‘Power, profits, and punishment’: Nuestra Familia trial reveals secrets of the brain trust behind a massive criminal network in Northern California

OAKLAND — For the past six weeks, a group of Bay Area jurors have been treated to an insider look at the prison gang behind Northern California’s largest criminal network, the paramilitary-style web of gangs controlled by an organization known as the Nuestra Familia.

Four men, all incarcerated in California’s prison system, face federal charges of racketeering and conspiracy to commit murder. Two of the defendants are in their 70s and have watched the trial from state-issued wheelchairs, one so afflicted he’s the only one left sitting in the courtroom when jurors enter and exit. But despite the pair’s age and ailing health, prosecutors say they are among the most powerful criminals in the state with the ability to control thousands of gang “soldiers” in neighborhood “regiments” and prisons.

The defendants, David “DC” Cervantes, 76, James Perez, 70, Guillermo Solorio, 45, and George Franco, 59, are alleged to be part of the Nuestra Familia’s leadership, which controls affiliate cliques that are part of the Norteño gang. Based in Northern California, the gang is strongest in the Bay Area and in Monterey County, where its “regiments” pay taxes from drug proceeds and other illegal activity, prosecutors said at the start of trial.

“You’ll hear one Nuestra Familia insider describe an Nuestra Famlia account with $250,000 in it,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Leif Dautch said in his opening statement to the jury. The trial and the gang’s purpose, he said, could be summed as “power, profits and punishment.”

The four men are accused of not only running the gang, but of plotting to murder California prisoners. None of the murder plots were successful, prosecutors say. The victims were either stabbed and survived, or moved off of general population yards before they could be harmed.

The main witnesses include men who rose the ranks of the Nuestra Familia, like Matthew Rocha, a former gang leader who testified he was second-in-command before a power struggle with Perez placed his status in jeopardy. Rocha was eventually stabbed in Pleasant Valley State Prison in 2019, setting off a riot as those loyal to him rushed to protect him. After the stabbing, he left the gang and began cooperating with authorities, culminating with him taking the witness stand this week.

“After the incident on the (prison) yard and how everything transpired, I was unable to go back to the yard,” Rocha testified, explaining how he came to leave the gang.

Rocha’s testimony was an autobiography of sorts. He talked about his upbringing in Salinas, joining a gang as a young teen and spending most of his teen years incarcerated in the California Youth Authority. When he made it to adult prison, he was quickly recruited by the Nuestra Familia, and learned the basics — how to make weapons out of loose metal and plastic, how to write coded messages and smuggle contraband.

The gang even required prospects to write book reports and essays to be graded by higher-ups, he said.

In 1995, prison became Rocha’s life. He was sentenced to 26 years to life for murder and manslaughter convictions, and eventually became a leader in the Nuestra Familia.

In fact, Perez’s lawyer, Shawn Halbert, told jurors in opening statements that Rocha’s testimony is his latest act in an ongoing attempt to get back at Perez over their feud. She described Rocha as an unrepentant killer who was “actively trying to kill Mr. Perez” in 2019. The defense attorneys also said Perez and Franco were leaders of a hunger strike and peace agreement between previously warring gangs that sought to reduce prison violence.

The alleged murder victims were all given due process by the Nuestra Familia and found “guilty” of violating gang tenants, prosecutors said. The infractions ranged from being suspected police informants to murdering a Norteño member without authorization. One of the prosecution witnesses, a former Nuestra Familia named Donald Moran, who went by “Donald Duck,” said he was involved in plots to kill a man whose wife had testified in a criminal case.

Eventually, like Rocha, Moran said he grew disenfranchised with the gang and agreed to testify against his former cohorts.

“The violence, having members you know, killed, trying to kill them, hurting innocent people, involving innocent people, what we would call civilians…Things of that nature,” he said when asked to explain his decision. He later added, “I have no obligation to these people anymore. I’m no longer that person. I don’t want to be that person and be a part of what they’re a part of. I want to close that chapter in my life.”