A report from last Monday shows that a U.S. federal judge handed down a sentence of more than 17 years in prison to a leader of the dangerous international street gang MS-13 and prison gang Mexican Mafia for his role in trafficking over 100 lbs of cocaine and methamphetamine (meth) every month on the gang’s behalf.
Nelson Alexander Flores, 52, of Tijuana, Mexico, was accused by prosecutors of coordinating with and supplying meth from multiple sources in Mexico between 2018 and May 2020 with the intent of distributing the drug throughout the United States on behalf of the MS-13 street gang and the Mexican Mafia prison gang.
Flores, also known by multiple aliases, was given a 17.5-year term for his role in the global narcotics scheme. Federal prosecutors in California’s Southern District announced the sentence and $10 million fine, the maximum penalties for violating Title 21, the drug code.
Flores also has a five-year jail term for his conviction in a RICO case involving MS-13 in the Southern District of Ohio. In this instance, the court decided that the defendant’s sentence in the Southern District of California would run concurrently with his sentence in Ohio.
Flores was one of 23 defendants in an Ohio case where federal prosecutors claimed they conspired to break federal law by conducting the operations of a criminal enterprise. According to online federal prison records, Flores is now being imprisoned at the Metropolitan Correction Center in San Diego.
Since its formation in August 2019, Joint Task Force Vulcan has been credited by the Department of Justice as having successfully executed a whole-of-government approach to battling MS-13.
In 2019, New York prosecutors arrested roughly one hundred members and affiliates of the MS-13 gang in the city’s greatest takedown of a violent street gang.
In May of this year, an Uber Eats employee was killed, beheaded, and dismembered by a convicted criminal associated with MS-13.
Sheriff Chris Nocco of Pasco County, Florida, said the delivery driver’s body was discovered inside the MS-13 member’s house in garbage bags.
MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, is a transnational criminal organization with its roots in 1980s Los Angeles, California. The gang was originally formed to protect Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles from other criminal groups.
