Roni Arriola-Palma, MS-13 Violent Racketeering, Maryland 2015

Greenbelt, Maryland – A Maryland MS-13 member pleaded guilty to violent racketeering charges, including an attempted murder and extortion, in federal court.

Roni Arriola-Palma, age 24, of Hyattsville, Maryland, admitted his participation in the crimes as a member and leader of the Peajes Locos Salvatrucha clique of MS-13.

According to the plea agreement, from 2009 until at least 2012, Arriola-Palma and MS-13 members in the Peajes clique and other MS-13 cliques committed crimes to further the interests of the gang, including murder, assault, robbery, extortion by threat of violence, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and witness retaliation.

Arriola-Palma admitted that on January 13, 2011, he attended a Peajes clique meeting with other MS-13 members near the Greenbelt Metro Station, where they discussed committing violent crimes against rival gangs.

Arriola-Palma and other MS-13 members attacked a person they believed was an associate of a rival gang, dragging them back into a mini-van, where they continued to assault them. They eventually left the victim for dead in the woods, but the victim survived the attack.

From March to November, 2011, members of the Peajes clique threatened to kill a fellow MS-13 gang member unless he paid them a weekly or bi-weekly ‘rent’ or ‘tax,’ which gang members collected from the victim.

Roni Arriola-Palma faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and is scheduled for sentencing on March 9, 2015, at 10:00 a.m.

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