Fed. Court Sentences Salinas Man With Gang Ties On Racketeering

SAN JOSE, CA -- A Salinas man who associated with three Norteno gangs in his city has been sentenced in federal court in San Jose to 12 years in prison for racketeering conspiracy and aiding an attempted murder of a rival gang member.

Robert Loera, 38, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh on Wednesday. He pleaded guilty before Koh in July to one count of conspiring in a racketeering enterprise between 2009 and 2011 and one count of being an accessory to an attempted murder after the fact.

In the murder attempt, a Norteno gang member shot at three suspected Sureno gang members on Bellehaven Street in Salinas on Nov. 5, 2010, according to a superseding indictment issued by a federal grand jury in
2015. One victim was injured with a head wound and a second man was grazed on his hand by a bullet.

U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Abraham Simmons said that in his plea agreement, Loera admitted that he learned of the shooting while he was driving and then picked up the shooter and another associate and drove them out of the area to help them evade police.

Loera also admitted during his plea that as part of the racketeering, or organized crime, enterprise, he participated in the armed robberies of a pharmacy and a jewelry store in Salinas and a jewelry store in
Watsonville in 2010, Simmons said.

Loera waited outside in a car in the $8,000 pharmacy robbery, drove the getaway car in the $40,000 robbery of the Salinas jewelry store and monitored a police scanner from his car during the $80,000 jewelry store robbery in Watsonville, Simmons said.

Loera was one of nine Norteno members and associates named in the 73-count indictment in 2015. Three others have pleaded guilty to various charges, charges were dismissed for one defendant and the other cases are pending.

The indictment said the enterprise members belonged to or associated with three Norteno-affiliated gangs within Salinas: the East Las Casitas, Salinas East Market and Santa Rita street gangs.

It said Loera was not a member of a gang, but associated with the enterprise members and allowed them to use his house as a safe haven or home base for planning robberies and shootings, regrouping after crimes and
storing guns and robbery proceeds.

In exchange for his guilty plea to the two counts, prosecutors dropped five other counts against Loera, including a charge of conspiring to murder members of rival gangs in aid of racketeering.

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