That youthful, white supremacist hoodlums in Southern California suspend their Adolf Hitler idolatry to date African Americans and Latinas, or enter into chummy narcotics trafficking with non-Nazi approved races are facts well known to OC Weekly readers.
But last week inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse an odd case concluded when a 79-year-old, Caucasian, great-grand father and successful businessman got punished for his secret ties to the Mexican Mafia.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Jack Glenning of Orange used La Eme gangsters as violent enforcers against customers who were delinquent in making payments to his bail bonds operation.
Prosecutors also report that telephonic surveillance proved Glenning served as a communications conduit to the underworld organization known to employ lethal measures; they also say he plotted ways to financially benefit the gang and discussed locating a witness to a Mexican Mafia murder.
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The Tennessee native and U.S. Army veteran with numerous health ailments had hoped his age as well as asserted sincere regret would save him from the slammer, a stance opposed by Assistant United States Attorney Daniel H. Ahn, who labeled the case as “serious criminal conduct” that warranted at least 27 months of incarceration.
“The facts show that defendant and his co-conspirators, by virtue of their connection with the OC Mexican Mafia, communicated to a victim their ability and willingness to inflict serious bodily injury if the victim did not acquiesce to their demands,” Ahn advised U.S. District Court Judge Andrew J. Guilford. “By having the Mexican Mafia act as enforcer, the defendant not only furthered the enterprise's violent reputation and the fear that accompanies that reputation, he helped fund the OC Mexican Mafia's activities.
Glenning's longtime friends told Guilford they knew the defendant as a decent, caring person who was unnecessarily victimized at 5:30 a.m. by an aggressive SWAT team raid that came to secure the arrest while the elderly target was asleep and medicated for health issues.
The judge considered the stances and compromised, ordering a 366-day punishment followed by supervised probation of three years and a ban on future Mexican Mafia association.
Glenning received an additional perk. He can spend the upcoming holidays with family. Guilford ordered the businessman to self-surrender to the U.S. Marshal in Santa Ana for imprisonment by noon on January 8.
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Email: rs**********@oc******.com. Twitter: @RScottMoxley.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.