Criminal gang leaders executed in central China

Xinhua

CHANGSHA, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- A court in central China's Hunan Province sentenced two leaders of a local organized crime group to death with two year reprieve on Tuesday, according to local authorities.

The Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture Intermediate People's Court handed down the sentences to Liu Wanliang and Yang Zhengliang for their crimes, which included commandeering a private owned manganese mine, organizing and leading a criminal gang, murder, racketeering, sheltering criminals and pandering.

The court also sentenced four of the gang's members to life imprisonment and 23 other gang members to jail terms from two to 20 years.

According to the court, Liu and his gang reaped significant profits from a privately-owned mine that they seized in 2006. Over the following year, Liu illegally purchased two firearms, bringing his personal collection to eight weapons, the court said. Liu used his firearms to kill one person and injure five others, according to the court.

Spanish police arrest suspected Chinese mafia members

CNN

Madrid (CNN) -- Police in Barcelona have arrested 39 members of a suspected Chinese mafia and freed 30 young Chinese women whom they allegedly forced into prostitution, a senior officer of the Catalan regional police told CNN Wednesday. 

The arrests occurred earlier this week after a long investigation. It was the biggest strike to date against Chinese-run mafias involved in forced prostitution in the northeast region of Catalonia, whose capital is Barcelona, said the senior officer, Xavier Cortes, head of the Catalan police unit that fights human trafficking. 

In recent years, the Chinese crime syndicate had crowded out others from the prostitution market in the fashionable Eixample district of Barcelona by using forced prostitution and charging below-market rates, Cortes said. 

The women were forced to work in unsanitary conditions and in marathon sessions, seeing eight clients in a row for an hour each, he said. 

After initial arraignments, a judge ordered 33 of the suspects to remain in prison. Six others were released but remain under investigation, and must check in regularly with authorities, Cortes said.

24 face charges after investigation into organized crime ring

WKYT News

  A Franklin County grand jury has handed down indictments against 24 people following an investigation into organized crime.

  The Franklin County Sheriff's Office says "Operation Maverick," which was launched in March, targeted the importation and trafficking of prescription medication in the county.

The sheriff's office says the investigation revealed many people traveled to Florida to obtain Percocet and other controlled drugs.

Investigators say those suspects were financed by others, and large amounts of drugs were transported from Florida to Franklin County, where the drugs were then sold illegally.

"If you're going to deal drugs here, we are going to arrest you," Franklin County Sheriff Pat Melton said. "That is the bottom line of this operation, and that's the story here. We have tens of thousands of pills coming into our community from Florida by people going down there to the doctor and paying cash."

Did Federal Judge in Immigration Case Benefit from Organized Crime?

Opednews

  A federal judge who last week upheld most of Alabama's immigration law benefited from organized crime in the state's domestic-relations courts, according to a lawsuit filed four years ago.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn held that key provisions in the Alabama immigration law are constitutional, making it the strictest such measure in the nation. But a 2007 federal lawsuit alleges that Blackburn was the beneficiary of unconstitutional actions by certain judges and lawyers in an Alabama divorce court. Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that a hunting club in central Alabama was the focal point of an organized crime ring that fixed divorce cases in order to benefit Blackburn and other favored parties--and their lawyers.

A specially appointed federal judge from Georgia dismissed the lawsuit on technical grounds in March 2008. But U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield found that a key argument in the lawsuit "obviously was not frivolous." And for the purposes of his ruling, Edenfield states, the court was required to find many of the alleged facts as true.

Mexican Mafia racketeers sentenced

From the Houston Chronicle

Five members of the Texas Mexican Mafia gang were sentenced this week in Del Rio to prison terms for racketeering-related crimes, U.S. Attorney Robert Pitmanannounced Friday.

They pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate theRacketeering Influenced Corruption Organization Act. Investigators blamed the gang for two killings.

The Texas Mexican Mafia was formed in the early 1980s by inmates in the state's prison system, and has branched into criminal activity outside prison, including extortion, narcotics trafficking and violent crime to enforce a 10 percent drug street tax.

The case is the first investigation to target the gang's operations along the Texas–Mexico border area, in Eagle Pass, Del Rio, Crystal City, Carrizo Springs, Uvalde, Sabinal and Hondo.

Pope condemns 'Ndrangheta mafia in their Calabrian lair

From the Guardian

Pope Benedict XVI has condemned Italy's "ferocious" 'Ndrangheta mafiaduring a visit to the group's heartland in Calabria, days after police seized a suspected mob shipment of more than half a tonne of cocaine at a local port.

Addressing 40,000 people at a disused industrial site in Lamezia Terme, the pope said the crime families in Calabria, in the toe of Italy, were "tearing at the social fabric" in a region "which seems to be in a constant state of emergency".

In a region noted for chronic unemployment, poor healthcare and corruption, the 'Ndrangheta has used its drug connections with Colombia and its quiet stranglehold on many businesses in northern Italy to overtake Sicily's Cosa Nostra and rack up revenue of €44bn (£37bn) a year, according to a 2008 study.

The pope's denouncement was welcomed by Father Giacomo Panizza, a Roman Catholic priest who works with the disabled in Calabria and has been forced to travel with a police escort after he clashed with local crime bosses.