Authorities say first Cesar Valle tried to tax the gents working in a transgender brothel, then the 22-year-old robbed the illegal business operating out of a Santa Ana apartment unit and finally, on Monday, he was a no show as his jury trial was getting going.
Superior Court Judge W. Michael Hayes, who had previously set Valle's bail at $100,000, issued a $1 million warrant for the gang member's arrest due to his alleged failure to appear to face robbery,
burglary and other charges that could put him away for life.
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Travel back to April 2010, a simpler time when Osama bin Laden was still breathing air, Taylor Swift's “You Belong to Me” was burning up the charts and you could walk into an apartment unit on North Ross Street in Santa Ana and pay for some tranny love.
A report of a home invasion robbery in progress after midnight April 17 of that year sent police to an apartment where they found no robbers but did find a bunch of mattresses on the floor and seven “women” sporting large Adam's apples. At least one occupant admitted they were all dudes and that the apartment was a front for prostitution.
He then related this crime: Three gang bangers showed up at the door earlier in the evening demanding a $60-per-tranny tax, threatening to kill workers who failed to pay upon their return. Around midnight, men who were later identified by police as Valle and 22-year-old Christian F. Cabrera returned, roughed up a shemale, demanded money and walked out with a laptop and a cell phone that did not belong to them.
The victims told police the home invaders drove off in a white sedan. Days later, while investigators were conducting follow-up interviews at the apartment, a victim noticed what he claimed was the same white sedan cruising by. After he yelled something along the lines of “THAT'S IT!” cops pulled the vehicle over and Valle and Cabrera were arrested.
Cabrera is already in the middle of his five years in state prison after pleading guilty in 2010 to second-degree robbery and gang crime counts.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.