Global Courant
Michael Torres, a member of the Mexican mafia who oversaw gangs in the San Fernando Valley and controlled drug and racketeering rackets in Los Angeles County jails, was stabbed to death in jail on Thursday, authorities said.
Torres, 59, was assaulted around 9 a.m. at California State Prison, Sacramento, where he was serving 133 years to life for attempted murder, conspiracy, weapons offenses and witness tampering.
Prison officials identified the attackers as Ray Martinez, 49, and Juan Angel Martinez, 47. The men, who are not related, are both serving life sentences for murder and other crimes. Ray Martinez is a member of the Mexican mafia nicknamed “Cisco,” according to police sources.
It’s unclear why Torres was killed, but he made many enemies on his rise from the streets of San Fernando to running the nation’s largest provincial prison complex.
“The only game is greed,” one gang member told prosecutors in 2005, predicting that Torres would one day be killed in prison. “They step on each other’s faces to get to the top.”
Originally from the San Fer gang, Torres was sponsored for membership in the Mexican Mafia by one of the founders, Luis “Huero Buff” Flores, in Pelican Bay State Prison in 1994, a law enforcement officer testified in 2004. His nickname, ” Mosca,’ means ‘fly’ in Spanish.
After serving 16 years for manslaughter, Torres was released in the early 2000s. He subsequently became the “sanctioned tax collector” of the Mexican mafia in the San Fernando Valley, a prosecutor wrote in a bail request.
“Mosca has a lot of juice,” a witness told prosecutors. ‘Mosca has the whole valley. That’s all. So every neighborhood in the valley pretty much pays him.”
On the night of June 12, 2003, Torres knocked on the door of a North Hills apartment. He told the man who answered that he was looking for Diablo, according to evidence presented at his trial.
A gang member named Smokey had told Torres that David “Diablo” Mendoza had beaten down drug dealers and prostitutes by claiming to be a member of the Mexican Mafia. As Mendoza approached the doorway, Torres asked if he was a “carnal” – a term for a member of the Mexican mafia. When Mendoza lifted his shirt, as if to show off his tattoos, Torres shot him in the chest.
Later that night, two of Torres’ subordinates kidnapped Smokey. They beat him, strangled him with a rope and stabbed him with a screwdriver, but he managed to fight off his attackers and flee.
When Torres was arrested, detectives searched his mother’s beige stucco home in San Fernando and found bundles of cash in a crawl space and another $6,000 in a coffee pot, according to a search warrant.
They also found a list of dozens of books that Torres apparently intended to buy. The reading list included the “completely uncensored” edition of the “Anarchist’s Cookbook”, “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Let Everyone Do Something and Never Feel Powerless Again”.
Torres, who had a fifth grade education, acted as his own lawyer. A witness told prosecutors that Torres was representing himself to extend his stay in Men’s Central Jail, where he collected taxes on all drug sales.
“Mosca does not want to leave the county jail,” the witness said, according to court records. “I don’t know if you understand this, but Mosca is getting a very large sum of money that will be put in that county jail.”
Smokey, in custody on an unrelated charge, was visited by a woman holding a note against the glass wall in the visiting room. When he spoke to police, the message said, “I’m killing you and your family to let you know not to marry the Eme.” Smokey told prosecutors he believed Torres wrote the note.
Mendoza testified that Smokey, not Torres, shot him. A year after the trial, Mendoza was shot in North Hills by an unknown person.
Convicted of attempted murder, witness threats and other crimes, Torres was sent to prison for life.
Nine years later, Torres took control of the Los Angeles County prison system from his prison cell, according to evidence presented during the prosecution of his lieutenants.
He oversaw the Mexican Mafia’s two main prison rackets. One was “the kitty,” a jar of commissary items collected from Latino inmates and then sold. The other was the one-third tax levied on all drug sales.
Torres, a micromanager, called his subordinates using smuggled mobile phones and demanded an accounting of all the money made and the names of everyone who handled it, one of his associates told The Times.
Torres distributed the proceeds from the Men’s Central Jail to all Mexican mob members, his lieutenant told authorities in 2017, while dividing the money from Wayside, the prison complex in Castaic, between himself and another Mexican mob member, Jose “Joker” Gonzalez. The lieutenant said he collected $12,000 a week from prisons on behalf of Torres.
Outside of jail, Torres charged gangs and drug dealers in the San Fernando and Antelope Valleys and invested the money in legitimate businesses and real estate, according to gang members who worked under him.
Torres was under indictment in federal court at the time of his death, charged with conspiring with the Aryan Brotherhood to traffic heroin.
