LOS ANGELES (CNS) – Forty-two members of what prosecutors call a San Fernando Valley-based white supremacist gang have been arrested in connection with a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday, Oct. 2, alleging a years-long criminal operation that included drug trafficking, weapons violations and COVID-19 and loan fraud.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, 29 people named in the indictment were arrested Wednesday in a series of raids involving the Los Angeles Police Department and other agencies. Thirteen other defendants were already in custody, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the gang has been allied with the Aryan Brotherhood and Mexican Mafia, and its members use “Nazi tattoos, graffiti and iconography to indicate their violent white supremacy extremist ideology.”
A total of 68 defendants are named in the indictment, which alleges offenses including conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, distribution of controlled substances, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, aggravated identity theft, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime and unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition by a felon.
The gang’s “violent white-supremacist ideology and wide-ranging criminal activity pose a grave menace to our community,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement announcing the indictment. “By allegedly engaging in everything from drug-trafficking to firearms offenses to identity theft to COVID fraud, and through their alliance with a neo-Nazi prison gang, the ([gang is] a destructive force. In prosecuting the members of the … criminal organization, our office is carrying out its mission to protect the public from the most dangerous threats.”
During the investigation, law enforcement seized “large quantities of illegal firearms, and dozens of pounds of fentanyl, methamphetamine and heroin,” prosecutors said.