A high-ranking Mexican Mafia operative heavily involved in distributing massive amounts of heroin in Southern California, ordering assaults, coaching new hoodlums and collecting street taxes was given new, taxpayer-funded housing this week.
Omar Vidal Briseno (a.k.a. “Lil Rambo”) will recognize the bars, tight living space, lack of female presence and armed guards because on more than 15 prior occasions he's been sent to prison, including on state convictions for burglary, theft and narcotics offenses.
U.S. Probation office staff believe Briseno, who has never held a legitimate job, possesses no respect for the law and recommended a punishment of 175 months in prison for violating heroin distribution laws as well as his participation in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations conspiracy (RICO).
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A federal prosecutor, who noted the defendant refuses to renounce his allegiance to the Mexican Mafia and has not taken advantage of government-sponsored drug treatment programs, suggested the appropriate sentence should be incarceration for 140 months.
This week inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse, U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna granted the prosecutor's sentencing recommendation and imposed federal supervised probation of eight years after Briseno's eventual release back to society.
Selna also ordered Briseno, who was born in 1976, to never again associate with anyone in the Mexican Mafia, visit areas controlled by the gang, or wear any of the gang's “insignias, badges, buttons, caps, hats, jackets, shoes or any clothing that defendant knows evidence affiliation with the Mexican Mafia.”
Jail records show that the defendant has not yet been transferred to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
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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.