Huge gang bust nets 39 arrests

All but nine of 48 alleged members or associates of the Nuestra Familia criminal gang indicted in May are in custody in the largest gang prosecution ever in Santa Clara County, the district attorney’s office said Tuesday, June 11. Mountain View police are among the local law enforcement agencies that assisted in the investigation.

One San Jose-based associate of the Nuestra Familia, Mario “Green Eyes” Soria, was arrested today on gang participation and methamphetamine sales charges, District Attorney Jeff Rosen said at a news conference in San Jose.

Rosen announced that a Santa Clara County criminal grand jury had indicted the 48 Nuestra Familia gang members or associates on 77 felony counts including murder, robbery, drug sales, witness intimidation and weapons violations.

A three-year probe into the gang’s activities in the county, involving more than a dozen federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, ended May 30 when the grand jury handed down the indictments, Rosen said.

“We began in 2010 and we were able to bring charges against more and more defendants until finally you have the largest gang indictment in the history of our county,” Rosen said.

The district attorney’s office is prepared to prosecute the extensive number of defendants by using a special courtroom, Department 54 in the county’s Hall of Justice in San Jose, that is able to try multi-defendant cases, Rosen said.

Prosecutors also expect that some of those charged will agree to plea deals to avoid trials, he said.

“We believe that as this prosecution goes forward, certain individuals will plead

guilty and whittle down the number eventually left for trial.”

“Sometimes when there are a dozen or more defendants left for trial, we may split it up into two trials, depending on what the evidence is, without going to a stadium to do it,” Rosen said.

However, Rosen said the cases would take “many, many months to prosecute.”

Nuestra Familia is a violent street gang that has operated out of prisons in California going back to the 1960s, according to the district attorney’s office.

Of the 48 people indicted, 38 are men and 10 are women, 23 are believed to be full-fledged members of Nuestra Familia in the county and 25 are suspected associates of the group, the district attorney’s office said.

Two alleged members, Juan “Rico” or “Juanito” Carrasco and Jose Luis “Looney” Garcia, and seven associates of Nuestra Familia remain at large, Rosen said.

According to the indictment, “All 48 defendants and others, on or about and between June 10, 2010, and May 30, 2013, sold methamphetamine in association with the Nuestra Familia street regiment.”

The 77 felony crimes listed also include a series of five robberies of banks and credit unions in San Jose in which six defendants got away with $60,000 from late 2011 to early 2012, according to prosecutors.

For instance, the indictment charges defendant Martha Frances Castro with allegedly using a fake bomb to threaten employees and steal cash from the Alliance Federal Credit Union on Snell Avenue on Dec. 29, 2011.

Larry “Conejo” Lucero, who like Castro is in custody, is considered the leader of what prosecutors call the Nuestra Familia’s “Santa Clara County Regiment” of made gang members.

Lucero oversaw 12 gang members from the so-called San Jose Regiment, six from the Gilroy Regiment and four from the San Jose Federal Regiment, prosecutors said.

Members of in the federal regiment are in custody in federal prison while the others are in state prisons or still on the street, Rosen said.

Of the Nuestra Familia associates named in the indictment, 20 are affiliated with the San Jose regiment and five with the Gilroy group.

All four members of the federal regiment, Rubin Cruz, Angel Martinez, Alberto Jose “Bird” Larez and Josef Ryan Oaks, are named in the indictment for the murder of Martin Chacon, 38, who was shot to death in San Jose on Aug. 13, 2012, while he sat in his car.

Nuestra Familia’s members are predominantly in California, but some may be in other Western states, Rosen said.

“They’re organized gangsters,” he said. “You can see their organization from their structure, that they have people that give orders to others, that they work together and that makes them very dangerous and requires law enforcement to approach them in a sophisticated, multi-jurisdictional, multi-faceted way.

“It also means it could be a case that takes years to put together, as this case did,” Rosen said.

Law agencies that participated in the investigation included the Campbell, San Jose, Gilroy, Santa Clara, Mountain View and Los Gatos police departments; the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office; county and state corrections and gang intelligence officers; the FBI and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

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