View: Federal indictment

POMONA – Residents in neighborhoods throughout the Inland Empire and San Gabriel Valley were awakened early Thursday by sounds of exploding flash-bang grenades and voices over loudspeakers telling alleged members of the Mexican Mafia to come out with their hands up.

Officials from the FBI along with other federal and local law enforcement agencies simultaneously led several pre-dawn raids and arrested members of the Mexican Mafia prison gang and members of La Familia Michoacana, a Mexican drug cartel.

Seventeen members associated with the gangs were arrested on drug-, firearms- and trafficking-related crimes in the San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire.

Three gang members listed in the indictment were already in custody for unrelated charges, according to the FBI.

The criminal operation resembled the process portrayed in the 1989 James Bond movie “License to Kill,” in which drugs were smuggled after being mixed with ordinary liquids, Assistant U.S. Attorney Shawn Nelson said at a Thursday news conference in front of the Pomona Police Station.

“The drugs were imported in an unfinished or liquid state in the form of gasoline,” FBI special agent Timothy Delaney said Thursday.

“The drugs are brought to a facility and re-crystalized (iced), which prepares them for local distribution.”

The men listed in the indictment were allegedly moving several pounds of crystal methamphetamine on a daily basis, Delaney said. The drug was worth about $9,000 per pound.

“Today, we took 20 very dangerous individuals off the street,” Nelson said. “The man we believe to be the ring leader of this operation is still outstanding and we’re doubling our effort to bring him to justice.”

The alleged kingpin – Jose Juan-Garcia Barron, 33, of Ontario – is considered the most dangerous member of the international drug smuggling operation.

Barron has been known to travel between Mexico and the United States. His current whereabouts is unknown, Nelson said.

Barron spent time between Los Angeles County and Mexico and controlled the importation of methamphetamine from Mexico to the United States where it was sold on the streets of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties by networks made up of local gang members or their associates, who pay taxes to the Mexican Mafia.

Eight other men listed in the indictment are still roaming the streets, Nelson said.

The 16-month long investigation – which officials called “Operation Crystal Light” – stemmed from a kidnapping case in Pomona that led authorities to the ongoing organized-crime and drug-trafficking ring.

A house in the 900 block of Nocta Street in Ontario was used by the cartel and Mexican Mafia members to stash their drugs.

“An auto body shop in Montclair was used as a cover for the drug-smuggling operation,” Nelson said.

Authorities contend the drugs were imported by airplane, boats and in vehicles crossing the border.

“They would use various chemicals, acetone, turpentine, that re-crystalizes it into the white, crystal form, which is what the customers on the street want to buy,” Nelson said.

The quality of the methamphetamine was, in most cases, 99 percent pure.

On Thursday, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials announced in a memorandum they are cooperating with Mexican officials who are cracking down on methamphetamine production and smuggling.

Mexico has experienced a dramatic increase in clandestine methamphetamine lab and precursor chemical seizures – a nearly 1,000 percent uptick between 2010 and 2011, according to the DEA. The increase has led to a rise of methamphetamine seizures at the U.S. border.

In 2011, Southwest border seizures of methamphetamine totaled 16,140 pounds, more than twice the amount seized in 2009.

The State Department has set aside $12 million to support efforts by the Mexican government to enhance the country’s capacity to safely secure clandestine labs, gather evidence and destroy chemical precursors.

Those arrested Thursday, including a Baldwin Park man, range from alleged cartel members to street gang members or associates whose activity fueled violence in the communities in which they operated.

During the execution of the search warrants, investigators found large quantities of methamphetamine, white rock substances, various pills not yet identified, drug paraphernalia and at least nine firearms, according to the FBI.

The agents used confidential informants for much of the intelligence gathered during the investigative process.

The indictment details the roles of each defendant in the methamphetamine distribution conspiracy involving members and associates of the La Familia Michoacana drug trafficking organization and gang members associated with Los Amables and Westside Pomona Malditos gang members.

In June, another suspected high-level member of La Familia Michoacana was discovered living in El Monte and deported.

The San Gabriel Valley Safe Street Gang Task Force served as a leader in the year-and-a-half-long investigation. The group includes the FBI, Pasadena Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as well as the California Department of Corrections.

Mexican authorities allege in a criminal warrant that Anel Violeta Noriega Rios, 27, is also one of the cartel’s main U.S.-based operatives who helps oversee methamphetamine distribution in California and Washington state.

Officers with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and members of a U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force took Rios into custody June 27 at her El Monte home. She was arrested without incident for being in the country illegally.

La Familia, based in the Mexican state of Michoacan, has a reputation for violence, according to ICE. The cartel has tortured and killed Mexican police officers and engaged in shootouts with Mexican soldiers, according to news reports. Recently, the group was reportedly linked to the killings of 13 men and boys whose bodies were dumped outside a gas station in Zitacuaro, Mexico in January.

Federal authorities said the cartel is involved in drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion. Mexican authorities arrested the group’s leader, Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas, last year.

La Familia Michoacana started in the 1980s and was primarily a marijuana production and distribution organization, according to a 2009 fact sheet on the cartel by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The group later became an independent drug trafficking organization and allied itself with another group, Los Zetas. DEA officials said La Familia Michoacana has cut ties with Los Zetas “in an effort to take control of Michoacan from any external influences.”

doug.saunders@inlandnewspapers.com

909-386-3925,@crimeshutterbug