Michael Moreno, a reputed member of the Mexican Mafia, has been jailed for more than nine years on a charge that he helped orchestrate a novel but ultimately thwarted alliance with a Mexican drug cartel that wanted to trade money and drugs for protection in prison and muscle on the streets.
🔴 👉 𝐂𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄
🔴 👉 𝐂𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄
After pleading guilty this year, Moreno, 65, stood before U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder on Wednesday dressed in a white jumpsuit, hands shackled to the waist, his salt and pepper hair cropped short.
The judge asked if he wanted to say anything before he was sentenced.
“No, I’m OK,” he said. “I’m OK.”
Snyder sentenced Moreno to 11 years in prison. Because of the time he has spent in custody and credit he’s entitled to for completing a substance abuse program and not being disciplined while behind bars, Moreno is expected to be released soon, said his lawyer, Robert Bernstein.
Among the conditions of a four-year probation, Snyder forbade Moreno from associating with members of the Mexican Mafia “or others known to be participants in the Mexican Mafia’s criminal activities, with the exception of family members.”
No other family has contributed more members to the Mexican Mafia, the prison-based syndicate that controls Latino gang members in prison and on the streets of Southern California, than the Morenos.
“I got a family, big family,” Moreno’s younger brother, Tommy, testified at a recent trial. “I’ve got nine brothers and six sisters. Out of my nine brothers, five of them are Mexican Mafia members.”
There is Michael, better known as “Mike Boo”; Jesse, nicknamed “Pelon,” serving a life sentence for racketeering and said by his lawyers at 83 to be seriously ill; Eddie, who died of an overdose behind bars; Pete, doing life in Arizona for shooting to death a man outside a Phoenix bar; and Tommy, known as “T-Bug,” who has been in prison since 1983 for bank robbery and attacking another inmate at the Lompoc penitentiary.
The federal case against Michael Moreno began in 2011, when Jose “Fox” Landa-Rodriguez, a Mexican Mafia member then held at a federal prison in Virginia, turned to him for help realizing a dream of a drug-trafficking alliance.
