19 Suspected Members of MS-13 Gang Are Indicted

The Prince George's state's attorney's office has prosecuted several MS-13 members for homicides and assaults in recent years. In January, a Prince George's jury convicted MS-13 gang member Mario Ayala of first-degree murder in the May 2004 beating death of Ashley Urias, 38, at a Suitland cemetery.

A co-defendant pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and a third alleged accomplice, Everec Alvarez-Chacon, is scheduled to go on trial Sept. 19 on a charge of first-degree murder. Alvarez-Chacon is one of the purported gang members named in yesterday's indictment, and the Urias murder is one of the criminal acts the indictment alleges.

In April, a senior FBI official told a congressional committee that the agency has raised the priority of gang intelligence and investigative efforts.

The FBI will use "the same statutes and intelligence and investigative techniques previously used against organized crime against violent gangs," Chris Swecker, the FBI's assistant director/criminal investigative division, told a subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee.

The federal racketeering statute, known as the RICO law, was enacted by Congress in 1970 to give law enforcement a powerful tool to go after the Mafia, said Michael Greenberger, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and a former Justice Department official.

The law "was designed to allow you to get at people who were technically trying to keep their hands clean but were directing the criminal activity," Greenberger said. "You build the case by bringing in the criminal participants and the people who managed them."

According to the Justice Department's Criminal Division, about one-third of U.S. attorney's offices filed criminal charges under the RICO statute in 2003 and 2004.

Staff writers Fulvio Cativo, Joshua Partlow and Eric Rich and staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.