
The gangs must pay “taxes” - either a monthly flat fee or a percentage of their take from drug sales, robberies and other crimes. Over time, the Mexican Mafia leveraged this grip on the penal system into control over Latino street gangs in Southern California and the state’s Central Valley. County jailsįederal authorities on Wednesday capped a sweeping investigation into the Mexican Mafia with criminal counts against dozens of the organization’s members and foot soldiers, saying the charges were a bid to disrupt the gang’s control inside Los Angeles County jails. Eight months later, he and his friends refused to leave a Jack in the Box and brawled with the police officers who were called to the restaurant.Ĭalifornia Authorities arrest dozens in probe of Mexican Mafia control in L.A.


The following year, he and another boy robbed a woman of her purse at knifepoint. He was caught inside a stolen Volkswagen inhaling solvent fumes to get high when he was 12. The robbery was the first in a string of crimes Ortiz would commit as a juvenile, the probation report shows. Ortiz was arrested and declared a ward of the court. At 11, a probation report says, Ortiz and two companions whipped someone with a belt and ordered him to take them to his apartment, where they robbed him of an eight-track tape deck. His life as a criminal began even earlier. Ortiz, known on the street as “Little Man,” was 13 when he joined a local gang, the Whittier Varrio Locos, according to court records. With most of its members in prison for life and having nothing but time to nurse old grudges, decisions reverberate through the decades, shadowing those, like Ortiz, who perhaps thought they could live beyond the organization’s reach or outlast its memory. The killing of Ortiz illustrates how slights and betrayals within its ranks - some perceived, others real - have driven many decisions made over the Mexican Mafia’s treacherous history. Ortiz’s rise and fall in the Mexican Mafia tells a larger story about a syndicate that, through a mix of ruthlessness and business savvy, came to dominate California’s prisons and many of its street gangs. Then, last month, a man walked up to Ortiz and fired a bullet into his head, leaving him to die in the street in Chino. His answer was always the same: I can take care of myself. Whenever they discovered a plot to kill Ortiz or he was attacked in prison, they’d offer to protect him. For the next quarter-century, as he cycled through county jails, state prisons and brief stints on the street, he wore a target on his back. San Bernardino County Probate Records Find San Bernardino County, California probate records by name, estate number, case number and party type.It took 26 years for death to catch up to Donald Ramon Ortiz.Ī member of the Mexican Mafia, Ortiz was cast out of the criminal organization in the mid-1990s after angering other members.

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