An expansive San Diego-area investigation into a gang whose tendrils spread into narcotics, weapons dealing, homicides and extortion led local and federal authorities to arrest dozens of people allegedly affiliated with the Mexican Mafia, the District Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday.
Operation Los Impuestos, or “the taxes” in Spanish, led by the San Diego Police Department, resulted in the arrests last week of 39 people believed to be involved in the powerful prison gang. The department cooperated with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the district attorney’s gang unit.
The suspects are largely street gang members who “took orders from cartel bosses operating in state prison and preyed on business owners by forcing mafia-style taxes,” District Attorney Summer Stephan said Tuesday at a news conference.
As she spoke, Stephan was flanked by San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl and other investigators, as well as tables holding more than a dozen rifles, shotguns and handguns.
“They dealt illegal drugs including pounds of deadly fentanyl, committed widespread violence and trafficked weapons such as ghost guns and AR-15s,” Stephan said.
One of the cases charged as a result of the operation involved the homicide of an 18-year-old National City man, Juan Carlos Porter, in Chicano Park in September.
The suspect, a 15-year-old boy, used “an AR-15 supplied by an older gang member,” Stephan said.
The operation was spun off of a previous, yearlong investigation by San Diego police into an extortion ring in Barrio Logan that resulted in the arrest of six people in September, said Capt. Manny Del Toro.
Business owners were threatened with violence and vandalism if they did not pay money for “protection,” authorities alleged.
In continued interviews with victims and witnesses, “we found that that was just a small part of the problem,” Del Toro said. “It was actually bigger.”
The suspects were also involved in drug and weapons trafficking and were also taxing businesses in San Diego’s Mid City neighborhoods and National City.
In one incident, Molotov cocktails were thrown into a business last summer after the business owner “pushed back” on the taxes, Del Toro said.
That case was solved as a result of Operation Los Impuestos.
Del Toro said the orders for the extortion and trafficking schemes were handed down by Ronaldo Ayala, a Mexican Mafia leader from National City who was recently indicted on allegations of racketeering by federal prosecutors.
Ayala, who has been on Death Row since 1989, is also accused of offering protection to former Sinaloa drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in a maximum lockup in Colorado.
“Unfortunately, they were preying on other Latino businesses,” Del Toro said.
The businesses threatened were mostly small barber shops and taco restaurants, however, operations such as cannabis dispensaries and hookah lounges and businesses suspected of being fronts for drug trafficking were also targeted.
All of the arrests “went smoothly,” Del Toro said. Some suspects were already in custody at the time of the arrests.
“This is the biggest (operation) that I’ve seen in my 35 years as far as significance,” Del Toro said.
“Despite the success of this, there’s a lot more out there,” he added. “Right now we want to seize the opportunity, we want to show the message to the community that we will follow up, we are going to take action.”
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