Pictured: Eduardo Gonzalez-Tostado, reputed AFO cartel associate, SCORE off-road racer and kidnap victim in the United States. At the time in 2007, he reportedly operated numerous 'business' fronts in Mexico and the Untied States. "Eddy" was freed from his captors by the San Diego division of the FBI, in Chula Vista, California. Picture from 'Narco Tijuana'.
Eduardo Gonzalez-Tostado, AKA: “Mandilón,” which comes from the Spanish word for apron — el mandil — and in street parlance, means “whipped.”
Pictured: Eduardo (Eddy) Gonzalez-Tostado's Class 1 wrecked at the SCORE Primm race in September of 2007, killing his co-driver Erick Morales. Morales bled to death after the incident broke his neck and ruptured a major artery to his brain.
Blood covered the inside of the buggy and part of the exterior fiberglass, where he was pulled, blood gushing out of his neck, out of the rig.
At least two kidnapped, tortured and acid dissolved bodies were found buried in the backyard of the kidnap house. These findings were made after the 2007 kidnap victim was rescued.
The Gonzalez kidnapping occurred after a 2006 public call on law enforcement authorities to control the state of widespread lawlessness that appeared to be ignored at the time, with bodies being found all over the border.
Bodies of innocents and noted bi-national criminal players.
Many found on the United States side, with no public mentions of cautionary information from any authority, whatsoever. Possibly because they didn't know what was going on at the time.
In fact, the local San Diego FBI office went as far as calling the local public release of demands for 'greater law enforcement' as "an over-reaction". Clearly, with the release of the indictments today, prove, the federal, state and local authorities had no grip on the situation. What other animals are on the streets, today?]
“(UI-unintelligible) from the, uh, places. From Ensenada”, Eddy said. “A shop associated with off-road race cars”.
When asked if other cartel associates like Jorge Rojas López continue to cross the border and dare, as Rojas bragged, to bring cartel methods to the United States, Mark Amador said that these types of kidnappings have increased in San Diego County over the past few years and there are similar kidnapping crews that remain active since the takedown of Los Palillos in 2007.
“These groups band together in criminal conspiracies to rob, kidnap, extort, and kill.”
It all went down at 539 Point Dume Court, in Chula Vista, California.
According to the San Diego FBI, many kidnappings investigated in San Diego involve Hispanic residents who have ties to Tijuana or Ensenada. Some of the family members who report abductions say, “We were hesitant to come, but there have been three kidnappings in our neighborhood alone, and they never got their family members back, so we’re coming to you for this one". By “neighborhood”, the FBI agent said, the callers really meant their circle of friends.
Sometimes the abduction is discovered because the police find a body, parts of bodies or heads and track down the family and are told, “Yes, there were ransom calls, but we didn’t call the police.”
Reporting From 2007:
''Jury selection will begin Thursday in the trial of a woman accused of luring a wealthy Mexican businessman to a Chula Vista home in 2007, where he was held for eight days by Mexican gang members demanding a ransom.
Nancy Mendoza Moreno, 23, is charged with kidnapping for ransom with bodily injury and conspiracy to commit kidnapping for ransom. She faces life in prison without parole if convicted.
Moreno allegedly met Mexican businessman Eduardo Gonzalez-Tostado at a coffee shop on June 8, 2007 and immediately lured him to the South Bay home with a false hope the two would be intimate. Instead, Gonzalez-Tostado was beaten by masked gunmen wearing police uniforms who turned out to be members of the Los Palillos Mexican gang, prosecutor James Fontaine said.
The victim's family put together nearly $194,000 to pay the ransom, and a tracking device placed in a container with the money led to five defendants, who were arrested on June 16, 2007, as they tried to drive away during the victim's rescue, according to authorities.
Jorge Rojas Lopez and Juan Francisco-Estrada Gonzalez were convicted of the crimes and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Last month, two other members of Los Palillos, Jose Olivera Beritan and David Valencia, were convicted of the kidnapping and other crimes, including murder.
''''Two members of a breakaway Mexican drug gang dissolved their victims' corpses in vats of acid in a gruesome display of Mexican cartel tactics played out on U.S. soil, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday.
The defendants held two kidnap victims in the master bedroom of a home in a middle-income San Diego home as ransom payments were negotiated, said Mark Amador, a San Diego County deputy district attorney. After being dragged downstairs and strangled to death in June 2007, the bodies were placed in two 55-gallon barrels of simmering fluids being heated by propane tanks.
A cooperating witness eventually led investigators to the San Diego ranch of one defendant, where they discovered bones, 14 teeth and body remains that appeared like brownish gelatin, Amador told jurors in his opening statement.
The technique of dissolving bodies in liquid is common among warring Mexican cartels but extremely rare on U.S. soil. It allows for evidence to be destroyed.
Amador said the liquids are typically made of supplies that can be purchased at Home Depot, like pool cleaners. Jurors were shown photos of three boxes of muriatic acid found in one holding house in Chula Vista, a San Diego suburb.
Jose Olivera Beritan, 38, and David Valencia, 41, are charged with murdering and kidnapping two people in San Diego, while Beritan is charged with a third murder. They are the first to go on trial among 17 people were indicted in 2009 in what authorities said was a campaign by a Mexican drug gang to export its violent ways to the United States.
Beritan is also charged with an attempted kidnapping in January 2007. The victim was allegedly abducted in a San Diego suburb by assailants wearing police uniforms and managed to escape. The victim is expected to testify.
"Disturbing news, horrifying events, graphic images, evil deeds motivated by greed and revenge," Amador said.
Prosecutors say the defendants belonged to "Los Palillos" --"The Toothpicks" in English -- a cell of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel that broke away around 2002 when its leader was killed in an internal feud. The leader's younger brother, Jorge Rojas, moved to the San Diego area and allegedly directed the cell in trafficking drugs and committing nine murders and a series of kidnappings until his arrest in 2007.
Rojas, 32, was convicted of one kidnapping in 2008 and sentenced to life in prison. He will be tried later this year on additional charges that may make him eligible for the death penalty, if convicted.
The group's targets were sometimes suspected or confirmed drug traffickers, authorities say.
The two whose bodies were dissolved in acid include a drug trafficker, said Amador, who did not reveal the other victim's occupation in his opening statement. The home where their bodies were dissolved was equipped with sheets of wood and fans.
"It was a mess to do this, and it stunk," Amador said.
The group's demise came in June 2007 when the family of one kidnap victim, Eduardo Gonzalez Tostado, called the FBI for help, Amador said. Families of previous victims refused to contact authorities.
The prosecutor described Gonzalez as a wealthy businessman but acknowledged he is suspected by some of ties to the Arellano Felix cartel. A young woman allegedly lured him to a home in Chula Vista, where he was chained and blindfolded in a closet for eight days while his captors demanded $2 million from his pregnant wife.
The family paid $193,000 in a package equipped with a tracking device that the FBI used to locate the victim. Gonzalez, who was rescued in a SWAT raid, is expected to testify at the trial."" [From 2007]
The Rest Of The Story...
From reporting at the time: ""Some
members of Los Palillos, most of whom grew up and went to high school in
San Diego, once worked as hit men in Tijuana, Mexico, for the Arellano
Félix organization, one of the drug cartels in Latin America, behind
much of America’s illegal marijuana trade, according to the authorities.
But
in 2002, cartel bosses had the leader of Los Palillos at the time,
Victor Rojas Lopez, assassinated, Mr. Amador said. The victim’s brother,
Jorge Rojas Lopez, took over the crew, helped to break two other
members out of a Mexican prison and moved the operation to San Diego,
Mr. Amador said.
By
August 2004, the crew had begun kidnapping and killing people, Mr.
Amador said. “They got hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of
ransom money for several kidnappings,” he said.
“Sometimes they would kill the victim, and in other cases they would release them.”"
***""And the FBI did not know what was going on!""
http://bajasafari.blogspot.com/2009/08/kidnappings-tortures-mutalations.html
http://bajasafari.blogspot.com/2007/09/baja-off-road-racer-killed-at-score.html
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi24dfuVQ5kNHTYPHS6QkF4Aff-5rHtfE2UIc2MPKjLXglFylTXoXNJjnMTMbbf9f_N8LD6KK5SrJraU9bV90Fik3jiBhqIWQwTU3x2uF1W6eoaqGIp-lXtfAA6dGTSh9Dm8WzrVw/s1600-h/baja+racing+news+.com+SCORE+fatal+morales+primm.jpg
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2010/apr/07/cover/
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2007/aug/28/testimony-begins-in-chula-vista-kidnap-for-ransom/
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2012/02/trial-begins-of-afo-cell-in-san-diego.html
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