Some L.A. politicians and anti-gang workers probably can't wait for Hector Marroquin to just disappear. According to Jeffrey Anderson's story on the scrambling away from responsibility for the alleged gun-runner behind the gang-prevention organization No Guns, lots of people seemed to have an idea that Marroquin never left the life. But, did anyone do anything about it? Barely. See "This week in gangs: Once a banger, always a banger?" for more details.
Anderson is also on the web-only update today on the arrest of South L.A. mega landowner and supermarket chain chief George Torres. Federal agents arrested Torres at his home in Arcadia, but the charges haven't been unsealed. With his well-documented ties to the Vignalis, chances are it won't look good.
On the fraud front, Hector Becerra details the exploits of Tony Nava, Jr., a shiny-clean hustler who defrauded as many as 80 people by leveraging his ties to the Mongols bike gang:
The alleged scheme involved persuading people to invest in "hard-money" loans — high- interest loans to people who couldn't borrow from banks. In the beginning, Ramirez said, Nava offered returns on the investments, which were not large.
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Eventually, people began to get suspicious because they were not receiving investment returns from Nava, Berger said. But he said initially they declined to go to authorities because Nava made it no secret that his brother, Art Nava, was a leader of the Mongols gang.
* Photo of Hector Marroquin from LAWeekly.com.