The Gangster Report -

As The Crow Rises: Mexican Mafia Boss Johnny Martinez Must Face Jury On Murder Beef

Scott Burnstein

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March 7, 2021

As The Crow Rises: Mexican Mafia Boss Johnny Martinez Must Face Jury On Murder Beef

March 7, 2021 – Mexican Mafia boss Johnny (The Crow) Martinez will stand trial for the 2017 murder of a drug dealer in Placentia, California, after all. The case against Martinez was tossed late last year on an appeal related to grand jury evidence procedure. A state superior court judge concluded a preliminary hearing last week by ordering the case bound over for trial.

The Mexican Mafia or “La Eme,” was founded in the California prison system in the late 1950s and eventually spread to the outside world. La Eme’s strongholds are in California and Texas, but California’s faction is the most influential.

Martinez has made a power grab in La Eme in recent years, going from Orange County shot caller to the No. 1 boss of the entire organization, per California State Police records. He assumed the reins from the highly-respected Pete (The Fury) Ojeda, the Mexican Mafia’s longtime don, who has been in a 23-hour-a-day lockdown since 2016, and according to investigators, his rise to the throne has caused distrust, upheaval and wanton violence, both inside and outside prison walls .

State prosecutors allege Martinez ordered the murder of Robert Rios for refusing to pay a street tax. The 35-year old Rios was shot to death on his front lawn by a masked team of hit men on January 19, 2017. Besides Martinez, the feds charged seven other La Eme members with Rios’ slaying a year later.

Martinez, 45, has been behind bars for the past two decades, serving a 15-year prison stint for a murder from the 1990s. He green-lit Rios’ killing from inside Salinas Valley State Prison in Monterey, using a smuggled cell phone, according to the indictment filed against him. One of the members of hit team has turned state’s evidence.

Fading To Black In The LBC: Mexican Mafia OG Slain Under Cali Freeway Following Shunning For Assault On Boss

Scott Burnstein

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March 7, 2021

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Fading To Black In The LBC: Mexican Mafia OG Slain Under Cali Freeway Following Shunning For Assault On Boss

March 7, 2021 – Excommunicated Mexican Mafia member Sam (Blackie) Villalba was killed earlier this year in Los Angeles. The 64-year old Villalba was found shot to death under a Long Beach expressway offramp in January. The FBI and California State Police believe the slaying was gang related and retribution for past behavior.

The Mexican Mafia or “La Eme,” was founded in the California prison system in the late 1950s and eventually spread to the outside world. La Eme’s strongholds are in California and Texas. Villalba hailed from La Eme’s Artesia Boulevard Gang faction in Long Beach.

Indicted in a sweeping May 1995 racketeering and murder case, Villalba pleaded guilty and did 15 years in prison. The indictment charged him with taking part in the first-degree homicide of La Eme soldier, Charles (Charlie Brown) Manriquez, who was gunned down on March 25, 1992 in the Ramona Gardens housing project in Boyle Heights. Manriquez upset La Eme leaders by consulting on the film American Me, directed by and starring Edward James Olmos. The film was released less than two weeks prior to his murder.

American Me was a semi-fictionalized telling of the rise of the Mexican Mafia which included two male rape scenes that upset La Eme bosses. Manriquez was one of three consultants on the film to pop up dead in the aftermath of it hitting the big screen.

Villalba’s problems with La Eme began behind bars. He placed his hands on Mexican Mafia shot caller James (Rube) Soto during a heated exchange in the prison mess hall and after the incident was placed on the shelf by La Eme bosses.

Villalba returned to prison twice after he completed his term for racketeering and murder, both times for violating his parole (’14, ’16). He had been free since the winter of 2017 and moved back to the LBC, tempting fate some say, by simply being present in his old neighborhood.

“Shelvings” within the Le Eme rank-and-file are not uncommon, however, the murder of a soldier or shot caller banished from gang activity is rare. The last shelved member of the Mexican Mafia to be killed was Anthony (Ditto) Moreno, slaughtered along with his family in the heinous 1995 El Monte Massacre.

The Kitchen Keeps Getting Hotter For Alleged Mafia Don Big Joe In Buffalo, Nephew Busted For Bribes, Drugs

Scott Burnstein

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March 3, 2021

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The Kitchen Keeps Getting Hotter For Alleged Mafia Don Big Joe In Buffalo, Nephew Busted For Bribes, Drugs

March 3, 2021 – The nephew of reputed Buffalo mob boss Joseph (Big Joe) Todaro, Cheektowaga strip club owner Pete Gerace, Jr., was indicted by the feds this week in Western New York for bribery and narcotics and sex trafficking conspiracies. The 53-year old Gerace, Jr., who owns Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club, was taken into custody in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and has pleaded not guilty.

The indictment accuses Gerace, Jr. of paying cash bribes to law enforcement on a recurring basis to protect himself and his business from drug probes. Pharaoh’s was raided by Homeland Security agents in late 2019. Gerace, Jr.’s dad, the former owner of the club, Peter Gerace, Sr., coughed up $17,000 to the Office of Homeland Security for faulty hiring practices tied to 40 un-vetted hires at Pharaoh’s, in 2012.

Gerace, Sr. is married to Big Joe Todaro’s sister. His other son, Anthony Gerace, 41, was pinched on drugs and weapons in May 2019 after Homeland Security raided his Clarence Center home and found duffel bags filled with marijuana, 14 guns and $103,000 in cash.

Retired Buffalo DEA agent Joe Bongiovanni was indicted in November 2019 for shaking down drug dealers he believed were connected to Italian organized crime figures in the Buffalo area. Gerace, Jr. and Bongiovanni, 57, grew up together in the same neighborhood in Western New York. Sources familiar with the investigation say the reference to a strip club owner phoning Bongiovanni and asking for help in dealing with an overdosed stripper in Bongiovanni’s indictment is referring to Gerace, Jr. and Pharaoh’s.

Both Bongiovanni and Anthony Gerace have pleaded not guilty to the charges and are awaiting trial. Bongiovanni once worked for the Erie County Sheriff’s Department.

The federal government in Buffalo believes 74-year old Big Joe Todaro is the boss of the Magaddino crime family and that he succeeded his father in the job. Joseph (Lead Pipe Joe) Todaro, Sr., died after a prolonged battle with heart disease in 2012. He was 89 at the time of his death.

FBI documents allege Lead Pipe Joe assumed control in the Magaddino clan in the 1980s, named Big Joe his underboss and often used him as his acting boss. The Todaros pioneered the marketing of Buffalo wings with their enormously successful La Nova pizza and wing empire. In 1990, Big Joe Todaro was forced to resign from his leadership post in the LIUNA (Local 210) when his underworld ties came under the microscope. Big Joe Todaro, Jr. calls any assertions that he is a mob boss of any sort, “nonsense.”

A Case Of The Blue Wave Blues: Pagan’s MC Boss “Conan the Barbarian” Richter Nailed On Gun Charge

Scott Burnstein

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March 1, 2021

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A Case Of The Blue Wave Blues: Pagan’s MC Boss “Conan the Barbarian” Richter Nailed On Gun Charge

March 1, 2021 – The Pagan’s Motorcycle Club’s quest for total east coast domination in the biker underworld was briefly disrupted last month when Pagan’s national president Keith (Conan the Barbarian) Richter was busted by the feds for a firearm offense after police in Mercer County, New Jersey stopped him in his white-colored GMC SUV en route home from a Pagan’s get-together held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on February 20. Lancaster is just outside Philadelphia, a longtime Pagan’s stronghold.

During the traffic stop, police found Richter to be in possession of a gun (fully-loaded Ruger 45-caliber handgun), which is a no-no for the chiseled, hippy-haired biker guru considering he’s a convicted felon. The gun was located in a secret compartment of the vehicle. The feds got tipped off to Richter’s possession of the handgun and intention of crossing state lines by an informant at the party he attended in the Philly area.

Richter’s expansion mandate is called the “Blue Wave Initiative” in club circles, per FBI and NJSP records. The state of Pennsylvania has long been an influence-center in the Pagan’s organization, dating back decades.

The 62-year old Richter is based out of Long Island, New York, and described as ambitious, magnetic and methodical in the way he goes about his business, according to retired FBI agents familiar with Richter from his early days as a baby biker shot caller in Suffolk County. He did 15 years in prison for extorting and trying to kill a New York strip club owner in the 1990s. He took power as the club’s overall boss in late 2017, per ATF documents, and made plans to colonize rival territory in parts of Northeast Pennsylvania, Northern New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

The Pagan’s launched two new chapters in the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre area in the last 18 months. The Outlaws Motorcycle Club maintains a pair of “support clubs” in the region. The Outlaws are the most powerful club in the Midwest. Richter wants the Pagan’s to establish a strangle hold on the entire Northeastern seaboard.

On Richter’s orders, members of The Pagan’s in clubs east of the Mississippi River must wear an “East Coast” rocker rather than one that identifies any particular city or state as is customary in most other clubs. There have now been nine new Pagan’s chapters opened on the east coast under Richter’s Blue Wave initiative.

Richter was The Pagan’s national Sergeant at Arms in the 1990s when Philly biker don Steve (Stevie the Gorilla) Mondervergine ruled the club. At that time, Richter ran The Pagan’s Long Island chapter boss. One of Richter’s first moves as national president, was to reinstall the hulking Mondervergine, a former dirty police officer and high-ranking Italian mafia associate, as boss of The Pagan’s crucial Philly chapter, per sources in federal law enforcement.

The Queen Rat: “La Reinita” Ready To Spill The Beans On El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel To Avoid Prison

Scott Burnstein

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February 28, 2021

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The Queen Rat: “La Reinita” Ready To Spill The Beans On El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel To Avoid Prison

February 28, 2021 – The Little Queen has loose lips. And Mexico’s once uber-powerful Sinaloa Cartel, could be in jeopardy of folding under the pressure of her future testimony.

Narcos boss El Chapo’s wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, dubbed “La Reinita” or “Little Queen” by the press and her social media followers and cartel subjects alike, will be cooperating against his sons and stepsons, who currently run the Sinaloa Cartel, according to federal law enforcement sources talking to the New York Post. The sources tell the New York Post, she intends on joining the Witness Protection Program.

The 31-year old wife of international drug kingpin Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman, La Reinita was taken into federal custody by DEA agents last Monday in Virginia and charged in a drug conspiracy and aiding-and-abetting case when she arrived in the U.S. from Mexico at Dulles International Airport outside Washington D.C. On Tuesday, she was denied bail. Coronel Aispuro’s father is a top lieutenant of El Chapo’s. She is accused of helping her husband and his sons oversee the Sinaloa drug cartel empire while 63-year old El Chapo serves a life prison sentence and is looking at a 10-year prison sentence of her own, if found guilty.

Coronel Aispuro is a former beauty queen, an Instagram influencer and a VH1 reality television star. Married in 2009, La Reinita and El Chapo have elementary-school aged twin daughters (Emaili and Maria) and a 32-year age difference. Last year, Coronel Aispuro trademarked the term “El Chapo Guzman,” for potential licensing deals.

Guzman is the world’s most notorious and feared drug kingpin of the 21^st Century, has been in U.S. custody since 2017. A mythic figure around the globe — fashioned a super villain of sorts by friends, foe and flocking media like –, Guzman was found guilty on racketeering, drug and murder counts in a heavily-covered 2019 trial in New York City. Today, he is serving a life prison sentence in the BOPs SuperMax facility in Florence, Colorado.

Federal prosecutors allege Coronel Aispuro was part of the planning in Guzman’s daring underground escape from a Mexican prison in 2015. According to the DEA, El Chapo’s four eldest sons control day-to-day operations of the Sinaloa Cartel. The cartel, which at one time was the biggest in the world, is currently on the ropes with El Chapo locked up and resources being depleted due to war with another cartel known as the New Generation Jalisco group.

Coronel Aispuro has dual citizenship between Mexico and the United States. She was born in San Francisco. Her father, Ines (El Uno) Coronel Barreras, ran El Chapo’s marijuana smuggling business in Northern California, Colorado, Arizona and Durango, Mexico.

For most of her childhood, Coronel Aispuro lived in Durango. As a teenager she won several beauty pageants. El Uno, 53, is doing a 10-year stretch in a Mexican prison for drug trafficking and weapon offenses.

El Chapo married Emma Coronel Aispuro in 2009. The pair met in 2007 at the Coffee & Guava Festival in Canales, Mexico where she was participating in a beauty pageant at just 17.

Coronel Aispuro appeared in the VH1 reality television show, “Cartel Crew,” in 2019, the same year El Chapo was found guilty at a federal drug, racketeering and murder trial in New York. Coronel Aispuro’s Instagram account has more than a half-million followers.