Four members of a San Fernando Valley-based clique of a transnational gang were convicted Thursday of federal racketeering and murder charges for killing three gang rivals.
One of the charges involves the machete slaying and dismemberment of a man on federal land — the Angeles National Forest.
Angel Amadeo Guzman, 31, of Panorama City; Fernando Garcia Parada, 28, also of Panorama City; Edgard Velasquez, 43, of Reseda; and Jose Jonathan Castillo, 34, of Koreatown were found guilty by a jury in Los Angeles federal court following a 17-day trial.
The four were among nearly three dozen people named in a 12-count indictment handed down in 2019. Federal prosecutors say they’ve won 30 convictions in the case so far.
Evidence showed one victim was accused of painting the graffiti of a rival gang, and Velasquez authorized the murder. Guzman, Garcia, and others abducted the man, strangled him, and drove him to the Angeles National Forest, where they and several co-conspirators attacked the victim with machetes. Later, they dismembered the victim, carving out his heart and throwing his body parts into a canyon.
In April 2017, the jury heard, Guzman and co-conspirators killed another victim, who had fled El Salvador without the gang’s permission when it was thought the victim was cooperating with law enforcement. One gang member used the Facebook account of a teenage girl to catfish the victim, who was lured to the Angeles National Forest and then killed.
Finally, in June 2017, Castillo, Garcia and co-conspirators murdered another victim, a gang associate who was accused of overstating his position in the organization. The victim was taken to the Angeles National Forest, where he was stabbed and hacked to death.
U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. scheduled Oct. 20 sentencing hearings in downtown Los Angeles for the defendants, all of whom will face one or more mandatory sentences of life in federal prison.
Formed in the mid-1980s in Los Angeles, the gang has a presence in at least 10 states and several countries abroad. The epicenter of the organization’s “Fulton clique,” prosecutors said, is in the San Fernando Valley, where El Salvadoran gang members joined with others to carry out the crimes detailed in the indictment.
The arrests were the culmination of a two-year investigation by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Task Force on Violent Gangs, which includes the FBI, Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Just three of 22 defendants originally named in the first indictment seven years ago were then over the age of 24, prosecutors said, while 16 of those defendants are eligible for the federal death penalty should the Justice Department opt to seek it.
Court documents say young associates of the Fulton clique who strived to become full-fledged members of the gang were required to kill a rival or other adversary to gain initiation.