LAS VEGAS - Fourteen men were named Thursday as members of a white supremacist gang based in Nevada's state prisons who directed murder, extortion, methamphetamine sales and other crimes behind bars and on the outside.
An indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas names five leaders of the Aryan Warriors prison gang: Ronald "Joey" Sellers, Daniel Joseph Egan, James Milton Wallis, Guy Edward Almony, all current prison inmates; and Ronnie Lee Jones.
"The gang members charged in this indictment are alleged to have engaged not only in violence and crime in our prisons, but also of extending their reach outside prison by distributing methamphetamine and other drugs on the streets of our cities," Steven Myhre, acting U.S. attorney for Nevada, said in a statement.
The five-count indictment, handed up Tuesday, accuses each of being a member of a criminal racketeering organization, or RICO. The charge carries the possibility of life in prison if convicted.
Sellers, 39, Egan, 32, and Kenneth Russell Krum, 37, also face charges of engaging in violent crime in aid of racketeering, a federal charge carrying up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Sellers, an inmate nicknamed "Fuzzy," is accused of conspiring in an August 2001 knife attack on a prison inmate who later died.
Egan, known as "Dano," is accused of conspiring in knife assaults on two other inmates in 2004 and 2005.
Krum, known as "Yum Yum," "Big Pimping" or "Barnyard," was identified as an Aryan Warriors lieutenant who conspired in the beating last February of a man at a home in Las Vegas.
"The goal of this investigation, accomplished by these arrests, was to significantly dismantle the Aryan Warriors organization by removing its leadership in the Nevada prison system and disrupting its street program," said Steven Martinez, special agent in charge of the FBI office in Las Vegas.
Martinez said the gang was responsible for manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine and marijuana in Nevada prisons and in the cities of Las Vegas, Reno and Pahrump.
Jones, 47, was arrested Thursday in Las Vegas, along with Krum, Tony Howard Morgan, 38, and Charles Edward Gensemer, 43. Michael Wayne Yost, 53, was arrested in nearby Pahrump.
Almony, 35, Charles Lee Axtell, 47, Scott Michael Sieber, 39, Jason F. Inman, 32, and Robert Allen Young, 29, already were in Nevada prison custody. Kory Allen Crossman, 34, was in federal custody on unrelated charges.
The 14 men are scheduled to appear Friday before a U.S. magistrate judge in Las Vegas.
The investigation began in January 2004, after state prison officials learned of allegations of witness tampering and violence against the family of a former gang leader, officials said.
The indictment accuses the gang of extorting money from inmate families and stealing and using false and fraudulent identification documents and credit cards, in what Myhre called "an ongoing effort to finance and spread their message of hatred and racial supremacy throughout Nevada."