Authorities: MS-13 gang founder in Massachusetts sentenced
A man prosecutors say is the founder of the transnational street-gang MS-13 in Massachusetts was sentenced Tuesday for illegally re-entering the country, according to a release from the U.S. District Attorney’s office.
Carlos Geovanni Martinez-Aguila, 38, of Mesquite, Texas, received three years in prison and two years of supervised release. He was born in El Salvador in 1977 and entered the United States illegally in 1995, before being deported back to El Salvador in 2003 after he was convicted of an unarmed robbery, authorities said.
Martinez-Aguila’s sentencing comes after a federal sweep of alleged MS-13 gang members in the Boston area. Prosecutors say the gang is responsible for four murders in the Boston area. Authorities used informants to record the gang’s initiation rituals.
Martinez-Aguila, who authorities say is known by the gang nickname “Buffalo,” “was well known by MS-13 gang members and local law enforcement as a founder of MS-13 in Massachusetts,” according to the release.
A law enforcement source told Boston.com that Martinez-Aguila is infamous for surviving a 1999 incident in Everett in which a fellow gang member shot him in the face. The bullet entered the left side of his cheek and lodged in his sinus area, leaving him relatively unharmed, the source said.
According to the release, in 2005, federal law enforcement arrested Martinez-Aguila, who provided a false name, in Lawrence after he had re-entered the country. Martinez-Aguila was arrested for armed robbery, assault with a dangerous weapon, making threats, and giving a false name to police, but posted bail and was released before Lawrence police learned his true identity, authorities said.
He was arrested 10 years later, on Sept. 23, 2015, near Dallas, Texas, and pleaded guilty in April to unlawful re-entry of a deported alien.
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