Chicago Tribune
COOK County, Illinois -- The violent and sometimes improbable saga of a fake ID ring that stretched from Little Village to Mexico City reached a climax Wednesday, when federal authorities announced that they had captured the leader in Mexico and charged him with murder and racketeering.
U.S. law enforcement officials in Chicago said Mexican authorities caught up Friday with Manuel Leija-Sanchez, 40, saying he was the leader of a Little Village-based operation since at least 1993. Officials estimate the ring made as much as $3 million a year over that period.
The ring made headlines in April, when, according to authorities, the slaying of an alleged competitor led armed federal agents to storm the operation in a daylight raid, triggering a street protest over the agents' tactics.
Long part of the daily bustle at a 26th Street outdoor mall, the ring was the Chicago franchise of a larger network of fake ID operations across the U.S., run by the Castorena-Ibarra crime family in Mexico, federal immigration officials say.
Posted by tyne at October 25, 2007