FBI: Informants recorded gang acts
By Gary L. Wright
gwright@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010
Investigators turned MS-13 gang members into informants to help bring down the violent gang in Charlotte, an FBI agent testified in federal court Wednesday.

Agent Michael Attard told jurors the informants videotaped gang meetings and drug buys. In one recording, they captured their fellow gang members talking about business, as well as a shooting.

"It enabled us to identify the gang members engaging in criminal activity," the agent said during the second day of the high-profile trial of six alleged gang members.

The men on trial all face charges of racketeering conspiracy, with some also facing firearms, drugs and robbery charges. One defendant - Elvin Pastor Fernandez-Gradis - is charged with murder.

Prosecutors say they're part of an international organization from El Salvador that has committed crimes across Charlotte, including robbery, racketeering, extortion and murder.

In all, 26 alleged gang members were indicted in Charlotte in June 2008. Eighteen have pleaded guilty, and one faces a separate death penalty trial. One is in prison in El Salvador.

On Wednesday, a guard stood watch on the roof of the federal courthouse as the trial of the six remaining defendants continued. A tent behind the courthouse obscures the comings and goings of defendants and others. And the judge in the case has ordered that jurors' names be kept secret in court.

Prosecutors showed jurors photographs of alleged MS-13 gang members taken by the informants. The FBI agent pointed out each of the six defendants in the photographs.

The government paid one of the informants about $20,000 during a nine-month period. That informant is now in the government's witness protection program, the FBI agent said

"I paid him when I deemed it necessary," Attard said during cross-examination by one of the defendants' lawyers.

Also Wednesday, a detective and gang expert with the Los Angeles Police Department told jurors about how the MS-13 gang operates in cities across the country.

Detective Frank Flores said MS-13 has between 8,000 and 12,000 gang members in the United States and tens of thousands more in Central America.

Flores told jurors how gang members rise through the ranks by gaining respect and how some are killed for betrayal and cooperation with law enforcement authorities.

He said MS-13 uses graffiti to mark and control its territory and to intimidate communities.

Flores also talked about how new gang members are initiated with beatings that last 13 seconds.

Jurors watched a video of two such beatings in Durham that had been filmed by investigators. One of the men was repeatedly kicked while on the ground.

"Some of these beatings are pretty severe ...," Flores said. "This isn't the Boy Scouts. It isn't the chess club. It's a world of violence."

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