13 charged in Mexican Mafia collection racket in LA County jails
LOS ANGELES — Authorities this week charged 13 people with collecting money from drug sales and extorted commissary goods inside the Los Angeles County jails on behalf of Michael "Mosca" Torres, a Mexican Mafia member who controlled the jail rackets until his death in July.
The case filed Wednesday by Los Angeles County prosecutors offers yet another illustration of how the Mexican Mafia, a prison-based syndicate of Latino gang members, controls and extracts money from inmates held at the nation's largest jail complex.
Torres, 59, oversaw this system using contraband cellphones in a state prison hundreds of miles away, where he was serving a sentence of 133 on July 6 in what law enforcement officials suspect was an internal power struggle over control of the L.A. County jails.
