A previously convicted Mexican Mafia member who ran the activities of one of East Los Angeles’ longest-running street gangs was sentenced Monday to 10 years behind bars to run concurrently with a 20-year term he is currently serving for an earlier case.
Manuel Larry Jackson pleaded guilty in March 2025 to racketeering conspiracy and drug conspiracy charges, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Five years earlier, Jackson was sentenced to 20 years behind bars after a jury in downtown Los Angeles found him guilty of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. Court papers show he has almost 20 previous criminal convictions.
In the current case, Jackson was the lead defendant in a 2014 federal racketeering indictment naming more than three-dozen individuals suspected of ties to the gang.
Authorities say Jackson, 61, known as “Cricket,” gave directions to the multi-generational gang, which takes its name from a park near the Ramona Gardens housing complex in Boyle Heights.
The gang’s main business is drug trafficking, according to the indictment, which details more than three dozen narcotics transactions involving as much as nearly a half-pound of methamphetamine.
To conceal the business and expand its territory, the gang’s members take steps to prevent law enforcement from infiltrating its activities, steps that include CCTV surveillance at drug houses, making bogus complaints about police officers in an attempt to have them moved to patrol other areas of Los Angeles and threatening and assaulting local residents who cooperate with law enforcement, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The gang is closely aligned with the Mexican Mafia, and many members of the prison gang come from the East Los Angeles area long associated with the street gang.
Federal prosecutors said that under Jackson’s control, the gang committed a variety of crimes, most significantly drug trafficking, which generates revenues through the sale of narcotics and the “taxing” of drug dealers who operate in the area. Some of the revenues generated through “taxes” or “rent” were funneled back to Jackson in prison and to other incarcerated members of the Mexican Mafia, the indictment states.