Aryan Brotherhood associate admits to arranging violent crimes, running pounds of drugs from prison cell

FRESNO — A man who prosecutors claim was on a fast track to join the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang when he was indicted in 2020 has admitted to plotting a murder, ordering an arson, arranging a robbery, and directing drug sales from his California prison cell, court records show.

Kenneth Bash, 38, has agreed to plead guilty to a racketeering charge and to a methamphetamine distribution charge, which carries a maximum of life in prison. Bash’s plea agreement details drug deals he arranged in California and Montana, a plot to commit an arson against someone who owed Bash money, and a plot to rob someone in Alabama.

Bash also admitted to his role in a plot to kill a man suspected of molesting a girl. The other two alleged members of the murder plot are incarcerated Aryan Brotherhood members who face pending charges.

Bash was not an Aryan Brotherhood member, but had a position of power within the gang’s hierarchy in Salinas Valley State Prison, in 2020, according to an indictment against him. The plea agreement says he was an “important cog” in the Aryan Brotherhood’s drug business at the prison, which prosecutors say was because he used contraband cellphones to arrange drug smuggling and deals in the free world.

A 2020 wiretap targeting Bash’s phone led to a large-scale federal investigation dubbed Operation Lucky Charm that centered on prison drug smuggling and involvement with a predominantly white gang in the Central Valley known as the Fresnecks. Since then, the case has taken a much darker turn; new indictments have charged alleged gang members with two separate double homicides in Southern California and a string of prison killings.

Bash plotted to kill someone who was suspected of sexually assaulting a girl in October 2020. The plea agreement says the Aryan Brotherhood took the assault as “disrespect” and that Bash arranged to provide the would-be hitman with a gun. The plot never went through.

The indictment charges Aryan Brotherhood members Waylon Pitchford and Jayson Weaver with joining Bash in the plot. The two were reportedly granted membership into the gang after murdering a reputed Black Guerilla Family member named Hugo “Yogi” Pinell in 2015, at California State Prison, Sacramento. Another gang leader was convicted last April of playing a role in Pinell’s murder, and defendant himself at trial with evidence that prison officials knew of threats to Pinell’s life and failed to act.