Federal prosecutors on Wednesday indicted 68 alleged members and associates of the Peckerwoods, claiming the white supremacist gang bought medicine and dedicated fraud within the San Fernando Valley beneath the auspices of imprisoned members of the Aryan Brotherhood.
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1. The letters SFV for the Peckerwoods gang signify “San Fernando Valley” and the acronym of “Searching for Victims,” federal prosecutors allege. (U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace, Central District of California) 2. Federal prosecutors included an image of an alleged Peckerwoods gang member holding firearm in a sweeping indictment introduced Wednesday. (U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace, Central District of California)
Twelve alleged Peckerwood members are charged with racketeering, whereas one other 56 defendants are charged with conspiring to distribute medicine.
The Peckerwoods, who took their identify from a derogatory time period for white inmates within the California jail system, embraced Nazi iconography and traded racist feedback in a personal Fb group, based on an indictment unsealed Wednesday.
Through the top of the protests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020, the indictment says, one member of the Fb group wrote: “I wish all the blacks and all the cops would just kill ALL of each other. Our side of the dayroom only! If thats all that was left in the world, that would be awesome.”
A photograph submitted in proof by prosecutors allegedly exhibits a picture despatched by one Peckerwoods gang member to a different of $20,000 in wads of money made dealing medicine.
(U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace)
However based on the indictment, the Peckerwoods’ major concern was getting cash — by means of promoting methamphetamine, heroin and fentanyl, prosecutors say. They’re additionally accused of extra refined crimes like identification theft and financial institution fraud, and a few Peckerwoods robbed drug sellers and stole merchandise in “smash-and-grab” heists, the indictment says.
Gathering a “tax,” or reduce of the proceeds, prosecutors allege, have been members of the Aryan Brotherhood, the dominant white gang within the California jail system. Two alleged Aryan Brotherhood members have been charged within the indictment: Paul John Pichie, a.ok.a. “Sinister,” and Michael “Suspect” Vitanza, who’re each accused of conspiring to visitors medicine.
Vitanza as soon as shared a jail cell with Danny Troxell, described at a current racketeering trial as a member of the Aryan Brotherhood’s three-man ruling “commission.” A witness on the trial testified that Vitanza was “Danny T’s right-hand man.”
In a name secretly recorded by authorities, Vitanza allegedly advised a feminine affiliate he was the “youngest made member of the Aryan Brotherhood.”
“The Peckerwoods’ violent white-supremacist ideology and wide-ranging criminal activity pose a grave menace to our community,” U.S. Atty. Martín Estrada stated in a press release. “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 Peckerwoods are a destructive force.”
The indictment makes clear that Vitanza and different defendants have been speaking with prisoners utilizing contraband cellphones. The indictment lists dozens of unnamed conspirators who weren’t charged.
The case towards the Peckerwoods follows comparable racketeering indictments introduced towards the Aryan Brotherhood in Sacramento and Fresno. In these circumstances, authorities have accused imprisoned leaders of the group with orchestrating murders each inside and outdoors the California jail system.
Prosecutors this yr satisfied a jury to convict Troxell and two co-defendants of homicide in help of racketeering. However their said aim of transferring the defendants, who have been already serving life sentences in state custody, to extra restrictive federal prisons has stalled following the federal Bureau of Prisons’ refusal to simply accept the California inmates.
One Aryan Brotherhood member who pleaded responsible to homicide in help of racketeering in that case is now making an attempt to withdraw his plea, saying he signed it solely as a result of he’d been assured he’d spend the remainder of his life in a federal — not California — jail.
