Illicit phones are tools in prison
Investigators use banned technology to their advantage against gangs
SACRAMENTO >> In the 1990s and early 2000s, if the leader of a prison gang wanted to call a hit, he had to rely on cunning methods: coded letters, hand signals in monitored prison visiting rooms or a cryptic language of double entendres.
These days, all he has to do is reach for his contraband cellphone.
California prison officials describe illicit phones as one of the biggest security threats facing the state’s beleaguered prison system, with an estimated tens of thousands in circulation. From 2007 to 2011, the number of cellphones in California prisons increased tenfold, from 1,400 to 15,000, according to a report by Government Technology.
The prisons’ penalties — up to a 90-day loss of good behavior credits for an inmate caught with a phone — are hardly enough to deter gang leaders serving life sentences.
But if phones have created more opportunities for prisoners to smuggle drugs, arrange escape attempts and commit murder, so too have they spawned another consequence — making it easier than ever for authorities to file criminal charges.
That was especially evident in the Eastern District of California, where U.S. Attorney Mcgregor Scott’s office announced two major cases within a matter of days in June, each targeting dozens of suspected members and associates of two notorious California
prison gangs: Nuestra Familia and the Aryan Brotherhood.
Both cases followed a similar pattern: Authorities discovered that high-ranking gang members had acquired cellphones in prison. Instead of immediately confiscating the phones, federal agents obtained warrants authorizing wiretaps, listened and waited.
“Prison gangs have been, unfortunately, organized in our prison systems from the 1960s and ’70s,” California Department of Corrections Secretary Ralph Diaz said at a June news conference announcing the Aryan Brotherhood bust. “Prison gangs have evolved. … The way they’ve grown their profits has evolved. In the same way, we have to evolve.”
Changing times
Nuestra Familia is known as the governing body of the Norteño gang, a predominantly Latino group formed in Northern California that identifies with the color red.
The Aryan Brotherhood is a prison gang formed in the 1960s that is nearly all white and brands its members with shamrock tattoos as well as racist symbols such as swastikas. Both gangs are thought by authorities to be tied to hundreds of slayings inside and outside prison over the years.
Charging records in one case allege that 21 members and associates of Nuestra Familia conspired to sell methamphetamine and marijuana in prison, working with unidentified money launderers to funnel profits. Two Pleasant Valley State Prison inmates, Salvador Castro Jr. and Raymond Lopez, were allegedly running the show.
In the other case, 26 Aryan Brotherhood members and associates were charged with a litany of serious crimes, including five murders and four murder plots, as well as smuggling heroin, meth, phones and even saw blades into prison. The defendants include a California attorney and two alleged members of the Aryan Brotherhood’s three-man commission that runs the gang: Ronald Dean Yandell, 56, a former Richmond resident, and Danny Troxell, 66.
The criminal complaints in both places are extremely detailed, outlining specific conversations between suspected gang leaders and subordinates, inner conflicts within the gangs, alliances and their methodology for conducting illegal activity.
The cases are déjà vu to the early 2000s, when federal prosecutors filed two major cases against the same gangs, intent on moving the leaders out of state to high-security federal prisons. Cracking those cases required legwork, government informants and luck.
In 2001, investigators uncovered that Nuestra Familia’s leadership in Pelican Bay State Prison was using sophisticated means of communication, such as glancing in a certain direction during a prison visit, to order murders, as author Julia Reynolds, a newspaper reporter in Salinas, detailed in her book “Blood in the Fields.“
The following year, a similar investigation revealed that the Aryan Brotherhood’s leadership called hits from federal prison using invisible ink made from urine, or coded references to California’s murder penal code, 187 (one letter referred to the birth of “one baby boy, eight pounds, seven ounces” to order a killing).
This time around, by contrast, the crimes were explicitly spelled out in thousands of hours of phone conversations,
prosecutors say.
“Through the wiretap on Mr. Troxell’s contraband cellphone, we gained wholesome, extensive information about the Aryan Brotherhood and its criminal activities, including in great detail, murders, attempted murders and drug trafficking,” Scott said at the June news conference. “The recordings of Mr. Yandell’s discussions with other AB members about the gang’s criminal activities formed the cornerstone of this case.”
In one call, Yandell reportedly boasted about committing a murder in 1986 at a Tracy prison yard to benefit the Aryan Brotherhood.
In another, he allegedly directed co-defendant Travis Burhop to arrange the slaying of an Aryan Brotherhood associate who had broken gang rules by failing to retaliate for a slight in time.
The murder was “top secret,” Yandell allegedly told Burhop in one conversation. Days later, they began speculating why their target had been abruptly moved to protective custody, according to authorities. The reason was that Drug Enforcement Administration and California prison officials had overheard the kill order.
The conversations among alleged Nuestra Familia members were equally revealing, reportedly including discussions about demand for “water,” a slang term for methamphetamine in the prison system, and orders of 10-pound drug shipments. In one conversation, Castro told co-defendant Jesse Juarez of Visalia to arrange for an escort for drug smugglers they were working with, according to the criminal complaint.
“We might have to get a car with some homies to help protect the shipment,” Castro allegedly said in the May phone conversation from his prison cell in Pleasant Valley. “Like, just go follow ’em behind, make sure nobody f— with ’em. From Sacramento down here.”
Later in the conversation, Castro allegedly told Juarez, “I’m holding you responsible” for the shipment.
“I got you. I know. Man, come on, man,” Juarez allegedly replied.
Fighting the tide
In recent years, state and federal officials have floated several ideas to stop the flow of cellphones into prison, everything from phone-sniffing dogs to body scanners for visitors and inmates. It is assumed that phones are mostly smuggled into prisons by visitors and staff, who can collect fees upwards of $1,000 per phone.
In the recent Aryan Brotherhood case, attorney Robert Mcnamara is accused of smuggling a cellphone into a Sacramento prison during a privileged legal visit.
The feds have ruled out the use of cellphone jammers, noting their high cost, the possibility they could interfere with 911 calls on cellphones outside prison walls though nearby, and the fact that the federal Communications Act prohibits “non-federal entities from using cell jammers,” according to a report by the Federal Communications Commission.
Instead, a similar device is being tried out in some prisons nationwide. Known as Contraband Interdiction Systems, the technology acts like a cellphone tower, intercepting calls and allowing only those deemed as coming from “authorized” phones to go through. It is being used in more than 100 prisons nationwide, including 16 in California, according to the FCC.
Prison officials have found another ally in their fight against smuggling: phone companies like Global Tel Link, also known as GTL, which contracts with jails and prisons throughout California. GTL charges by the minute for phone call use, and recent federal and state restrictions have limited how much they are allowed to collect.
The influx of prison cellphones further threatens GTL’S revenue stream, and as a result, the company has offered to donate devices that impede cellphone use.
“Prison gangs have evolved. … The way they’ve grown their profits has evolved. In the same way, we have to evolve.” — Ralph Diaz, California Department of Corrections secretary