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Perez-Castaneda has pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. In Lerma’s case, the indictment says, a Pomona woman, Cheryl Perez-Castaneda, collected taxes from Calipatria prison sales and funneled them to Lerma through his inmate trust account and Green Dot prepaid money cards. He will typically send the tax payment to the Mexican Mafia member’s associate outside prison. The seller will owe a tax on the sale to the Mexican Mafia member who controls the prison in which he is housed.
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When an inmate purchases drugs or other contraband inside prison, money is typically exchanged outside prison, between representatives of both the seller and the buyer. And within the walls of Calipatria State Prison in Imperial County and the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, Lerma exacted a “thirds” tax of all narcotics smuggled into and sold within the facilities, the indictment says. The new indictment, however, describes Lerma as a “full” member of the Mexican Mafia who, since at least 2012, has taxed drug dealers in Pomona and its surrounding neighborhoods under fear of assault or death. Prison officials classified Lerma as a member of the Mexican Mafia in 1995, but he has contested this characterization, telling the parole board, “I’ve always denied being a member of any prison gang or being involved in any prison gang.” He has ever since been serving a sentence of 15 years to life for murder. In 1982, Lerma shot to death a man in Sacramento County who had robbed him of heroin and a power tool.
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While serving a five-year term, Lerma acknowledged that “for lack of a better phrase, I learned how to think and be a convict.” He was released in 1979, having heard from other inmates about “selling and dealing drugs, making money - fast, easy money,” he told the board, “and that’s what I decided to do.” “Myself, personally, I’ll tell you I was a big embarrassment to the Marine Corps,” he told the parole board. He joined the Pomona 12th Street gang at 12, dropped out of school after the 11th grade and joined the Marines, but he was kicked out after committing a murder at 18. Lerma, whose attorney had no immediate comment on the new indictment, has twice been convicted of murder, according to parole transcripts reviewed by The Times. Upon being inducted into the organization, members of the Mexican Mafia - nearly all of whom are imprisoned - retain control of their original gangs, taxing their rackets and directing their members to commit extortion, assaults and murders, law enforcement authorities say. The Mexican Mafia comprises about 140 men drawn from the top ranks of Southern California’s Latino street gangs. He moved as a child to Whittier, and by the age of 13, Loza testified, he had been jumped into Canta Ranas, a street gang born in the late 1940s in neighboring Santa Fe Springs.The indictment, which broadens an earlier one filed three years ago, describes a system by which the Mexican Mafia wrings a “tax,” or cut of profits, from drug dealers and other criminals by harnessing the loyalty of Latino gang members on California’s streets and within its prisons. Loza, 41, was born in the Imperial Valley town of Brawley, the son of a machinist and a warehouse employee. It demonstrated how the Mexican Mafia, most of whose membership is incarcerated, holds the region’s Latino street gangs under its sway through fear and mythos, exacting a tax from virtually every dollar they make and using their members as foot soldiers for the syndicate.
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The trial was a window into what is arguably the most powerful criminal organization in Southern California. It was an unprecedented departure, law enforcement officials say, from the Mexican Mafia’s historical refusal to acknowledge in the courtroom such an organization exists, let alone discuss its politics on the witness stand.
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Loza, from Whittier, was convicted of murder, racketeering and other crimes after an unusual trial in August, in which Loza himself testified for two days. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.įor cutting short the life of a fellow Mexican Mafia member in a hail of bullets, a judge ruled Monday that Jose Luis Loza should spend the rest of his own in a federal prison. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.