SAN JOSE — Federal authorities have secured a new indictment that significantly expands the footprint of racketeering allegations against a Salinas street gang, including linking them to more murder cases than the initial charges secured two years ago.
Nine reputed members of the Salinas Acosta Plaza gang, their ages ranging from 19 to 32, were charged with running a criminal gang enterprise out of an East Salinas townhouse complex for which the gang is named. Two defendants from an earlier 2024 criminal grand jury indictment — now superseded by the second indictment secured Dec. 18 and unsealed Tuesday — have been removed from the case.
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Court documents show that the number of killings tied to the group has increased from eight to 11, and the timeline of the crimes has expanded by more than a decade, now spanning August 2009 to April 2025.
“For more than a decade, this gang has terrorized the residents of the Acosta Plaza townhomes and East Salinas more broadly. The violent criminal activity that defendants have been charged with is appalling and unacceptable,” Craig Missakian, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, said in a statement. “We will not stop until the residents of this community feel safe and secure in their homes.”
The investigation underpinning both indictments was conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, the Salinas Police Department and the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office.
All told, the indictment describes 53 separate crimes linked to the gang, including the 11 murders and also 14 attempted murders. The alleged crimes include gang rival killings and shootings, street robberies, home invasions, and the firebombing of an apartment at the townhome complex with Molotov cocktails.
Several defendants are accused of trafficking fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine. One defendant is accused of obstruction by alerting gang members to the imminent racketeering indictment in 2024. The defendants are also alleged to have maintained a cache of nearly 100 guns in a stash house that same year, and for using their ill-gotten gains to pay dues to the prison gang, buy guns and drugs, and cover bail when members got arrested.
While the racketeering charges are designed to hold all the defendants accountable for crimes that can’t be traced to an individual person, two of the defendants are specifically linked to murder and attempted murder cases from 2014 and 2023. As a result, those defendants could face lifetime prison terms if convicted, whereas the other seven defendants could face a maximum 20-year prison term.
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