Prison Gang Pockets Deep

[Gate Keeper]

They (EME) have been doing this for many, many years, and they finally got caught. Even though these guys are in SHU, the laws we've got have enabled them to legally do this, and continue their illegal activities. Maybe things will change. Unfortunately for the rest of the prison population, the changes will more than likely affect every prisoner in the system instead of those responsible for this illegal behavior. :shake:

Ya see folks, we just don't make up the rules to mess with your loved ones. The system has been tweeked to react to inmate behaviors. The inmates make up the program...We don't. For every screwed up rule you can think of, it has been a direct result of inmate behavior.

Prison Gang Pockets' Deep

Department of Corrections officials have frozen the inmate trust accounts of 14 Mexican Mafia members and are investigating whether the prison gang is laundering drug money through the tightest lockup in the state.
In a Sept. 1 audit, corrections investigators discovered that two Mexican Mafia members in Pelican Bay State Prison's Security Housing Unit (SHU) each had more than $20,000 in their accounts.

Two others had more than $10,000 and seven other members of the "Eme," the Mexican Mafia nickname taken from the Spanish pronunciation of the letter "M," had accounts ranging from $1,700 to $5,200, prison officials said.


Corrections investigators said the prison gang members obtained the funds through a system their informants have described as "trickle-up economics," in which street gang drug dealers who work for the Mexican Mafia pay financial tribute - like a tax - to the prison mobsters.

"The evidence indicates that the money is definitely coming from a tainted source," said Pelican Bay spokesman Lt. Steve Perez.

FBI investigators visited the prison in Crescent City last week to discuss potential money laundering - a federal crime - through the bulging trust accounts, according to Perez.

Inmate trust accounts are set up by the Department of Corrections for all 164,000 prisoners in the state. Friends and relatives of the inmates deposit funds that the prisoners use to buy canteen food or toiletries. The vast majority of inmate trust accounts in the state are no larger than a couple hundred dollars, prison officials said, but there is no legal limit on how much cash an inmate can have on the books.

Investigators said audits of the 14 accounts at the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit - where the state's 1,148 toughest inmates spend 221/ 2 hours a day in their cells and are transported in chains by two-officer escorts - represent "snapshots" and that the amount of money flowing through prison accounts is probably much more.

"We had one member tell us that he made $60,000 a year sitting in his cell and that he paid for his kid's college education with it," said Robert Marquez, a gang investigator at Pelican Bay.

Corrections investigators said Mexican Mafia inmates send the cash back out to friends and relatives in amounts ranging from a few hundred to several thousand dollars.

"Then it has legitimacy," Marquez said.

The trust fund probes are the latest evidence of the growing power, influence and wealth of the Mexican Mafia, the oldest, largest and most feared prison gang in California. They also provide evidence of the Eme's increasing reach outside penitentiary walls.

Some experts say the Mexican Mafia has become the leading organized crime organization in California, with tentacles touching many communities, including Sacramento.

"Biker groups and street gangs pale in comparison to the Mexican Mafia, both in terms of level of organization, amount of money and their directed and controlled violence," said Scott Decker, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and one of the country's leading gang experts.

Most alarming, Decker and other experts said, has been the Eme's ability over the past decade to tax Latino street gangs in Southern California.

Fearful of bucking the Mafia on the streets and then having to face its members in prison, street gang members have done the Eme's bidding in the drug, extortion and protection rackets in neighborhoods throughout the state, prison officials say. They pay a percentage of their profits in the form of "rent" or "taxes" to the Eme members in prison.

The result has been a multimillion-dollar criminal enterprise that is enriching prison gang members 800 miles away in the Pelican Bay SHU, experts say.

"That's the real danger," Decker said, of the Eme's success in organizing street gangs. "It had been a relatively disorganized culture. But if they get a strong organizational and institutional structure, they'll start to look like organized crime, and their activities will be of even a greater concern."

A San Francisco lawyer who has represented Mexican Mafia members in lawsuits challenging conditions in Pelican Bay said prison authorities are overstating the Eme's threat.

"I think the department is hypersensitive and somewhat paranoid when it comes to any innocuous communication or transfer of money between inmates," attorney Charles Carbone said.

Besides, Carbone said, the gang's leadership has undergone what he called a schism in recent years and "is not the threat it once was."

Law enforcement officials vehemently disagree. They say the organizational structure outlined by Decker, the criminology professor, has created increasingly sophisticated and lucrative operations in neighborhoods throughout Southern California.

In short, they say, a cash pipeline is running smoothly from the barrios of Los Angeles to the trust accounts of Pelican Bay.

"Rent payments start on the street corner and are paid pretty much every week," said Bruce Riordan, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles who in 2002 successfully prosecuted a Mexican Mafia member, his wife and several street gang members in a case that demonstrated the vertical nature of the business.

"If the gang is running well, a percentage is taken by the street gang members and a percentage is forwarded to the Mexican Mafia brothers, and/or their associates or family members," Riordan said. "Then it's laundered - not in the Swiss-bank sense of the word, but it passes from hand to hand, and then it is put on the prisoner's books. It could be by an uncle, a wife, a daughter who may have no association with the gang and may not know the money's dirty."

In Riordan's 2002 case, prosecutors believe just one faction - or "clique" - of the massive 18th Street gang in Los Angeles, the Columbia Li'l Cycos, was netting $250,000 a month for eight years, out of a tiny neighborhood in the MacArthur Park area. FBI agents found $400,000 in the possession of the Mexican Mafia member's wife when they arrested her.

Prosecutors said the convicted Eme member, Francisco Ruiz "Puppet" Martinez, now 41, was being paid $40,000 a month throughout most of the 1990s, including the nearly three years he spent in the Pelican Bay SHU.

Riordan and other law enforcement officials and gang experts said operations like the one in MacArthur Park are being replicated by dozens, possibly hundreds, of Latino street gangs in Southern California under the auspices of the Mexican Mafia.

Prison investigators said they also have received information that the Mexican Mafia has carved out the Sacramento area as new turf and granted it to one of its members.

Under the gang's system, the unidentified member will be responsible for taxing Sacramento's growing number of "Sureño" (Southerner) street gangs.

Although Sacramento law enforcement officials have noticed an upsurge in "Sureño" gang activity, they said they were not aware of the Mexican Mafia wielding any influence here.

"As far as the Mexican Mafia claiming Sacramento, it's not something we have heard," said Detective Elaine Stoops, a gang investigator with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department.

In the past nine years, three federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization prosecutions have resulted in convictions against more than 20 Mexican Mafia members and their associates in Los Angeles.

Still, prison investigators and law enforcement officials believe that an estimated 100 to 150 of the hardest-core "Eme" members, both on the street and inside the state and federal prison systems, are controlling associates inside and out.

In turn, the associates direct "crew chiefs" who call the shots for an estimated 30,000 "Southern Hispanic" inmates in the Department of Corrections and an estimated 100,000 more Sureños on the streets, bringing in eye-popping amounts of cash.

"We had a street gang situation, with Mafia associates, where they were selling $1 million in drugs a week," said Al Valdez, the supervisor of the Orange County District Attorney's Office gang unit.

A former Mexican Mafia "soldier," who authorities said controlled drug trafficking and protection operations for the gang on one California prison yard, said in an interview that he collected and redistributed anywhere from $500 to $2,000 a week during his years of work for the Eme.

"You just make sure your yard is in line, that the money's coming in and going out to the right places," said the inmate, speaking on condition of anonymity.

At Pelican Bay, prison investigators said money orders continue to flow into the 14 frozen accounts, at rates of up to $500 a week. But with authorities blocking the inmates from redirecting the funds, investigators said the Eme members are dashing off coded letters to their correspondents telling them to send the money somewhere else - to other inmates or back to the streets.

[California Sunshine]

Thanks for posting this I read it in the paper this morning and was going to post it but ya beat me to it!

[~StArFiSh~]

i didnt see this and posted it,,,lol

[~StArFiSh~]

I have a question Gate Keeper- My man is not in this gang but he is in pelican bay shu- am i allowed to mail him a copy of this or will they not let him have it?

[haswtch]

Ah, capitalism...

[Rebelcowby]

Man, this is messed up. And I thought I was making good money in construction.

[Ebony's spice]

They're probably making more than the prison guards, which would not set well w/them (the guards). Ok, so they have been creative enough to figure out how to still take care of their families even though they're behind bars. Hmmm.....wonder if any of them needs a penpal??

[KMFDM75]

uhhh....so nobody ever noticed these LARGE sums of money in their accounts?? HMMM.......

Nancy

[toi_ama]

Why doesn't DOC just put a limit on how much money a person can have in their trust account? Wouldn't that solve the problem? I absolutely find it amazing that the powers that be wouldn't have done something a long time ago-------how could they see 5 digit figures in an inmate trust account and not go "wait a minute"? Surely SOMEONE was noticing this. Why did it take till now to follow up on it?

[rosiensmokee]

that's crazy stuff!! good article thanks for posting..

[SGT Anonymous]

A lot of inmates have thousands of dollars on their books. Should we just start investigating all of them?

[Psycho1]

We as Correctional Staff have noticed this for years, and when we brought it up to the management, we were told that there was nothing that could be done. As fas as finding away to support their families, I guess that's all good if you think that the money for drugs and murder is okay. Inmates will continue to beat the system, that's what they are good at.

[toi_ama]

Yes, I do think they should all be investigated, as a matter of fact. If they've got thousands on their books, I think something must be fishy, don't you? If they're from a wealthy family and they've got it legitimately, that's one thing. But my guess is that that's not the case for most of them. It would be simple to just limit the amount of money an inmate could have at one time, wouldn't it?

[SGT Anonymous]

Well after this they just may limit it. As far as the investigations, the biggest problem I see is where the money is going to come from to pay the investigators.

[~StArFiSh~]

You dont need investigators, just put a cap on amount of money that can be on books. People on welfare cant have a savings account with thousands of dollars in it... There is NO reason for an inmate to have thousands, even a hundred dollars in his account at a time- whats he gonna buy- stamps for the whole prison...lol.