68 members of a neo-Nazi gang charged with racketeering: FBI

From left to right: A suspected member of the Peckerwoods gang holds a rifle, a photo of a firearm that one of the suspects posted on Facebook Messenger, and the head of a Peckerwood with Nazi tattoos (U.S. Attorney’s Office).

Sixty-eight members and associates of a Los Angeles-based white supremacist street gang have been charged in a federal racketeering case alleging years of drug trafficking, gun possession and fraud, authorities said.

Twenty-nine of the 68 defendants – some with nicknames such as “Monster,” “Bezerker,” “Sinister,” “Meat” and “Scumf…” were arrested Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a news release. Thirteen were already in custody.

They face a slew of charges, including conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, distribution of a controlled substance, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, aggravated identity theft, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition by a felon, and possession of 15 or more unauthorized access devices. The case carries a statutory maximum sentence of life in federal prison.

The conspiracy details of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act – the same tool used to crack down on organized crime in the 1970s – focus on the so-called Peckerwoods, a white supremacist gang based in the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley region. LA.

They got their name from a derogatory term for white people, authorities said. The gang is linked to the Aryan Brotherhood, a neo-Nazi prison gang, and the Mexican Mafia prison gang, which controls most of California’s Latino street gangs.

U.S. Attorney Martín Estrada called the Peckerwoods a serious threat to the community.

“By allegedly involved in everything from drug trafficking to gun crimes, identity theft and COVID fraud, and through their alliance with a neo-Nazi prison gang, the Peckerwoods are a destructive force,” he said in the press release. “By prosecuting members of the Peckerwoods criminal organization, our office is carrying out its mission to protect the public from the most dangerous threats.”

The indictment, unsealed Wednesday, outlines the allegations from December 2016 to September 2024. Authorities said the Peckerwoods use Nazi tattoos, graffiti and iconography to signify their violent white supremacist extremist ideology. These tattoos and iconography include swastikas, the symbol “88,” used by violent white supremacist extremists as code for “Heil Hitler,” and images of Nazi planes.

“I wish all the blacks and all the cops would all kill each other. Only our side of the daycare center! If that’s all that’s left in the world, that would be amazing,” wrote a member of the gang’s Facebook group during the Black Lives Matter protests over the police killing of George Floyd in June 2020, the indictment said.

They shipped drugs to customers and used Zelle and CashApp for the transactions, prosecutors said. They signed fraudulent loan applications for people incarcerated in California state prisons and then collected a portion of the proceeds from the co-conspirators. In one case in April 2021, a defendant filed an application claiming he was a self-employed “artist/writer” with a gross income of nearly $250,000 and received a loan of $20,833 that month, authorities said.

Do you have a tip we should know? (email protected)