Maple Street Queens

Maple Queens Gang

Operation Greedy Grove

Oroginally published
(09/02/2010) – Dallas – Seven alleged members of violent local street gangs, who allegedly ran a drug distribution conspiracy in the Highland Hills and Pleasant Grove areas in Dallas, were arrested this morning on charges outlined in one of two federal indictments returned last month and unsealed late yesterday and today, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas.

Five additional defendants were arrested and charged at the state level. Those arrested on federal charges will begin making their initial appearances before U.S. Magistrate Judge Renée Harris Toliver in Dallas this afternoon at 2:00 p.m.

This Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) investigation,

"Operation Greedy Grove," targeted narcotics trafficking by violent, armed CRIP gang members in Highland Hills and Pleasant Grove. Multiple search warrants were executed simultaneously this morning and narcotics, U.S. currency, vehicles and firearms were seized. U.S. Attorney Jacks said,

..."This joint OCDETF investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Dallas and Fort Worth Police Departments led to today’s take–down and exemplifies the value of combining the strengths, resources, and expertise of federal, state and local agencies to fight these drug trafficking networks. I applaud the hard work, innovation and teamwork these agencies exhibited to bring down this drug trafficking operation; the residents of Pleasant Grove and Highland Hills should sleep better tonight."

"The arrests made today send a clear message that we have ‘zero tolerance’ for drug traffickers and the accompanying violence they wreak on our neighborhoods," .....said DEA Special Agent in Charge James L. Capra.

"This Operation is an example of the outstanding level of success we have when local and federal law enforcement agencies work together to make our communities safer."

ATF Special Agent in Charge Robert Champion stated that, "this investigation is evidence of ATF’s commitment to working with our law enforcement partners to combat the illegal narcotic activities of gangs in our community and to negate the firearm violence that goes hand in hand with such activities."

One indictment charges the following 12 individuals, members of the Highland Hills Posse street gang, with conspiracy to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base (crack cocaine), 500 grams or more of cocaine, and up to 50 kilograms of marijuana and at least one substantive count of distribution of a Schedule II controlled substance:

Adrian Levells, aka "Rat," 37
Gary Montgomery, aka "G–Bone," 39
Quincy Pearson, aka "Baby Face," "Face," 33
Jonathon Stevenson, 30
Christopher Hordge, aka "Lil Chris," 27
Rodger Williams, aka "Rod," 32
Lester Henderson, 23
Cedric Robinson, aka "C.C.," 21
Dane Medlock, 27
Johnny Everitt, 31
Antwone Brown, aka "Money," 23
Carlos Porter, 36

In addition, the indictment charges defendants Williams, Henderson, and Hordge with firearms offenses. The indictment also includes a forfeiture notice that would require the defendants, upon conviction, to forfeit eight vehicles, and any cash or property they derived as a result of their offense. Defendants Montgomery, Pearson, Stevenson, Henderson, Robinson, Everitt and Porter were arrested this morning.

The second indictment charges the following four individuals, members of the NFL Boyz street gang, with conspiracy with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of crack cocaine, 500 grams or more of cocaine and a detectable amount of MDMA (ecstacy):

Ronald Alexander, aka "Ron Don,"31
Richard Young, 28
Marquinn Greer, aka "Lil Quinn," 29
Larry Taylor, 29

Defendants Alexander and Taylor are also charged with multiple substantive counts of distribution of a Schedule II controlled substance. The indictment also alleges that the defendants used proceeds from their illicit drug sales to produce material glorifying the lifestyle of NFL Boyz members and violence against law enforcement agents. These four defendants have not yet been arrested.

Both of the indictments allege that the defendants would acquire the drugs and use stash houses known as "traps" to store the drugs and their cash gained from the sales. Some of the defendants acted as "look–outs" or engaged in counter–surveillance when drug transactions were occurring and at other times keep watch on each other and the stash locations to be aware of any police presence.

An indictment is an accusation by a federal grand jury and a defendant is entitled to the presumption of innocence unless proven guilty. However, if convicted, each of the defendants faces a maximum statutory sentence of up to life in prison and millions of dollars in fines.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rick Calvert is prosecuting the case.

The Rest @ The Winkler Post

22 Mexicans Kidnapped enroute to Acapulco Resort

Creo que fue soldados de al Famila Michoacan;

Creo que un Cappo in le famila teni un decision estupido, que si las turistas estan en vacation, su familia tiene dinero. En los dias que viene, la famila michuacan van a orar para el dinero, pero solo van a ganar la policia national y la armada.

- Federico Gochoa



MEXICO CITY — A heavily armed gang has kidnapped 22 Mexican tourists in the beach resort of Acapulco, the prosecutor's office in the southern state of Guerrero said Saturday.

The tourists from Morelia in the neighboring state of Michoacan were "deprived of their liberty" late Thursday when they were overtaken by an armed group, prosecutors said in a statement, adding they did not know the identity of the gunmen or the fate of those abducted.

Local media reported that a woman escaped the kidnapping and said heavily armed gunmen accosted her group group of employees from an auto-mechanic shop when they made a brief stop on their way to their hotel for a weekend stay.

Michoacan is the base for La Familia, a powerful drug cartel whose reach stretches to Guerrero, a major hub for drug trafficking, and where Acapulco has seen bloody cartel-related violence over the past year.

On a single day in March, drug-related violence left 13 people dead in the city, including four civilians who were decapitated and five police.

Guerrero is among several states at the heart of a massive federal deployment of some 50,000 troops that has so far failed to suppress a wave of violence blamed on feuding drug cartels since 2006.

According to official figures, more than 28,000 people have been killed in violence linked to cartels and organized crime since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon took power

La Familia Michoacana & Project Coronado

La Familia Michoacana (English: The Michoacán Family) or La Familia (English: The Family) is a Mexican drug cartel and an organized crime syndicate based in the Mexican state of Michoacán.[1] Formerly allied to the Gulf Cartel—as part of Los Zetas[2][3]—it has split off as its own organization since 2006.[2][4]


The cartel's current leader, Nazario Moreno González, known as El Más Loco (English: The Craziest One),[5] preaches his organization's divine right to eliminate enemies. He carries a "bible" of his own sayings and insists that his army of traffickers and hitmen avoid using the narcotics they sell.[6] Nazario Moreno's partners are José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, Servando Gómez Martínez and Dionicio Loya Plancarte, each of whom has a bounty of $2 million for his capture.[7]


Mexican analysts believe that La Familia formed in the 1980s with the stated purpose of bringing order to Michoacán, emphasizing help and protection for the poor.[8]



In its initial incarnation, La Familia formed as a group of vigilantes, spurred to power to counter interloping kidnappers and drug dealers, who were their stated enemies.[8] Since then, La Familia has capitalized on its reputation, building its myth, power and reach to transition into a criminal gang itself.


La Familia emerged to the foreground in the 1990s as the Gulf Cartel's paramilitary group designed to seize control of the illegal drug trade in Michoacán state from rival drug cartels.



Trained with Los Zetas,[9] in 2006 the group splintered off into an independent drug trafficking operation.



La Familia has a strong rivalry with both Los Zetas and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, but strong ties with the Sinaloa Cartel of Joaquin Guzman and the Tijuana Cartel of the Arellano Felix family, and this makes La Familia Michoacana one of the strongest cartels in Mexico.[10]
[edit] Faith-based cartel
La Familia cartel is sometimes described as quasi-religious since its current leaders, Moreno González and Méndez Vargas, refer to their assassinations and beheadings as "divine justice"[11] and that they may have direct or indirect ties with devotees of the New Jerusalem religious movement, which is noted for its concern for justice issues.[12]

La Familia’s boss and spiritual leader Nazario Moreno González, (a.k.a.: El Más Loco or The Craziest One) has published his own 'bible',[11][13] and a copy seized by Mexican federal agents reveals an ideology that mixes evangelical-style self help with insurgent peasant slogans.

Moreno González seems to base most of his doctrine on the work by a Christian writer John Eldredge. The Mexican justice department stated in a report that Gonzalez Moreno has made Eldredge's book Salvaje de Corazón (Wild at Heart) required reading for La Familia gang members and has paid rural teachers and National Development Education (CONAFE) to circulate Eldredge's writings throughout the Michoacán countryside.[14][15]

An idea central to Eldredge's message is that every man must have "a battle to fight, a beauty to rescue and an adventure to live." Eldredge quotes from Isaiah 63, which describes God wearing blood-stained clothes, spattered as though he had been treading a wine press. Then he writes: "Talk about Braveheart. This is one fierce, wild, and passionate guy. I have never heard Mister Rogers talk like that. Come to think of it, I never heard anyone in church talk like that, either. But this is the God of heaven and Earth."

La Familia cartel emphasize religion and family values during recruitment and has placed banners in areas of operations claiming that it does not tolerate substance abuse or exploitation of women and children.

According to Mexico Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna,

• it recruits members from drug rehabilitation clinics by helping addicts recover and then forcing them into service for the drug cartel or be killed.[16]
• Advancement within the organisation depends as much on regular attendance at prayer meetings as on target practice.[6]
• The cartel gives loans to farmers, businesses, schools and churches,[17] and it advertises its benevolence in local newspapers in order to gain social support.[15]
• On July 16, 2009, a man by the name of Servando Gómez Martínez (La Tuta) identified himself as the 'chief of operations' of the cartel.
• In his TV message, Gómez stated, "La Familia was created to look after the interests of our people and our family.
• We are a necessary evil," and when asked what La Familia really wanted, Gómez replied, "The only thing we want is peace and tranquility." President Felipe Calderón's government refuses to strike a deal with the cartel and rejected their calls for dialogue.[18][19] \

On April 20, 2009, about 400 Federal Police agents raided a christening party for a baby born to a cartel member.[20][21]

Among the 44 detained was Rafael Cedeño Hernández (El Cede), the gang’s second in command and in charge of indoctrinating the new recruits in the cartel's religious values, morals and ethics.

Operations

Even by Mexican standards, La Familia has been known to be unusually violent.[16]

• Its members use murder and torture to quash rivals, while building a social base in the Mexican state of Michoacán.
• It is the fastest-growing cartel in the country’s drug war and is a religious cult-like group that celebrates family values.[6][22]
• In one incident in Uruapan in 2006, the cartel members tossed five decapitated heads onto the dance floor of the Sol y Sombra night club along with a message that read: "The Family doesn’t kill for money. It doesn’t kill women. It doesn’t kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die. Know that this is divine justice."[23]

The cartel has moved from smuggling and selling drugs and turned itself into a much more ambitious criminal organization which acts as a parallel state in much of Michoacán.

• It extorts "taxes" from businesses, pays for community projects, controls petty crime, and settles some local disputes.[24]
• Despite its short history, it has emerged as Mexico’s largest supplier of methamphetamines to the United States, with supply channels running deep into Middle America, and has increasingly become involved in the distribution of cocaine, marijuana, and other narcotics.
• Michael Braun, former DEA chief of operations, states that it operates "superlabs" in Mexico capable of producing up to 100 pounds of meth in eight hours.
• However, according to DEA officials, it claims to oppose the sale of drugs to Mexicans.[16]
• It also sells pirated DVDs, smuggles people to the United States, and runs a debt-collecting service by kidnapping defaulters.
• Because often times they use fake and sometimes original uniforms of several police agencies, most of their kidnap victims are stopped under false pretenses of routine inspections or report of stolen vehicles, and then taken hostage.

La Familia has also bought some local politicians.[25]

• 20 municipal officials have been murdered in Michoacán, including two mayors. Having established its authority, it then names local police chiefs.[26]
• On May 2009, the Mexican Federal Police detained 10 mayors of Michoacán and 20 other local officials suspected of being associated with the cartel.[25]
• On July 11, 2009, a cartel lieutenant—Arnoldo Rueda Medina—was arrested;
• La Familia members attacked the Federal Police station in Morelia to try to gain freedom for Rueda shortly after his arrest.
• During the attacks, two soldiers and three federal policemen were killed.[27]
• When that failed, cartel members attacked Federal Police installations in at least a half-dozen Michoacán cities in retribution.[28]
• Three days later, on July 14, 2009, the cartel tortured and murdered twelve Mexican Federal Police agents and dumped their bodies along the side of a mountain highway along with a written message: "So that you come for another. We will be waiting for you here." [28]

The federal agents were investigating crime in Michoacán state;[29] President Calderón, responded to the violence by dispatching additional 1,000 Federal Police officers to the area. The infusion, which more than tripled the number of Federal Police officers patrolling Michoacán, angered Michoacán Governor Leonel Godoy Rangel, who called it 'an occupation' and said he had not been consulted.

The governor's half-brother Julio César Godoy Toscano, who was just elected July 5, 2009, to the lower house of Congress, was discovered to be a top-ranking member of La Familia Michoacana drug cartel and is accused of being in charge of protection for the cartel.[28][30]

Days later, 10 municipal police officers were arrested in connection with the slayings of the 12 federal agents.[28]

President Calderón stated that the country's drug cartels had grown so powerful that they now posed a threat to the future of Mexican democracy.

His strategy of direct confrontation and law enforcement is not popular with some segments of Mexican society, where battling violent drug gangs has brought out several human rights charges against the Mexican military.[31]

Project Coronado

Kilograms of cocaine seized

Small part of US currency seized

On October 22, 2009, U.S. federal authorities announced the results of a four-year investigation into the operations of La Familia Michoacana in the United States dubbed Project Coronado.

It was the largest U.S. raid ever against Mexican drug cartels operating in the U.S.[32][33] In 19 different states, 303 individuals were taken into custody in a coordinated effort by local, state, and federal law enforcement over a two-day period. Seized during the arresting phase was over 62 kilograms (140 lb) of cocaine, 330 kilograms (730 lb) of methamphetamine, 440 kilograms (970 lb) of marijuana, 144 weapons, 109 vehicles, and two clandestine drug laboratories.

• Since the start of "Project Coronado", the investigation has led to the arrest of more than 1,186 people and the seizure of approximately $33 million.
• Overall, almost 2 metric tons (2.2 short tons) of cocaine, 1,240 kilograms (2,700 lb) of methamphetamine, 13 kilograms (29 lb) of heroin, 7,430 kilograms (16,400 lb) of marijuana, 389 weapons, 269 vehicles, and the two drug labs were seized.[32]

"Multi-agency investigations such as Project Coronado are the key to disrupting the operations of complex criminal organizations like La Familia. Together—with the strong collaboration of our international, federal, state, and local partners—we have dealt a substantial blow to a group that has polluted our neighborhoods with illicit drugs and has terrorized Mexico with unimaginable violence", said FBI Director Mueller.

The investigative efforts in Project Coronado were coordinated by the multi-agency Special Operations Division, comprising agents and analysts from the DEA, FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Marshals Service and ATF, as well as attorneys from the Criminal Division's Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section.

More than 300 federal, state, local and foreign law enforcement agencies contributed investigative and prosecutorial resources to Project Coronado through OCDETF.

The Rest @ Wikipedia