A man who authorities say was a leader of La Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, in Maryland was sentenced Monday to life in federal prison after a jury convicted him of ordering the killings of three teenagers in Maryland and Virginia.
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Junior Noe Alvarado-Requeno, 24, who lived in Landover, Md., before his arrest, was a leader of an MS-13 crew called “the Sailors Clique,” which “spread fear in local communities using violence and extortion,” the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland and the FBI said in a statement.
In November, a U.S. District Court jury in Greenbelt, Md., convicted him of three counts of murder in aid of racketeering, as well as other charges, including drug-distribution conspiracy.
Authorities said Alvarado-Requeno ordered the killing of a suspected rival who, in June 2016, was lured into woods in Gaithersburg, Md., and stabbed 153 times. The teenage victim “did not belong to any gang,” the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.
‘People here live in fear’: MS-13 menaces a community
In December 2016, Alvarado-Requeno “directed and participated in the murder of a 14-year-old member of MS-13 who was suspected of talking to the police,” the U.S. attorney’s office said. The boy’s body was later found near Germantown, Md.
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Then in March 2017, after a member of the Sailors Clique became involved in a dispute with a high school student in Lynchburg, Va., Alvarado-Requeno “organized a squad of MS-13 members” who “kidnapped the student from his front lawn and cut his hands off before killing him.”
Alvarado-Requeno and his co-defendant, Miguel Angel Corea Diaz, 41, formerly of New Jersey, “controlled and operated” the clique as it engaged in extortion, drug trafficking, money laundering and other crimes, the office said. The gang ran a protection racket in the Langley Park, Md., area that “extorted local businesses by charging them ‘rent’ for the privilege of operating in MS-13 ‘territory.’”
Corea Diaz was sentenced to life in prison earlier this month.