Federal prison will soon get a little bit heavier for many years.
A 6-foot-4 and 380 pound, onetime gang leader of the Mongols Nation Motorcycle Club–a rival to the Hells Angels–has admitted he repeatedly violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) including during a Feb. 2006 assault at the Key Club in Hollywood.
Peter Soto–who was captured in Mexico in 2011 after America's Most Wanted featured his crimes and is presently locked inside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles–now faces a potential maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.
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According to the guilty plea signed this month, Soto (AKA “Bouncer”) acknowledges that he “frequently possessed firearms, conducted Mongols meetings and participated in acts of violence” as well as repeatedly sold methamphetamine and cocaine.
In many cases, Soto believed the drug buyers were fellow Mongols or, in one case a football coach from a Catholic high school in the San Fernando Valley. In fact, the drug buyers were mostly undercover federal agents who'd expertly infiltrated the gang.
The guilty plea also outlines Soto's drug sales at the Tokio Lounge in Hollywood and at the Mongols' “National Run” in Palm Springs.
U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter will decide Soto's punishment mostly likely next year inside the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana, but one thing is sure: He'll never be allowed to carry a weapon again.
Last year, Ruben Cavazos, the onetime president of the Mongols, received a 14-year prison sentence as a result of Operation Black Rain, a joint law enforcement program involving police agencies and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
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.
