A lawyer accused of helping Mexican Mafia members smuggle drugs, collect money and leak information to government informants pleaded guilty Thursday in a deal with prosecutors that could prevent him from serving a prison sentence.
Gabriel Zendejas Chavez, who was indicted in a 2018 investigation into Mexican Mafia frauds at the Los Angeles County jail, told U.S. District Judge George Wu he pleaded guilty to the rare charge of “gross embezzlement.”
Chavez, 47, admitted that he learned a felony was being committed while meeting with an inmate at the county jail, failed to report the crime to authorities and tried to cover it up.
Federal prosecutors agreed to settle Chavez’s case without jail time, fines or any form of supervised release. Wu scheduled a sentencing hearing for Nov. 4.
Chavez’s defense attorney, Megan Blanco, said the guilty plea would likely result in the revocation of his law license. Chavez declined to comment after the hearing.
Chavez went to court in 2022 on racketeering charges. In his defense, he went from being a high school English teacher who studied law at night to a criminal defense attorney who defended some of the most feared inmates in California prisons.
Chavez told jurors, sometimes in tears, that he had clashes with clients who threatened to leave him with his scandals. Wu requested a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a verdict.
Prosecutors reached the deal with Chavez after his defense attorney accused them of withholding evidence during his 2022 trial — hundreds of thousands of pages of records from the jail cases of people he was accused of conspiring with. Chavez signed a plea agreement last week and is scheduled to begin a new trial Oct. 1. His behavior, he admitted in the plea agreement, differed significantly from allegations prosecutors made in a superseding indictment in February.
According to the indictment, Chavez sent a message during an unsupervised legal visit that Frank “Hombrecito” Muñoz, an estranged Mexican Mafia member, had been sentenced to death. Muñoz was killed in Hawaii in 2016.
Prosecutors also accused Chavez of a wide-ranging scheme to overthrow Artur “Turi” Estrada, a notorious member of the Rancho Cucamonga Mexican Mafia. From his cell in Corcoran, witnesses testified at Chavez’s trial, Estrada controlled an underground network that collected money and sold drugs in nearly every prison yard in California.
According to witnesses, some members of the Mexican Mafia, who are being held at the Pelican Bay maximum prison system, accused Estrada of greed. Prosecutors alleged that Chavez met with members of the Mexican Mafia at Pelican Bay and San Quentin under the guise of a legal visit to gather support for the action against Estrada.
Within a two-month span in 2014, Estrada’s right-hand man, David “Radio” Cortez, was killed in Tijuana, and Estrada’s brother, Jorge “Domingo” Estrada, was killed in Ontario. Both murders remain unsolved.
In his testimony, Chavez denied involvement in the campaign against Estrada. His lawyer asked what would happen if he were caught between two factions.
“You’re done,” Chavez said. “You’re dead. And if you’re happy, it’s just you, not anyone around you.”
His plea agreement made no mention of power struggles, shootouts or even the Mexican Mafia. Only Chavez admitted that he went to the Los Angeles jail with a man he knew was involved in the business and failed to notify authorities. He admitted that he concealed the crimes from the prisoner by using “hand gestures” and “coded language” and writing down “the names of members of this criminal enterprise.”
This is a clear reference to the tape played at Chavez’s legal visitation trial featuring Luis “The Weeknd” Garcia, Chavez’s client, who was wearing a wire at the behest of the FBI.
In the 52-minute tape, Garcia discussed with Chavez a plan to extort $100,000 from a motorcycle club in Mongolia in exchange for protection from the Mexican mafia behind bars.
Chavez admitted she spoke to Garcia about “a lot of illegal things,” but insisted she had no intention of following through. She testified she only agreed to go along with plans to film the meeting because Garcia had threatened to hurt her young daughter.
