more than double drug profit seizures during the same time period last year. He explained that traffickers who used to limit money stored in stash houses to $100,000 to $200,000 are now keeping $1 million or more.

After law enforcement stumbled onto several large stockpiles of drug proceeds, cartels made quick changes. “They’re having to resort to the old-fashioned way of putting money back in the trunk of a car and driving it south," Bodner said.

As cartel members and associates have made adjustments during the pandemic, so have investigators. “Routine hand-to-hand drug deals or buys you might have done a few weeks ago are a little tougher to pull off now," Scott, the DEA agent in Louisville, said. "But the bigger investigations, the wire intercepts, the long-term complex conspiracy cases are still going on. We’ve got enough gear to go out and do the arrests we need to do.”

Scott moved from Texas to Kentucky in May during the pandemic to lead the DEA's Louisville Field Division. He had to use video conferencing to meet his new agents, who he said continue to "vigorously" pursue cases. "It hasn’t been easy, and we’ve had to get a bit creative in how we safely approach our operations, but we haven’t let the pandemic stop our efforts to support DEA’s mission and keep our communities safe," he said.

Merkel, over DEA operations in the Far East, oversees one of the divisions most impacted by the virus. Several of his agents and their families were evacuated from China, Indonesia and parts of Manila. Those agents, temporarily relocated to Washington, D.C., have remained in contact with their counterparts in their host countries to coordinate investigations as well as search warrants and arrests. "They’re on the other side of the world still getting their job done,” Merkle said. "It's impressive."

Across the U.S., federal agents are wearing face masks, gloves and eye protection to search suspects' homes and make arrests.

Risks are especially high in New York, a virus hot spot. The virus has contributed to more than 40 deaths of members of the New York Police Department. Still, police and DEA agents teamed to shut down a drug ring in the Bronx in May with more than a million dollars in heroin and fentanyl. "Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we arrested six drug traffickers who aptly branded their product ‘coronavirus’," DEA Special Agent in Charge Ray Donovan, over the New York Division, said in a tweet.

However, some police departments remain concerned about safety and want to hold off on interviews and searches and instead focus on surveillance. “Some of those departments don’t want their guys going out,” said Glaspy, who oversees the task forces at the border that team federal agents with local and state police.

In Mexico, cartels are finding ways to capitalize on the virus. That includes fighting over drug sales and coveted routes as police and military are having to turn their focus from traffickers to civil unrest as a result of the coronavirus, which has killed more than 13,000 people in Mexico so far. "That obviously distracts law enforcement from controlling many highways and many drug distribution points, and that could promote the trafficking or domestic sale of drugs,” said Eduardo Guerrero Gutiérrez, a public safety consultant and political analyst based in Mexico City.

The cartel turf wars have contributed to a spike in homicides, which topped 11,535 by the end of April, according to the report from country's security ministry. At that pace, the country is expected to suffer the deadliest years since record keeping began in 1997.

All the while, during the pandemic, cartels are delivering food and essential household items to impoverished residents in Mexico to garner local support and mark their turf.

Cartel members are boasting about their supposed good deeds on social media, posting videos and photos of boxes of supplies branded with their cartel name, such as CJNG, for the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generción or its leader "El Mencho." But, the cartels are stealing the food they hand out from markets in Mexico in an attempt to bolster their image and profit off the pandemic, Merkel said. "It’s disgusting."

The food handouts are a common propaganda campaign for cartels, said Javier Oliva, political and social sciences professor and researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "The truth is that they just hand out 30 or 40 boxes," not enough to lessen the poverty, Oliva said. "They only want to show the message, 'Here we are,'" especially to rival cartels.

In contrast, the cartel also frequently uses social media to spread fear by posting photos and videos of kidnappings, torture and killings of rivals, which was detailed in a November Courier Journal special report on the cartel and El Mencho

Drug agents expect cartels to resume traditional money laundering and drug smuggling methods once flights and traffic at the border increase. They don't know if cartels have found new ways to get drugs from Mexico into the U.S. amid travel restrictions that they could continue to use. “It’s far too soon to know exactly how COVID-19 is affecting the cartels," Scott said during an interview in Louisville. "We just don’t have enough data."

In LA, Bodner agreed, but added: “The drug business is a pretty efficient market. "They're always looking for new opportunities."

Merkel said agents will investigate how cartels adjusted during the pandemic to find new ways to attack them. “We’ve seen what can happen when cartels are disrupted on a global scale," he said. "We’re going to attempt to exploit that as much as we can.”

Thanks to Beth Warren and Karol Suarez.

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Official Investigation Launched by @TheJusticeDept into Apparent Orchestration of Violent Riots

Amid the anti-racism demonstrations that have spread across the entirety of the US, many cities have erupted with violent riots complete with crime and looting. However, some law enforcement officials have been labeling the riots as “organized”, stating that there is an apparent orchestration regarding the violence that goes beyond the peaceful protests.

Law enforcement has been coming across large piles of bricks and rocks at pre-planned protest locations, while some riots are being directed by scouts to areas that lack police presence. In addition, apparently some of the individuals instigating the violence are not recognized by locals, suggesting that a more wide-scale organization of crime and looting is hiding amongst the anti-racism uprising.

As a result of these strange findings, the Department of Justice has decided to launch an investigation in order to determine if in fact there are coordinated criminal actors hidden between the otherwise peaceful protestors. Some construction sites in big cities such as New York have reported missing bricks, suggesting that they may have been stolen and then later placed at protest rallies for the lurking rioters to use against law enforcement and store fronts. Some NYPD members have had water bottles filled with cement thrown at them, thus further suggesting there may be some pre-planned orchestration behind the violence.

An eye-witness report from Chelsea states that a large group of looters is working together to swiftly break into stores and steal the contents. The looters were driven to the destination in groups and came prepared with suitcases and power tools. Once they had finished robbing the store, several cars would come by to pick them up and they’d be off to the next location.

However, the Department of Justice has a lot of investigative work ahead of them if they want to determine who is behind the apparent organized crime. According to a report by Fox News, DoJ officials are hoping to analyze social media communications to figure out who the individuals are that are planning the destinations of looters and rioters. As per Donald Trump’s reasoning, the DoJ may want to begin its investigation with Antifa, because according to a Rasmussen Reports survey, 49% of US voters are in favour of declaring Antifa a terror organization.

Thanks to Hermina Paull.

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Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio Reach Deal on "Killers of the Flower Moon" with Paramount and Apple - The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

After months of ironing out budget concerns over Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” adaptation, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Paramount has enlisted Apple to get the film over the hump.

Sources tell Variety that Paramount will still distribute the murder mystery drama, with Apple coming on to finance the pic and also serve as the film’s creative studio. Deals still have not closed, but sources add that they’re very likely to in the coming days.

Imperative Entertainment, whose partners Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas acquired the book in 2016, will produce the film. Imperative first bought the book and would later bring on Scorsese and DiCaprio to reteam on the project before bringing it to Paramount.

Based on David Grann’s non-fiction book, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is set in 1920s Oklahoma, where the newly created Bureau of Investigation began investigating a string of murders of wealthy Osage Indians who had been granted revenue rights to oil discovered under their lands. The book carries the subtitle “The Osage Murders and the Birth of the F.B.I.”

For months, the studio and producers had been back and forth on the film’s budget, which those close to the project said ranged between $180 million and $200 million, leading to rumblings about whether the movie would stay at Paramount, move to another studio or go to a streamer like Netflix, which just produced Scorsese’s “The Irishman.”

While there was a time when a move to a streamer was in play, sources close to the director say that, while he was willing for “The Irishman” to appear on a streaming platform, he always envisioned that “Killers of the Flower Moon” would be a theatrical release, with his reps pushing that it stay that way.

Though deals are expected to close for all parties, a production start date is still up in the air, especially when it comes to DiCaprio’s schedule. While the studio and producers were figuring out what would happen with “Killers of the Flower Moon,” sources say the Oscar winner was looking at a number of projects to do before it, including Adam McKay’s next film for Netflix. That movie also stars Jennifer Lawrence, and could possibly go into production before “Killers of the Flower Moon” if DiCaprio were to sign on.

This marks another major move into the film world for Apple after it acquired the rights to the Tom Hanks pic “Greyhound” from Sony for $70 million. It previously co-produced “On the Rocks” with A24, which stars Bill Murray with Sofia Coppola directing.

It marks the sixth collaboration between DiCaprio and Scorsese, who last teamed on 2013’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Thanks to Justin Kroll.

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Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the @FBI

From New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history
     
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances.

In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the “Phantom Terror,” roamed—many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled the case. In desperation, the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only American Indian agents in the bureau. The agents infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

In Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, the book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward American Indians that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating.

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