A Glassboro man who was associated with the Bloods street gang was sentenced to 13 years in state prison Thursday for dealing crack cocaine.

The sentence for Lamar Young, 32, includes six years without possibility of parole, state Criminal Justice Director Stephen J. Taylor said. Young was sentenced by state Superior Court Judge Walter L. Marshall Jr. in Woodbury as a persistent offender to an extended term in the first-degree range.

Young was found guilty at trial on Feb. 11 of second-degree distribution of controlled dangerous substance for selling crack cocaine on two occasions in Glassboro. The charge was contained in a May 30, 2008 state grand jury indictment. Young was an associate of both the Fruit Town Brims and Nine Tech sets of the Bloods.

The case stems from Operation Bloodwork, a joint investigation conducted by the State Police Street Gang Unit South and the Glassboro police.

Ten other people have pleaded guilty to drug or weapons offenses as a result of Operation Bloodwork, which focused on the criminal activities of the Fruit Town Brims in the Glassboro area.

Deputy Attorney General Cassandra Serentino prosecuted the case for the Division of Criminal Justice Gangs & Organized Crime Bureau. She was assisted at trial by Deputy Attorney General J. Michael Wicke. Det. Michael Flory led the investigation for the State Police, assisted by Det. Michael Powell of the Glassboro police and Det. Pete Ferris of the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office.

RAPPER,The Game, was held by Canadian officials for several hours yesterday and then released back into the United States, reportedly because of his affiliation with gangs in America.

Substance Entertainment Group, the organization behind The Game’s tour in Canada has told TMZ that the rapper’s reps received a call while he was already a plane on his way to Canada.

During the call officials informed The Game that he would not be allowed entry into Canada “due to new information received that  Game is affiliated with organized crime and is an active member of the Bloods street gang.”

Oddly enough concert promoters already had their ducks in a row in terms of permits before top level officials stepped in.

Refunds to all his Canadian shows will be given out to customers.

A local gang member who tattooed the Jan. 23, 2004, fatal shooting of a rival on his chest was convicted Wednesday of the murder.
Deputy District Attorney Brock Lunsford said Anthony Garcia faces 65 years to life in prison at his May 19 sentencing in Norwalk Superior Court.

A jury found the 25-year-old Garcia guilty of the first-degree murder of John Juarez and of shooting at an occupied vehicle. The jurors also found true the allegations that Garcia intentionally fired the gun causing injury and death to Juarez, used a handgun in the killing and committed the crimes for the benefit of Rivera 13 gang.

The prosecution's case was helped by the tattoo on Garcia's chest. The tattoo depicts a helicopter


A jury on Wednesday convicted Rivera 13 gang member Anthony Garcia of killing John Juarez on Jan. 23, 2004. The prosecution was helped by one of Garcia s tattoos which detectives say shows the crime scene. The tattoo depicts a helicopter shooting a Mr. Peanut in front of a liquor store. Juarez, 23, was shot outside Mr. Ed s Liquor on Rosemead Boulevard. The 25-year-old Garcia s gang moniker is Chopper and Juarez was from the Pico Nuevo gang. Rival gangs refer to Pico Nuevo members as peanuts. (Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department)
shooting a Mr. Peanut in front of a liquor store. Juarez, 23, was shot outside Mr. Ed's Liquor at 6616 Rosemead Blvd. in Pico Rivera.
Garcia is a Rivera 13 gang member whose moniker is "Chopper" and Juarez was from the Pico Nuevo gang. Rival gangs refer to Pico Nuevo members as "peanuts."

"It's shocking to see someone was so audacious to put the crime scene on his chest. Plus factor in he put, `Rivera Kills' above that," Lunsford said.

He said homicide and undercover detectives he asked have not seen a tattoo like that.

Garcia's tattoo has details of the crime scene, Lunsford said. He said Garcia even got the trajectory of the bullets right.

The chopper is on the right firing at the Mr. Peanut, who is on the left side.

"That's exactly how he did it," Lunsford said.

The tattoo also includes a curved streetlight/sign to the left of the liquor store. Across from the store is a building marked Rivera.

Lunsford pointed out there is a curved streetlight with signs at Carron Drive and Rosemead Boulevard that looks similar. Also across from Mr. Ed's Liquor is a home for seniors, although the name is different.

"If you stand on Carron facing the liquor store on the north, you would be looking at the crime scene photo," Lunsford said.

Garcia's attorney, Robert Guaderrama, declined Thursday to comment on the verdict.

Juarez's stepfather is Gilbert Paul De La Rosa, and his stepgrandfather was the late Gilbert De La Rosa, who served as mayor of Pico Rivera.

Gilbert Paul De la Rosa thinks the jury did the right thing.

"Everything pointed to him. He had no defense," De La Rosa said.

But he doesn't hate Garcia. He said he feels sorry for Garcia and prays for him.

"I got together with his family and told them we have nothing against them," De La Rosa said.

He couldn't believe it when he was told about the tattoo.

"This goes to show you some people don't care," he said.

Juarez was standing by the payphones outside the liquor store the night of Jan. 23, 2004, when two men walked up to him. He was asked where he was from and then shot several times. The shooters ran to a waiting pickup truck which took off.

The case remained unsolved until 2008.

Sheriff's Homicide Sgt. Kevin Lloyd was looking through photos of gang member tattoos on August 2008 when he saw the unusual tattoo emblazoned on Garcia's chest.

It reminded him of a 2004 shooting in Pico Rivera when he was a sergeant there. His hunch proved right.

A deputy from the station's graffiti team had taken the picture of Garcia with his tattoos on March 28, 2008, when he was arrested by the CHP for driving on a suspended license, according to Capt. Mike Parker.

Garcia was arrested Oct. 16, 2008, in La Habra, where he was staying with relatives.

At the Norwalk sheriff's station jail, he was placed in a cell with two undercover detectives posing as older gang members. Their conversation, which was taped, was later played at Garcia's trial. He admitted walking up to Juarez, asking him where he was from and shooting him.

The second shooter hasn't been charged yet. But the getaway driver, 28-year-old Robert Armijo of Pico Rivera, pleaded guilty to assault with a firearm and voluntary manslaughter. He faces 20 years in prison at his May 3 sentencing in Norwalk Court.

Armijo identified Garcia as one of the shooters while another Rivera 13 gang member, Manuel Jaramillo, said Garcia told him he shot a Pico Nuevo gang member he knew as "Ghost."

Juarez was Jaramillo's cousin, something Garcia apparently didn't know.

The defense pointed out Jaramillo was asked by his grandfather, the former mayor, if he was involved in the shooting.

Police are unlikely to ever unravel his drug fortune, hidden through a network of business and investment that includes coal and oil companies, brothels, property and even high-end fashion labels.

Like a lot of crooks, Mokbel began with small cannabis deals before moving into speed and finally driving the ecstasy explosion that dominated the club scene a decade ago.

Mokbel's crew - from the northern suburbs - began dealing cannabis in the early 1990s, meeting at Mokbel's mother's house in Canberra St, Brunswick.

Tony and his brother Horty were the first to branch out into speed, a grubby drug that Tony initially tried to keep his brother out of.



The Grove Cafe in Coburg was another haunt, where deals were done and the brothers discussed the ever-shifting loyalties of competing crime families like the Williams and the Morans.

By the mid-1990s Mokbel had gone from failed restaurateur to multimillionaire, owning racehorses, farms and luxury cars.

He was already thumbing his nose at authorities, according to associates, giving horses names like Frosty The Snowman and My Cook - slang terms in the drug trade. He owned at least seven horses, but none in his own name.

Mokbel had always loved the track. In the 1980s and early '90s he headed a group of punters, who ripped a fortune from bookies and became known as the Tracksuit Gang.

While punting and drugs delivered him a fortune, Mokbel once knew the value of a hard day's work.

Arriving with his family from Lebanon as a child, he grew up around Coburg and Brunswick and did whatever job he could find - waiter, dishwasher, security.

He was barely out of his teens when he and his wife Carmel bought their first business, a milk bar that saw them putting in long hours, every day of the week.

Later ventures included restaurants and cafes, including T Jays in Sydney Rd.

As his drug empire boomed, Mokbel took cover as a budding entrepreneur and property developer.

His biggest project was redeveloping the Brunswick market site into upmarket apartments and shops. It never came to fruition.

By the time he fled to Greece, Fat Tony faced charges over seven different drug operations.

But it was the death of Lewis Moran that threatened to cause Mokbel most grief.

When he was finally captured and returned to Melbourne, police felt they had strong enough evidence to charge him with the murder of Moran at the Brunswick Club in 2004 as well as small time drug dealer Michael Marshall a year earlier.

Things had started to turn sour for Mokbel a couple of years earlier when one one of his contacts turned police informer and began taping him and Carl Williams.

The sting that saw him arrested was Victoria's biggest at the time, a joint state and federal operation.

He sat in jail awaiting court hearings for month after month, but his time in Port Phillip Prison's Swallow unit wasn't wasted.

He became close to Williams and his trusted offsider, a killer turned informer later dubbed Mr A.

They ate meals together, and Mr A, who worked in the prison kitchen, would smuggle extra nosh to Mokbel, later telling police: "He loved his food."

Mr A said Mokbel was trying to have an informer killed, but complained that he couldn't reach him because he was in protective custody.

After their release on bail Mokbel and Williams met regularly, often at a Red Rooster outlet with police watching from a distance.

As Williams honed his plans for wiping out the Moran family, Mokbel offered his support, passing on news of Jason Moran's whereabouts when he had it.

Jason Moran was shot dead in 2003 by Mr A, and the murders continued with the death of a small-time dealer Willie Thompson.

Williams had also organised the hit, unaware that Thompson was a childhood friend of Mokbel.

Thompson's death angered Mokbel, who mistakenly believed Michael Marshall was the shooter.

Mr A told police Mokbel offered him and Williams $300,000 to kill Marshall.

"Tony confirmed to me that he believed Michael Marshall was responsible for Willie's death and he wanted him dead," Mr A said.

Mokbel had made no secret of his dislike for another big man of Melbourne's underbelly, Mick Gatto.

He even met Purana taskforce detectives after Gatto's 2004 arrest for the shooting of Andrew "Benji" Veniamin, telling them Gatto was a "c---sucker".

"I don't invite you to my place where I feel comfortable and pop ya," he said of Veniamin's death.

Gatto was acquitted by a jury after pleading self-defence.

Mokbel said Gatto had arranged for him to meet a gang of bikies in 2002 but the conversation went a little out of control and he was badly beaten. Gatto stood by and did nothing to help.

"Things didn't go too good. I was lucky in the end," Mokbel told police.

When Moran, a member of Gatto's Carlton Crew, was killed, police believed Mokbel and Williams had a shared interest in his death.

Williams had wanted all the Morans dead, and Mokbel had considered a strike against Moran a strike against his enemy, Gatto.

Their theory was buoyed by telephone intercepts of calls between Mokbel and Roberta Willliams, who called him to gloat over Moran's death in the hour after his public execution.

"They would have been laughing at us," she said of the Carlton Crew, referring to the shooting of her close friend Veniamin. Mokbel replied: "That's right, there's a god up there."

Carl Williams, who later pleaded guilty to the Moran murder, waited four minutes after hearing of Moran's demise to ring Mokbel.

Jurors in Mokbel's secret murder trial would later reject claims by the getaway driver that Mokbel himself paid for the hit.

Mokbel, the driver said, handed him $140,000 in a car park after the killing, $10,000 shy of the promised reward.

But they got a rare insight into the world in which Williams and Mokbel lived, hearing intercepted conversations where Williams - a man who stumbled over words like "pursuant" - would rant about his favourite topics, such as his ban from Crown casino.

So incensed was Williams by the ban that he would try to call then police commissioner Christine Nixon to complain.

Prosecutors eventually decided to drop Mokbel's murder charge, along with the charges over the drug bust that had originally brought Mokbel down.

In the Supreme Court this Monday Mokbel admitted his guilt to trafficking a large commercial quantity of methylamphetamine between July 2006 and June 2007.

He also admitted trafficking a large commercial quantity of ecstasy between February and August 2005.

Mokbel pleaded guilty to a further charge of urging an undercover officer to commit the offence of importing ecstasy into Australia.

The court heard all other matters against Mokbel will be discontinued.

All that is required to close the book on one of Melbourne's most colourful underworld characters is a jail sentence.

Drugs remained their major Australian market. "Australians are among the world's highest per capita consumers of illicit stimulants, and drug prices in Australia far exceed prices overseas, making domestic drug production and importation highly profitable," the report said.

It said cocaine production, supply and use had risen to new highs, distributed by some of the most sophisticated, profitable and powerful criminal networks in the world.

Mexican cartels had been identified among other Central and South American cartels as one of the key suppliers.

The report said the Mexicans were becoming "deeply entrenched" in Australia and internationally, winning footholds on most continents and producing profits that rivalled the economies of some small nations.

O'Connor said an operation by Australian agencies last year demonstrated the scale and emerging business alliances of crime groups.

Operation Hoffman had uncovered an international drug-importing network straddling Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, South Africa, Tonga and Hong Kong, with links to members of outlaw motorcycle gangs and to Australian and Hong Kong-based associates of Chinese criminal syndicates.

"This is a clear example of how organised criminals form new alliances and alignments to pursue their illegal objectives."

It also showed organised crime networks operated like multinational enterprises.

Luis Nicolas-Garcia, 22, of Salem was shot outside an apartment complex in the 3400 block of 30th Street NE on April 12, according to police.

Nicolas-Garcia was shot in the leg. He remains in fair condition at Salem Hospital, according to Julie Howard, a hospital spokeswoman.

The suspect in the shooting is still wanted. He is Hispanic and 18 to 19 years old. Police said the shooter was with two other men and they left the scene in a brown or gray Pontiac Sunfire sedan.

Police said Shiloh Hampton was seriously wounded in the attack. Police are looking for a white late-1980s Mercedes sedan in connection with the shooting. The Mercedes was lowered, had tinted windows and chrome rims.

Homicide and gang enforcement detectives are investigating the shooting at Northeast 11th Avenue and Multnomah Street near Holladay Park.

The shooting happened at about 4:56 p.m. outside the shopping center. Witnesses told police that Hampton was with a group of young people inside the Lloyd Center mall. As the group left the shopping center, shots were fired from a passing car, striking the young man in the head and abdomen.

None of the people with Hampton stayed to talk with police.

Investigators believe the shooting involved people associated with gangs. They have not determined if Hampton was involved with gangs or if he was the target of the shooting.

During the investigation, traffic was blocked for several hours from Northeast 13th to Ninth avenues along Multnomah, and 11th Avenue from Multnomah to Holladay streets.

gangster linked to rap star Giggs was sentenced to six years imprisonment today for shooting a man who owed money.

Taurean Taylor, 26, gave himself the street name Kyser or Kyze after the feared Keyser Soza in the Hollywood film The Usual Suspects.

He described himself as "the number one hitman" for Giggs, whose violent lyrics have been criticised by Operation Trident, the Met unit tackling gun crime in the black community.

Taylor shot Marcus Bennett, known as Meano, who was said to have owed an associate Godfrey Jok, known as Rox, £10,000.

He was hit in the arm and shoulder area as a warning on the Peckham Rye estate in January 2009.

Taylor, who later told friends he had "blazed him in his arm" used a self loading 9mm Glock pistol.
He was said to be part of the Peckham Boys - one of London's most powerful and organised street gangs.

Taylor, of Peckham Rye, was convicted of wounding with intent to cause GBH and possession of the Glock. He will be sentenced later by Judge Paul Worsley.

But he was cleared of the murder of Larry Safie, 25, in a tree-lined avenue in East Dulwich on a Sunday morning in February 2009 and Errol Davis, 24 at the SEOne nightclub near London Bridge in October 2008.

The court heard that while awaiting trial in Belmarsh prison Taylor told girlfriend Alesha White: "They're trying to say I'm his (Giggs) number one hit man. The reality of it Alesha is that they're not far wrong. They know what's going on."

In court he said this was merely a reference to his talent for making hit records.

Pleading guilty to second-degree murder in March, Jymaika S. Hutson, admitted to killing Tyree Lee on April 28, 2007.

Lee, regarded by law enforcement as a member of a Central District street gang, was shot to death outside a friend's home. Hutson, 32, had been a member of a rival gang, though he has since insisted that he abandoned the gang after a shotgun blast left his face severely scarred.

As his brother’s son looked on in a T-shirt reading “R.I.P. Daddy,” Tyrone Lee Jr. told King County Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez that Hutson’s actions four years ago left his family shattered.

Tyrone Lee noted that the young men were raised in the same community and had known each other for years. His brother left behind a family and a fiancée.

“They lost someone, something that they can never get back,” he said Friday.

Given the opportunity to speak, Hutson declined to address the judge or attempt to explain his actions the day Tyree Lee was killed.

On April 28, 2007, officers were called to the 2600 block of East Alder Street following a report of shots.

Police arrived to find Lee had been shot multiple times in the back, torso and legs. He died later that evening at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Witnesses to the shooting told police a white Chevrolet SUV had pulled up as Lee was walking to a friend's home. Hutson got out of the vehicle, drew a pistol and fired at least eight shots at Lee.

One witness told police he heard what would be some of Lee's last words.

"Hey man, I don't have a beef with you," Lee told Hutson before he was gunned down, according to the witness.

Police were able to trace the car to Gilbert Kinney, Hutson's co-defendant.

Hutson pleaded guilty on the eve of trial as prosecutors were prepared to offer the testimony of Kinney to implicate him in the shooting. Kinney, who drove Hutson to and from the shooting scene and provided the murder weapon, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge and was sentenced to home detention.

Speaking with investigators, Kinney said he followed Lee's car at Hutson's request. He said he had no idea Hutson planned to kill Lee, and admitted that Hutson used his pistol in the shooting.

Hutson -- said by law enforcement to be member of Deuce 8, a Central District street gang -- had been seen arguing with Lee at Barnett Park shortly before the shooting.

Police initially interviewed Hutson five days after the shooting. He denied any involvement in Lee's death; nearly three years passed before prosecutors were able to bring charges against him.

In the prosecution's view, the killing was revenge for an earlier attack Hutson blamed on Lee. Hutson was shot in the face with a shotgun by parties as yet unidentified.

Prosecutors were prepared to contend that a rivalry between Hutson's gang and Lee's Low Profiles – a breakaway set of Deuce 8 – played a part in the shooting, a contention disputed by Hutson's attorney.

“At the time of the shooting, Mr. Hutson was working very hard to extricate himself from ongoing violence that was part of his younger life,” defense attorney James Womack said in court documents. “This change took place shortly after he was shot in the face by a shotgun in February 2006. He had to make a choice.”

The rivalry between the Central District gangs began shortly before the slaying of another Seattle man, Deuce 8 leader Terrell Milam.

Milam was widely believed to have injured then-Seahawks defensive back Ken Hamlin in a bar brawl in October 2005. He was shot to death not long afterward by Omar A. Norman, a Low Profile gang member currently serving a 52-year prison term for Milam's murder.

That killing was followed by years of gang shootings and slayings, including the drive-by shooting that saw Hutson shot in the face.

Writing the court, Senior Deputy Prosecutor John B. Castleton noted that Hutson was responding both to his own shooting and Milam's when he killed Lee.

"The defendant admitted to shooting Lee as retaliation for Milam's death," Castleton told the court. "This type of 'payback' is simply part of the gang culture and was just one more incident in the ongoing LP/Deuce 8 feud."

Hutson was sentenced by King County Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez

Superior Court Judge Robert Perry sentenced a former Filipino gang leader to eight consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for his role in the murders of eight people and 10 attempted murders that occurred in the mid-1990’s in the Greater Los Angeles region.

Last Wednesday, Perry handed Marvin Mercado, 37, a former leader of the Asian Boyz gang, the stiff penalty after a jury earlier in the month of March spared the Filipino from the death penalty.

Perry called Mercado a clear danger to society and said only two of his victims were rival gang members while the rest were law-abiding citizens.

“He deserves the greatest sentence this court can impose,” said Perry, according to the Associated Press. “The amount of pain and senseless hurt this defendant and his associates have caused is enormous and incalculable.”

The sentence of Mercado finally closes one more chapter on what police and prosecutors called the “Summer of Madness” rampage in the mid-1990’s when Mercado and other members of the Asian Boyz gang terrorized the San Gabriel and San Fernando Valley.

The Asian Boyz gang was composed mostly of Cambodian, Vietnamese, Filipino and other Southeast Asian origin. They were known for targeting the Asian immigrant community, committing burglaries, robberies and eventually murder. In one home invasion case, Asian Boyz gang members tied up an 84-year-old Filipino woman.

It was during this time that Los Angeles Police Department investigators said members of the Asian Boyz gang – led by Mercado – killed two gang rivals, three men mistaken for gang enemies, a man during a home invasion robbery, a teenager walking home from an arcade and another man fatally shot with a shotgun.

When police authorities began rounding up the suspects of the crime, Mercado fled to the Philippines. His brother, Pierre Mercado, who is awaiting trial on four counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, also fled a few years later.

The seven other members of the gang - Buntheon Roeung, Sothi Menh, David Evangelista, Roatha Buth, Son Thanh Bui, Ky Tony Ngo and Kimorn Nuth - have since been prosecuted and sentenced to life in prison for their role in the murder, attempted murders, and conspiracies to commit murder in June of 1998.

Living a quiet life

Mercado had eluded authorities for more than a decade by escaping to the Philippines.

Using the name Mark delos Angeles, Marvin Mercado married Nicole Romero, the daughter of a wealthy construction magnate in a lavish wedding that Mercado family members attended under false names. His brother Pierre posed as his cousin, Angel Reyes, said prosecutor Hoon Chun.

An aunt, Luz Rodriguez, testified at the trial that she took the bride aside a week before the wedding and told her Mercado’s real identity, but the bride said she already knew.

Mercado lived for a year with his in-laws in a gated compound, described by Chun as “Bel Air-like,” before moving to a condo in a ritzy section of Manila. He ran an Internet café and a fish farming business. However, his life of luxury came to an end when a reward resulted in a tip to authorities. The brothers were arrested and extradited.

Moving on

The Asian Boyz still exist, but Chun said the convictions of Mercado and seven other members significantly diminished the gang’s criminal activity.

“They were responsible for a horrendous number of shootings that showed no signs of stopping,” he said. “This is one of those few cases where we can say, we made an impact.”

Jennifer Gregory, whose husband Jon Gregory was killed in a 1995 home invasion by the gang, said Wednesday she was relieved that justice had been done. Her three daughters were left traumatized by the murder of their father and grew up fearing the killers would return.

“It tore apart my kids, but it’s getting better,” she said. “He can’t do anything to anyone any more. I can try to move on.”

Chun said he believes Mercado deserved the death penalty, but called the sentence “a nice measure of justice.” “I can’t complain too much,” he added.