A 27-year-old San Fernando Valley gang member in the United States illegally was sentenced Tuesday to 35 years behind bars for multiple crimes including his role in the knife murder of a perceived rival whose body was thrown down a hill in the Angeles National Forest.
Kevin Arteaga, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, pleaded guilty in July 2025 to a federal charge of racketeering conspiracy, and admitted that prior to becoming recognized as a “homeboy,” or full-fledged member in the gang, he was expected to commit at least one homicide.
“After participating in a homicide, other clique members would jump in the prospective homeboy by administering a beating for 13 seconds,” according to his plea agreement filed in Los Angeles federal court.
The gang’s “Fulton” clique claimed areas within the San Fernando Valley, including Van Nuys, North Hollywood and Panorama City, with Whitsett Park and an area near the Los Angeles riverbed as intended strongholds, according to federal prosecutors.
On April 7, 2018, Arteaga and various co-defendants took a man identified in court papers as J.H.C. — who had allegedly leaked information to a rival gang — to the mountains, stabbed him at least 32 times, and threw his body down a hill, court papers show.
Arteaga was among nearly two-dozen people named in a 12-count indictment unsealed in July 2019 in Los Angeles federal court that targeted the gang. The indictment accuses suspected gang leaders of authorizing and coordinating various killings, while also naming gang members who allegedly carried out the murders and attempted murders of rivals.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office alleges that another murder linked to the gang took place in March 2017, when members targeted a rival gang member who they believe defaced their graffiti. After abducting, choking and driving the victim — identified by the initials J.S. — to a remote location in the Angeles National Forest, six of the gang’s members fatally attacked him with a machete, the indictment alleges.
The victim was then allegedly dismembered before a gang member “carved out” his heart and threw the body parts into a canyon, according to federal prosecutors.
Several of the violent killings took place in remote, mountainous areas in Los Angeles County, and were carried out with weapons that included baseball bats, knives and machetes, prosecutors said. Known crime scenes included remote areas of Malibu, Van Nuys and the Santa Clarita Valley, they added.
Formed in the mid-1980s in Los Angeles, the transnational gang has a presence in at least 10 states and several countries abroad, officials said. The epicenter of the organization, prosecutors allege, is in the San Fernando Valley, where Salvadoran members joined with others to carry out slayings detailed in the indictment.
Just three of the original 22 defendants named in the 2019 indictment were over the age of 24 at the time, prosecutors said, while 16 of the defendants are eligible for the federal death penalty should the U.S. Justice Department opt to seek it.
Nineteen of the initial 22 defendants, including Arteaga, had entered the country illegally, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
German Arnulfo Cruz Hernandez, the lead defendant in the indictment, pleaded guilty to his role in one of the murders in the Angeles National Forest and is awaiting sentencing.