PHILADELPHIA - FBI agents fanned out across Philadelphia on Friday arresting alleged members of a street gang that prosecutors said used kidnapping and murder to expand its drug trafficking territory in eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey.
Federal prosecutors charged 15 men and two women with being associated with the Philadelphia chapter of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation, a nationwide gang with roots in Chicago.
A grand jury indictment said the suspects had grandiose visions of expanding their influence from a single street corner in Philadelphia to a network of small cities, and launched a campaign of terror against other Latin Kings chapters in Vineland, N.J., and Millville, N.J., in 2003 in an attempt to consolidate their control.
During the fighting, the gang's leaders orchestrated a series of kidnappings and beatings, raped a female member of the rival sect and ordered several unsuccessful assassinations, prosecutors said.
Two alleged gang members were also charged with murdering a man from their neighborhood in 2004 who had boasted about being a Latin King when he wasn't in the gang. The indictment said the chapter's alleged 25-year-old boss, William Sosa, ordered the killing.
- S. Attorney Patrick Meehan said that while the Latin Kings had tried to pass themselves off nationally as a "law-abiding, benevolent social group ... Those claims are merely camouflage for what this enterprise really is: a well-structured gang of thugs that deals in drug trafficking, murder, assault, kidnapping, robbery, rape and more."
The indictment said Sosa's brief reign as the "Inca" in charge of Pennsylvania ended late last month when gang bosses in Chicago ordered that he be removed and murdered.
Fourteen of the defendants were from Philadelphia, two from Illinois and one from Vineland, N.J.
Authorities had 16 of the defendants in custody Friday, but were still looking for Sosa.