Source: United States Department of Justice News
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – A federal indictment was unsealed today in the District of Puerto Rico charging twenty-nine defendants with racketeering—drug trafficking, money laundering, bribery, extortion, wire fraud, and murder—and firearms trafficking committed in furtherance of one of the oldest criminal enterprises in Puerto Rico, El Grupo de los 27, announced W. Stephen Muldrow, U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico. Since 1980, El Grupo de los 27, also known as Los 27, has engaged in criminal activity within and outside the prison system of the Puerto Rico Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (PR DOC) and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). On June 27, 1980, Luis Pinela-Pizarro, aka “Shino Pinela/Tio/Pai/El Viejo” and others founded Los 27. The enterprise’s primary purpose was to take control of the prisons to make money.