GANGLAND GODFATHER

MS-13, shorthand for "Mara Salvatrucha," is one of the world's most lethal gangs, with a power and reach that exceeds that of some national governments. It has ravaged the tiny Central American country of El Salvador, and its influence extends into neighboring Honduras and elsewhere. But MS-13 isn't a homegrown Salvadoran phenomenon. It's an export from Los Angeles, where many gang members were initiated as adolescents and young adults, before being deported back to El Salvador and taking their violent methods with them. Today, as depicted in the new documentary "Gang Warfare USA," airing at 8 Monday night on the National Geographic Channel, MS-13 members in El Salvador work with their U.S. counterparts to export violence to cities as remote from L.A. as Greensboro, N.C. Marc Shaffer, the film's director, producer and writer, and his crew detail the disturbing story of how a restaurant murder in Greensboro eventually led investigators to L.A. and El ...

Hector Portillo, a member of the international MS-13 street gang, was sentenced to 38 years’ imprisonment by United States District Judge Sterling Johnson at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn. Portillo previously pleaded guilty to racketeering, including predicate acts of murder and attempted murder. After serving the term of incarceration, Portillo is subject to deportation to El Salvador.The sentencing was announced by Benton J. Campbell, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.As detailed in the superseding indictment and other court filings by the government, beginning in 2000, Portillo was a soldier of MS-13, also known as “La Mara Salvatrucha,” and engaged in a series of violent crimes in Flushing, New York, including conspiracy to murder and assault members of rival gangs, such as the Crips, the Bloods, and the Latin Kings. At his previous guilty plea, Portillo admitted that he and other gang members sought to retaliate against members of the Bloods gang for...

Albuquerque Police confirmed that suspect Pablo Ortiz is a member of the national gang, and are probing suspect Marvin Aguilar-Lopez to see if he's connected as well.Up to 10,000 people across the country belong to the MS-13 Gang, according to the FBI. The FBI labels the group as exceedingly violent."We have not had a confirmation yet, but if he hangs out with him, if he associates with him, we can probably assume he has some kind of affiliation with them as well," Albuquerque Police Department Officer Nadine Hamby said.When police arrested Ortiz, they noticed the digits "503" were shaved into the back of his scalp. 503 is the country code for El Salvador.The FBI claims that gang members identify themselves through 503 or gang tattoos on their chest.The gang was formed in Los Angeles by refugees who fled El Salvador, after a brutal Civil War in the early 1980s.Membership is believed to be growing in Southern California and urban areas in the northeastern U.S. A ...

Oscar "Taz" Fuentes, 28, of Huntington Station, and Julio Chavez, 23, of Huntington, killed Maurice Parker, 21, in a random drive-by shooting in front of a Flushing storefront on May 18, 2007, to maintain and increase their position in MS-13, an international gang with roots in El Salvador and a strong presence in Queens and on Long Island."Prosecutors said.On a night when gang members decided to go hunting for a victim on the streets of Queens, Maurice Parker was murdered simply for standing in the wrong place at the wrong time," said U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell. "These gangs have no place in our communities."Fuentes, whom prosecutors described as the New York gang leader in a press release, was wheeled into his arraignment handcuffed to a wheelchair, slumped over and appearing disheveled. Prosecutors said he had resisted coming to court, but Fuentes said he wanted to represent himself and plead guilty."I make my choice, your honor," he told J...

Eight members of the MS-13 gang were arrested Tuesday in Colorado and California, and police are searching for another four people. In addition, seven people were already in custody before Tuesday, and one has been deported."We wanted to get it at the front end and try and stop it before they got the good foothold," said Deputy Denver Police Chief Michael Battista. "I think by taking down these individuals in communities in the Denver metro area, we did accomplish that."It will have an impact on slowing their growth, if not stopping it in Colorado."The gang migrated from Los Angeles in an attempt to expand its drug trafficking activities, said David Gaouette, acting United States Attorney for the District of Colorado.MS-13 members specifically targeted Denver because they believed law enforcement here was "soft," said James Davis, special agent in charge of the FBI in Denver."They thought they had an opportunity here to take hold and expand,...

Ten foreign-born gang members with ties to local violent street gangs were arrested Charlotte, NC, Wednesday following an Immigration and Customs Enforcement led operation, according to reports obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police's Liaison Committee.The operation, dubbed Community Shield, was a multi-agency effort spearheaded by ICE. Among the participating agencies were the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD); the United States Marshals Service and the North Carolina Department of Crime Control and Public Safety's Alcohol Law unit (NC-ALE).The operation targeted foreign-born members and associates of MS-13, Surenos, Brown Pride, SUR-13 and Latin King street gangs. Those arrested were illegally present in the United States and are now in ICE custody; however, four of them, although administratively arrested, were referred to the United States Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina for possible criminal prosecution due to criminal off...

Charged Hector Portillo, a member of the international MS-13 street gang and seven others with multiple crimes, including 29 counts of murder, attempted murder, assault, racketeering, and illegal use of firearms. The charges were announced by Benton J. Campbell, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; Peter J. Smith, special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office of investigations in New York City; Richard A. Brown, Queens Country District Attorney, and Raymond W. Kelly, Commissioner, New York City Police Department. The indictment alleges that on December 24, 2006 three of the defendants, Hector Portillo, Javier Irheta and Luis Bonilla, murdered 15 year-old Pashad Gray in Flushing.Beginning in 1998, the defendants served as members and associates of MS-13, also known as "La Mara Salvatrucha," and engaged in a series of violent crimes in Jamaica and Flushing, New York, including conspiracy to murder and assault members of ...

murder conspiracy investigation and culminate in GTA-wide raids on a suspected local faction of the MS-13, which stands for Mara Salvatrucha-13, one of the world's most vicious gangs. Eventually the case would build to 13,000 pages of evidence against 17 suspected gang members, including surveillance reports, arrest and occurrence reports, synopses of each facet of the case, digital number recorders that detail the calls made between cellphones and the criminal histories of all of those involved – but no transcripts or tapes of intercepted conversations."There are no conversations in which anyone agreed to do anything," said criminal lawyer Jeffry House, who represents Luis Salas Reyes, one of the accused."I've dealt with more than 60 conspiracy cases in my 30-year career and that's commonly done to build a case."That case has now all but fallen apart. Conspiracy to commit murder charges have been stayed for Hector Sanhueza, 32, Manual Pasos, 19, Ronald ...

Alejandro Enrique Ramirez Umana, a/k/a "Wizard" and "Lobo," intentionally killed brothers Ruben Garcia Salinas and Manuel Garcia Salinas on Dec. 8, 2007, in Guilford County, N.C., in aid of an enterprise engaged in racketeering activity. The Department filed a notice of intent today to seek the death penalty against Umana for the killing of these two individuals in aid of racketeering and during and in relation to a crime of violence. Also according to the additional criminal counts, Elvin Pastor Fernandez-Gradis, a/k/a "Tigre" and "Flaco," intentionally caused serious bodily injury that resulted in the death of Ulises Mayo on April 12, 2008, in Mecklenburg County, N.C., in aid of an enterprise engaged in racketeering activity. The first superseding indictment, with an additional fifteen counts, was returned today by a federal grand jury in Charlotte, N.C., and alleges that the 26 defendants conspired to commit violent crimes in aid of racketeeri...

Three men -- described by police as MS-13 gang members -- have been charged with first-degree gang assault in connection with the attack on Marin Morales, which took place around at Antojitos Bar on Main Street, police said.Marin Morales was stabbed around 3:20 a.m. Sunday after he went outside the bar to help a friend who was getting beat up by a group, Det. Sgt. Gregory Quinn of the Homicide Squad said at a news conference.Part of the group then turned on Marin Morales, ripping off his shirt and chasing him into the bar's kitchen, Quinn said."Our victim exited the kitchen area a short time after and collapsed," he said. Marin Morales sustained stab wounds to the torso and was pronounced dead at the scene. The assailants fled the bar and ran north on Main Street to a parking lot at Fulton Avenue, where they victimized a third man, smashing a broken bottle into his temple, police said. The victim, in his early 20s, is hospitalized at Nassau University Medical Center. His ...

``Murdering someone is not a concern to them, it's a cost of doing business almost," Scioli said. ``Just their initiation to get into the gang is pretty aggressive." One of the fastest-growing and most violent gangs in the world is showing up in Arizona. Mike Scioli with the Border Patrol said members of MS-13, well-known for being ruthless, are coming to Arizona because its position on the border makes it a hot spot for drugs and human smuggling. MS-13 comes from El Salvador and has an estimated 100,000 members throughout Latin America and the United States. Many of the gang's founding members had experience or training in guerilla warefare in El Salvador. It's one of the fast-growing gangs in the world. Scioli said the presence of MS-13 gang members is making federal agents along the U.S.-Mexico border nervous. ``It's not uncommon for a single agent to run into a group of 10 to 13 people and make the arrest alone, on his own, with backup maybe a half-hour aw...

Twenty-six alleged members of a street gang said to be among the deadliest in the United States faced arrest after indictments were returned against them. Prosecutors said the indictments were returned by a grand jury in Charlotte, N.C., and accuse 26 alleged members of the Hispanic gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, of crimes ranging from murder to drug activity. Law enforcement officials say MS-13 is based in Charlotte and has up to 50,000 members worldwide, about 10,000 of whom are believed to be active in at least 38 U.S. states and is so big that 2004 the FBI created a task force that focuses specifically on it.An official report on the gang said members smuggle illicit drugs, primarily powder cocaine and marijuana, into the United States and distribute the drugs throughout the country, with some gang members also involved in alien smuggling, assault, drive-by shooting, homicide, identification theft, prostitution operations, robbery and weapons trafficking.The 26 were charged under...

Who are they? Members of Mara Salvatrucha, better known as MS-13, who are mostly Salvadoran nationals or first generation Salvadoran-Americans, but also Hondurans, Guatemalans, Mexicans, and other Central and South American immigrants. And according to the FBI's recent national threat assessment of this growing, mobile street gang, they could be operating in your community...now or in the near future. Based on information from their own investigations, from state and local law enforcement partners, and from community organizations, FBI concluded that while the threat posed by MS-13 to the U.S. as a whole is at the "medium" level, membership in parts of the country is so concentrated that they have labeled the threat level there "high." MS-13 operates in at least 42 states and the District of Columbia and has about 6,000-10,000 members nationwide. Currently, the threat is highest in the western and northeastern parts of the country, which coincides with elevated ...

Youths as young as 12 have been identified as members of the Young Bloods, Hanover Boyz, MS-13, the Almighty Latin King Nation, Laos Pride, Tiny Raskal Gang, Original Crip Gang, Oriental Rascals, Providence Street Boys, Dark Side Rascals, 18th Street Gang and the Asian Outlaw Boyz. The Latin Kings are involved in drug trafficking, but most of the gang members are not in it for the money. They join for a sense of belonging and to protect themselves from other youths. They have little sense of history and often no idea why they fight, except to avenge slights, with rival gangs. Police Maj. Stephen M. Campbell, who oversees the detective division, says that monitoring gang activity is a department priority. “It’s a constant back and forth between warring gangs,” he says. “The potential for a violent outburst that could take multiple lives is always there.” The police, with the help of two FBI agents and a state trooper assigned to the gang unit, have created a database identifying 1,400 g...

David Rivera, 33, a member of the MS-13 gang, has alleged links to several murders and prior arrests on sexual assault and drug charges as well as a conviction for gun possession. He was arrested in an apartment complex in the Rampart section of Los Angeles by ICE agents and detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division. Rivera attempted to escape out the back of the property before agents nabbed him, ICE said. In addition to Rivera, officers also arrested two other suspected gang associates on immigration violations. Rivera had been deported and illegally re-entered the country, ICE alleged. If convicted, Rivera could receive up to 20 years in federal prison. He had been sought by authorities for four years and is expected to make his initial court appearance this afternoon in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles, ICE said. “This arrest is the pay-off for perseverance, great police work and partnership with local law enforcement,” said Jennifer Silliman, ...