A previously convicted Mexican Mafia member who ran the activities of one of East Los Angeles’ longest-running street gangs was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison, which will run concurrently with a 20-year sentence he is already serving for an earlier case.
According to the United States Attorney’s Office, Manuel Larry Jackson pleaded guilty to racketeering and drug conspiracy charges in March 2025.
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Five years earlier, Jackson was sentenced to 20 years in prison after a jury in downtown Los Angeles found him guilty of possessing methamphetamine with the intent to distribute. Court documents show that he had nearly 20 prior felony offenses.
In the current case, Jackson was the principal defendant in a 2014 federal racketeering indictment that named over three dozen people accused of gang affiliations.
According to authorities, Jackson, 61, also known as “Cricket,” directed the multigenerational gang, which is named after a park near the Ramona Gardens housing complex in Boyle Heights.
According to the indictment, the gang’s principal business is drug trafficking, with more than three dozen narcotics transactions totaling about a half-pound of methamphetamine.
To conceal the business and expand its territory, the gang’s members use CCTV surveillance at drug houses, make bogus complaints about police officers in an attempt to have them moved to patrol other areas of Los Angeles, and threaten and assault local residents who cooperate with law enforcement, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The gang is tightly affiliated with the Mexican Mafia, and many members of the jail gang are from the East Los Angeles neighborhood, which has long been involved with the street gangs.
According to federal authorities, the gang under Jackson’s direction committed a variety of crimes, the most major of which was drug trafficking, which earns cash through the sale of narcotics and the “taxing” of drug dealers in the area. According to the indictment, some of the cash collected through “taxes” or “rent” was channeled back to Jackson in prison as well as other incarcerated Mexican Mafia associates.
