By Ray Sanchez, CNN
(CNN) — Giovanni Vicente Mosquera Serrano, an alleged senior leader of the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua has been added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Ten Most Wanted list.
Known as “El Viejo,” the old man, Mosquera Serrano is the first member from the gang on the FBI’s top fugitives list, according to the agency.
The FBI is offering a $3 million reward for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Mosquera Serrano, 37, who faces federal charges that include conspiring to provide and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, as well as conspiracy and distribution of cocaine in Colombia intended for distribution in the US, the agency announced on Tuesday.
Tren de Aragua, also known as TdA, allegedly sends gang members to the US to engage in drug, human and weapons trafficking, as well as violent crime, the FBI said.
TdA was designated as a foreign terrorist organization after an executive order was signed by President Donald Trump on January 20. The criminal organization originated in a Venezuela prison and has slowly spread both north and south in recent years. It now operates in the United States.
Investigators believe Mosquera Serrano may be in Venezuela or Colombia, the agency said.
Tren de Aragua has not only terrorized Venezuela for years but also countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, Chile and Peru, CNN has reported.
In Colombia, Tren de Aragua and a guerrilla group known as the National Liberation Army “operate sex trafficking networks in the border town of Villa del Rosario” and Norte de Santander, according to a US State Department 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report about Colombia.
The criminal groups exploit Venezuelan migrants and displaced Colombians in sex trafficking, taking advantage of economic vulnerabilities and subjecting them to “debt bondage,” the report stated. Police in the region reported the organization has victimized thousands through extortion, drug and human trafficking, kidnapping and murder.
Insight Crime, a think tank dedicated to organized crime, said in October that Tren de Aragua’s “reputation appears to have grown more quickly than its actual presence in the United States.”
“Additionally, there is no evidence, thus far, of cells in the United States cooperating with one another or with other criminal groups,” according to Insight Crime.
Tren de Aragua adopted its name between 2013 and 2015 but its operations predate that, according to a report by Transparency Venezuela, an anti-corruption nonprofit.
“It has its origin in the unions of workers who worked on the construction of a railway project that would connect the center-west of the country and that was never completed” in both Aragua and Carabobo states, according to the report.
The gang’s leaders operated out of the notorious Tocorón prison, which they controlled, the report said. Venezuelan authorities say they have dismantled the leadership of Tren de Aragua and freed Tocorón prison, one of the largest in the country, from the control of its members.
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