Dozens of members of the Mexican Mafia and their subsidiary street gangs in Pomona and other Los Angeles-area communities were arrested in an expansive sweep Wednesday morning that officials said was intended to destroy a lucrative drug enterprise operating in the region’s jails.

In total, federal prosecutors charged 83 people in widespread racketeering conspiracies, alleging they ran drugs and carried out violent assaults and murderson behalf of what officials called “the gang of gangs.”

U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna called the charges and the arrests “a major blow” to one of the region’s largest criminal operations.

“By taking out the gang members who control the jails, and by disrupting their communications network, we undermined the Mexican Mafia’s ability to coordinate street gang activity,” he said.

Federal and local law enforcement gather for Operation Dirty Thirds where they are targeting Mexican Mafia members at the command post in Whittier Narrows on Wednesday May 23, 2018. (Photo by Keith Durflinger for SCNG)

More than 30 people were arrested Wednesday in multi-agency raids on the Mexican Mafia gang throughout Los Angeles County. (Photo by Josh Cain/SCNG)

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Federal and local law enforcement gather for Operation Dirty Thirds where they are targeting Mexican Mafia members at the command post in Whittier Narrows on Wednesday May 23, 2018. (Photo by Keith Durflinger for SCNG)

More than 30 people were arrested Wednedsay in multi-agency raids on the Mexican Mafia gang throughout Los Angeles County. (Photo by Josh Cain/SCNG)

Federal and local law enforcement gather for Operation Dirty Thirds where they are targeting Mexican Mafia members at the command post in Whittier Narrows on Wednesday May 23, 2018. (Photo by Keith Durflinger for SCNG)



More than 30 people were arrested Wednesday in multi-agency raids on the Mexican Mafia gang throughout Los Angeles County. (Photo by Josh Cain/SCNG)

Federal and local law enforcement gather for Operation Dirty Thirds where they are targeting Mexican Mafia members at the command post in Whittier Narrows on Wednesday May 23, 2018. (Photo by Keith Durflinger for SCNG)

More than 30 people were arrested Wednesday in multi-agency raids on the Mexican Mafia gang throughout Los Angeles County. (Photo by Josh Cain/SCNG)

Federal and local law enforcement gather for Operation Dirty Thirds where they are targeting Mexican Mafia members at the command post in Whittier Narrows on Wednesday May 23, 2018. (Photo by Keith Durflinger for SCNG)

Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell speaks during a news conference Wednesday in Los Angeles about multi-agency raids on the Mexican Mafia gang throughout the county. (Photo by Josh Cain/SCNG)



Federal and local law enforcement gather around the suspect board during Operation Dirty Thirds where they are targeting Mexican Mafia members at the command post in Whittier Narrows on Wednesday May 23, 2018. (Photo by Keith Durflinger for SCNG)

Hundreds of local and federal law enforcement officers descended simultaneously on gang members’ homes, businesses and jail cells in the early morning raids — dubbed “Operation Dirty Thirds” after the “taxes” gang members collected on drug sales in jails — that spanned Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.

Prosecutors said the top ranks of the local Mexican Mafia were made up of imprisoned Latino street gang leaders controlling a vast network of members inside and outside local prisons and jails.

The indictments released Wednesday detailed how the criminal organization created a methodical system to communicate within the L.A. County jail system — the nation’s largest — in order to control gang territory and collect “taxes” for drug sales through extortion.

The Mexican Mafia had “total control” of street gangs in Pomona, who participated in a massive drug organization selling to L.A. County prisoners, Hanna said Wednesday afternoon at the federal building in downtown Los Angeles.

“These Mexican Mafia members and associates, working together to control criminal activity within (LA County jails), have become their own entity or enterprise and effectively function as an illegal government,” prosecutors wrote in one of the indictments.

Drugs smuggled into the prison by facilitators of the Mexican Mafia leader were required to be sold first, with the proceeds going to that leader. Other groups that brought in drugs had to give a third of their contraband to leadership.

The fee, known as a “thirds” tax, gave the name “Operation Dirty Thirds” to the investigation that led to the indictments and arrest of 32 people early Wednesday.

At the U.S. Attorney's Office. Map shows locations involved in today's multi-agency raid on Mexican Mafia members. 32 arrested. pic.twitter.com/gMH0GLrSTP — Josh Cain (@joshpcain) May 23, 2018

‘Dirty Thirds’

The entire operation took about two hours, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Officials arrested 32 people, in addition to another 35 who were already in custody in county jails. Those inmates were being transferred to federal penitentiaries to await their next court appearances, officials said.

There remained 16 gang members charged in the indictments who had not been found as of Wednesday and were declared fugitives.

Throughout the morning, FBI agents were seen leading people into a multi-agency command post set up in a parking lot in the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area near the intersection of Santa Anita and Durfee avenues.

FBI spokesman Mike Giffords said the post was placed at that location because it was central to the disparate areas targeted Wednesday. And with dozens of people to book, Giffords said putting as many investigators in one spot would help “speed up” the operation.

Local Control

The six-year investigation leading to Wednesday’s operation started in Pomona, where the hold of the Mexican Mafia over local gangs led to increasing violence.

The city experienced a wave of gang-related killings in 2013. Aided by an FBI-led gang task force focusing on the San Gabriel Valley, local detectives found that many of those deaths could be tracked back to Mexican Mafia drug-smuggling operations in local jails.

Like pulling on a thread that unraveled a tapestry of murder and mayhem plaguing Pomona neighborhoods, each assault or homicide related to the case that detectives investigated revealed more of the Mexican Mafia’s control of the city’s gangs.

“It just kept expanding and expanding,” Pomona Police Chief Michael Olivieri said.

Olivieri identified at least four local gangs participating in the Mexican Mafia’s drug smuggling and assault network: the 12th Street Sharkies, Cherryville, Ghetto Family and Pomona Sur.

He said the arrests Wednesday showed local law enforcement’s dedication to making Pomona a safer city to live.

“This is a proud day for me,” he said.

A handful of the members of those gangs were swept up in Wednesday’s raids; Mrozek identified at least 11 Pomona residents arrested during the operation, nearly a third of the total who weren’t already in jail, while another three from the city remained fugitives.

Others arrested included residents living in an array of Los Angeles-area suburbs — several residents of Whittier were taken into custody, as well as gang members living in El Monte, Ontario, Huntington Park, Palmdale, Rosemead, Norwalk, Pico Rivera, Long Beach, Gardena and Montclair.

Mexican Mafia’s structure

The indictments said the gang enriched itself through drug sales, collecting taxes on drugs and even collecting a share of purchases from the jail commissary. It was able to exert control by threatening and carrying out violence if people didn’t pay up or follow the rules.

The indictment accuses the gang of a surge of crimes between 2012 and 2016.

LASD Sheriff Jim McDonnell says gang members used incarcerations under AB 109 to return to jail to smuggle drugs inside. pic.twitter.com/pCySww4Xd4 — Josh Cain (@joshpcain) May 23, 2018

“Essentially, the Mexican Mafia is a gang of gangs,” said Paul Delacourt, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s field office in Los Angeles.

The indictment said Jose Landa-Rodriguez and two now-deceased members of the gang controlled jail operations during those years.

Landa-Rodriquez, 55, is accused of sanctioning murders, assaults and the kidnapping and planned murder of a relative of a gang member who defied him, prosecutors said.

A second higher-up, Luis Vega, 33, ordered a murder and directed assaults against those who showed disrespect or didn’t obey rules, the indictment said.

In an effort to disrupt the gang’s stronghold, the suspects will be held in federal facilities, and those already in custody in state prisons will be moved, authorities said.

Landa-Rodriguez is not a U.S. citizen, though nearly all of the other defendants charged in the indictment are citizens, Hanna said.

One of the group’s facilitators was attorney Gabriel Zendejas-Chavez, who was able to carry messages to the gang members while operating under the shield of attorney-client privilege, the indictment said. He is accused of enabling a plot to extort $100,000 from the Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang.

Zendejas-Chavez was arrested Wednesday. A woman who answered the phone at his office was unaware of the arrest and didn’t comment.

Associated Press writers Brian Melley and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.