SACRAMENTO — A person who was pulled over in Missouri whereas transporting methamphetamine for an alleged Aryan Brotherhood member admitted he was responsible two months earlier than federal prosecutors secured 4 indictments within the case, court docket information revealed.
The paperwork, unsealed in late October, present that Nickolas Perez agreed to plead responsible in April 2019 to fees of conspiring with the Aryan Brotherhood to distribute methamphetamine. The plea settlement was signed simply two months earlier than prosecutors charged almost two dozen members and alleged associates of the jail gang with conspiring to promote methamphetamine and heroin inside and outdoors of jail.
The heavily-redacted plea settlement doesn’t publicly reveal Perez’s co-conspirators or precise dates of the offenses. However a June 2019 prison criticism in opposition to 16 alleged Aryan Brotherhood members and associates names Perez as a courier for Travis Burhop, an incarcerated Aryan Brotherhood member who allegedly headed an enormous drug trafficking ring from his jail cell.
Burhop pleaded responsible final week to drug fees, in addition to involvement in a plot to homicide one other Aryan Brotherhood member. It's one in every of 5 murders and 4 alleged plots listed within the indictment.
The criticism alleges that Perez was driving a multi-pound methamphetamine cargo for Burhop in Could 2016, when he was pulled over in Missouri. He allegedly confessed to police, advised them they’d discover extra medicine in his lodge room, and claimed possession of money present in rubber bands within the automotive.
Perez later advised authorities he’d lied to Burhop in regards to the methamphetamine being seized, claiming that he had buried it by a river. So Burhop advised a person named Samuel Keeton to journey to the world with Perez and attempt to find it.
Keeton has since pleaded responsible to a federal drug cost and is awaiting sentencing.
In the meantime, prosecutors say they’re securing a superseding indictment in opposition to a number of of the 16 defendants, anticipated to drop someday within the subsequent month. For now, 5 of the co-defendants are set to go on trial in March 2023, court docket information present.