White Power Probe Leads Feds to Alleged Identity Theft 'Hobby'

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-power-probe-leads-feds-to-alleged-identity-theft-hobby

Federal wiretaps targeting cell phones used by Southern California white power gangs allegedly trafficking methamphetamine also turned up a surprise identity theft racket being run by an alleged member of the notorious Lakeside Gangsters, a “multi-generational criminal street gang” with ties to the Aryan Brotherhood and Supreme Power Skins, according to an FBI search warrant application obtained by The Daily Beast.

The investigation began as part of “Operation Shamrock Shake,” a joint investigation led by the FBI’s Violent Crimes Task Force-Gang Group targeting the Aryan Brotherhood, a prison gang, and its “subordinate white power street gangs,” the Supreme Power Skins, the Nazi Low Riders, and the Lakeside Gangsters, the document states. Although Aryan Brotherhood members make up just .1 percent of California’s overall prison population, they are responsible for some 50 percent of all homicides inside state prisons, it adds.

The group is known for its “ability to control subordinate White/Caucasian gangs outside of prison” as it collects “‘taxes’ or payments from these gangs to further their criminal enterprise,” according to the warrnat, which also notes the Aryan Brotherhood’s “history and reputation for using violence as a means of maintaining power and being a force to be reckoned with as a criminal enterprise...involved in drug trafficking, firearms trafficking, extortion, murder, and assaults.”

During the FBI probe, which the bureau conducted with, among others, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the San Diego Police and Sheriff’s Departments, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Internal Revenue Service, investigators identified an alleged high-ranking member of the Lakeside Gangsters named Brett Wenbourne. The warrant application says Wenbourne, known as “Split,” was a meth supplier for Todd “Coyote” Johnson, a so-called shot caller for the Supreme Power Skins.

*snip*