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Martin Madrigal Cazares, a fugitive Mexican Mafia member who managed gangs in Ventura County from a base in Mexico the place he developed a drug-trafficking community and introduced California-style jail politics to Mexican lockups, was gunned down earlier this month in Baja California, regulation enforcement sources mentioned.
Particulars of his demise stay scarce. The sources, who requested anonymity as a result of they weren’t approved to talk about the continued investigation, mentioned they’d not but been knowledgeable by Mexican authorities the place or when Madrigal, 53, was killed.
Deported in 2006 after serving a six-year federal jail time period, Madrigal, nicknamed “Evil,” was recognized to journey between Tijuana, Rosarito and Ensenada in Baja California, the sources mentioned. Beneath indictment in the US on drug trafficking costs and topic to extradition, Madrigal was twice launched from Mexican custody beneath circumstances that aren’t clear.
Madrigal, the sources mentioned, operated inside a shadowy world the place established Mexican drug traffickers rub shoulders with uprooted California gang members. Some are fugitives from justice, whereas others have been deported to a rustic they hardly bear in mind after rising up within the U.S. and serving jail phrases.
In Baja California, Mexican Mafia members act as brokers, the sources mentioned, arranging for traffickers to ship medication — largely methamphetamine — to contacts in California and elsewhere in the US. Typically, one regulation enforcement official mentioned, the medication are merely despatched by way of industrial transport corporations.
Six months earlier than his demise, Madrigal was arrested in Rosarito. Mexican authorities mentioned he and his nine-man entourage have been driving within the mattress of a pickup truck carrying military-grade weapons.
Raised on the east facet of Oxnard, Madrigal got here up within the Colonia Chiques gang earlier than being inducted into the Mexican Mafia within the early 2000s, mentioned Leo Duarte, a retired state prisons official who investigated the group for many years.
After changing into a “made” member of the group, Madrigal “thought he was all that and a bag of chips,” Duarte recalled. His outsized ego rubbed many Mexican Mafia members the incorrect method. One was Thomas “Wino” Grajeda, who mailed a letter to Madrigal that started, “Órale Martin, simply these few strains your method hoping that they discover you effectively, contemplating that issues have considerably gone to your head.”
Within the letter, obtained by The Occasions, Grajeda rebuked Madrigal for what he thought-about to be abuses of his newfound authority. “Be mindful,” Grajeda signed off, “you make your mattress in life or the life we reside, then sleep on it. I don’t need to hear no crying afterward.”
A Mexican nationwide, Madrigal served a 77-month sentence for illegally reentering the nation at federal penitentiaries in Victorville and Leavenworth, Kan., regulation enforcement data present.
After his deportation in 2006, Madrigal retained management of his previous gang and others in Ventura County, in response to investigations by the FBI and the Ventura County Sheriff’s Division. Wiretapped calls revealed that Madrigal’s lieutenants have been gathering “taxes” from gangs and drug sellers and sending the cash to Madrigal, who was being held in a high-security Mexican jail on unknown costs.
One among his underlings in California, Edwin “Sporty” Mora, referred to as Madrigal’s spouse, Lina Fuentes, and promised to ship Madrigal a letter. “Letting your husband know play for play what I’m doing out right here. Just about like who do I received managing every metropolis,” Mora mentioned, in response to a recording of the decision reviewed by The Occasions.
Mora mentioned a seller’s weekly dues began at $100. “But when they’re doing like a half-pound, a pound, you need at the very least $250 to $300 every week from them,” he mentioned.
Mora complained that one seller provided to pay simply $500 a month. “I mentioned, ‘Look, canine. Let’s do the mathematics. You’re making anyplace from 35 to $4,000 a month. And also you imply to inform me you’re solely going to offer me $500?’” When the seller whined about having payments to pay, Mora mentioned he instructed him, “I do know that, canine, however I can shut you down proper now to the place you ain’t going to have that $4,000 coming in.”
Mora requested Fuentes to get her husband’s blessing to “smash” an Oxnard gang member who was falsely claiming to be working for the Mexican Mafia. “I have to make an announcement with this idiot,” he mentioned.
Fuentes mentioned she would ship the request by way of a lawyer who was visiting Madrigal in jail. “I already know — you already know ‚ what he’s going to say,” Fuentes instructed Mora.
Madrigal, Fuentes and Mora have been all charged in federal court docket in 2013 with conspiring to site visitors meth in Ventura County. Mora’s federal case was dismissed after county prosecutors convicted him of conspiring to commit extortion and drug trafficking in 2015. Now 39, Mora is serving a 23-year sentence in Calipatria State Jail.
Fuentes stays a fugitive. Prosecutors filed paperwork to extradite Madrigal from Mexico, the place they mentioned he was already serving life in jail, however he was by no means handed over to U.S. authorities — and finally was sprung from custody.
Madrigal grew to become locked in a bitter energy battle with one other Mexican Mafia member, Michael “Mike Boo” Moreno, who was contesting not simply Madrigal’s maintain over the Ventura space however his collections rackets in prisons in California and Mississippi, wiretapped calls present.
Knowledgeable that some inmates have been nonetheless taking path from Madrigal, Moreno was overheard on the wiretap telling an underling: “Whoever continues, they’re going towards what we inform them, man.”
“He had his alternative already,” Moreno continued. “He had his probabilities. We gave him the advantage of the doubt. And he nonetheless screwed up. And whoever continues to f— with him after we already instructed them, they’re going to seek out themselves in bother too.”
Moreno was arrested in California in 2013 and launched this 12 months after pleading responsible to conspiring to distribute methamphetamine.
In keeping with data and sources, at the very least a half-dozen Mexican Mafia members from California are actually working in Baja California. Madrigal was not the primary of them to be killed.
Francisco “Sleeper” Escalante and Ramon “Thumper” Tanory, each members of the 18th Road gang who served 21-year phrases in federal jail for distributing cocaine, have been doing enterprise with Mexican drug traffickers in Baja California once they got here into battle with Mexican Mafia members from the California jail system who believed the 2 had not been “correctly vetted,” a regulation enforcement doc says. Each males have been killed in Mexico in 2019.
The night of Jan. 24, 2023, officers from Tijuana’s police division and Mexico’s nationwide guard arrested Madrigal and 9 different males close to the seashores of Rosarito, Mexican media reported.
The boys have been touring in a Ford F-150 with California license plates, carrying an arsenal of assault rifles and handguns, authorities mentioned. Police arrested them on a cost of possessing weapons that solely navy personnel are allowed to hold, the publication Punto Norte reported. Baja California authorities revealed images of Madrigal and the opposite detainees with their faces blurred, standing in entrance of a desk arrayed with the seized weaponry.
Held in a Tijuana jail, Madrigal discovered that lots of the inmates have been deported California gang members accustomed to taking orders from the Mexican Mafia, mentioned one regulation enforcement official who wasn’t approved to talk to the media and requested anonymity. He started taxing the drug commerce and meting out self-discipline to those that didn’t go alongside, the supply mentioned, and he proved such a headache to directors that they transferred him from lockup to lockup, hoping to interrupt his maintain over the jail rackets.
In some unspecified time in the future, Madrigal was launched from custody regardless of being named in two U.S. circumstances — one federal and one other in Ventura County — wherein he was topic to extradition. American officers mentioned their Mexican counterparts have by no means defined why Madrigal was allowed to stroll free.
Officers from the Mexican lawyer basic’s workplace didn’t reply to requests for remark.
A supply acquainted with Tijuana’s drug commerce, who requested anonymity for worry of reprisal from the Mexican Mafia, mentioned that on the time of his demise, Madrigal was doing enterprise with two brothers, Rene and Alfonso Arzate Garcia, whom Treasury Division officers named final month because the Sinaloa cartel’s plaza bosses in Tijuana.
It’s unclear whether or not Madrigal’s dealings with drug traffickers or some inner dispute throughout the Mexican Mafia led to his demise, U.S. officers mentioned. One supply who considered {a photograph} of Madrigal’s physique mentioned he dressed the a part of the California gangster to the tip: He wore a Chicago Bears jersey and a Santa Muerte pendant round his neck.
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