How the Mexican Mafia Controls Los Angeles County Jails Through Two Profitable Operations

The Mexican mafia, through its 140 men who control Latino gang members behind bars and on the streets of Southern California, has long considered the Los Angeles County prison complex, the largest in the country, to be their power base and source of wealth.

It may seem that there is no money in the county prison system. Most of the 15,000 people held in its six prisons are poor.This is stated in a special report from the Los Angeles Times.

They are not allowed to carry cash, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which oversees prisons, controls what is sold at police stations.

But in the recent trial of Gabriel Zendejas Chavez, a lawyer accused of working for the Mexican mafia, and other cases brought by district and federal prosecutors, gang members and law enforcement officials testified to schemes by which the Mexican mafia squeezes tens of thousands of dollars a week from overcrowded prison populations and identified the figures of the underworld through which the money passes.

The Mexican mafia uses two main schemes for making money in prisons. The first one is called “kitty”

Prisoners can buy snacks, toiletries and clothes from the prison shop.

For every $7 a Latino gang member spends, they must contribute $1.50 worth of items, or “kitten”, to the collection of items. explained Luis “Hefty” Garcia, an acknowledged high-ranking accomplice of the Mexican mafia, at a recent trial.

“It may seem like a small amount,” Garcia testified, “but overall it is a large amount.”

The collections are sold inside the prison to an inmate who pays for the goods by asking a friend or relative on the street to send money to an accomplice of a Mexican mafia member who runs the facility.

Joseph Talamantes, an FBI agent who investigated Mexican mafia control of the prison system, testified in a related case that “Kitten” sells quickly because it usually costs between $50 and $60, but its price is only about $35.

The member of the Mexican mafia who controls “Kitty” doesn’t care that he is underestimated because he represents pure profit.

Each week, Kitty brings between $1,500 and $2,500 to Central Jail, $1,000 to the Twin Towers, and about $3,200 to the Castaic prison complex known as Wayside, Garcia testified.

This works out to about $23,000 per month.

Another scheme is the tax on third parties.

The county jails are littered with drugs. Garcia, for example, testified that he sold methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, marijuana, “most drugs you can imagine” while he was in Central Men’s Prison.

Every member of the Hispanic gang who sells drugs in prisons must turn over a third of his supply to the member of the Mexican mafia who controls the institutions. according to Garcia and law enforcement officials.

The member of the Mexican mafia will then instruct the subordinate to sell the taxed “thirds” and embezzle the money.

“You have no choice whether to give away that third,” Garcia said, although tithing is not without its benefits.

Clients know not to “burn” a trafficker who pays taxes, who can use Mexican mafia hitmen to punish a delinquent debtor, he says.

Witnesses have testified that inmates buying drugs force someone outside the prison to send money to the dealer’s partner, usually using Green Dot and other prepaid debit cards.

Agents seized the ledger from the home of Garcia’s girlfriend who took his money; the notebook contained many dozens of Green Dot numbers with the names of the clients, the premises they were housed in, and the amounts they paid.

According to eyewitnesses, to offset the risk and difficulty of smuggling drugs into prisons, drug dealers may charge 10 times or more the retail price of drugs.

A gram of heroin costs about $50 on the street, Garcia said, but a quarter of that could be worth $150 in jail.

Because of the profits, many gang members seek to smuggle drugs into prisons.

After injecting drugs into the rectum or swallowing balloons filled with them, they either turn themselves in on an outstanding warrant or are deliberately arrested on a lesser charge.

Communication is required to make sure drugs are taxed, money is collected, debts are paid, and criminals are punished.

Much of this is done through prison phones, which the inmates know and keep track of with the Sheriff’s Department, but see them as an unavoidable risk.