July 10--The reputed kingpin of a Jamaica Plain gang police say had international ties to Mexico and the Dominican Republic ran a multimillion-dollar cocaine ring right from prison, where he moved hundreds of pounds of the drug using the MCI-Concord phones, authorities said yesterday.
Juan "White Boy" Guzman, locked up since June 2011 on drug and gun charges, pulled the strings of the Boylston Street Gang drug trade from jail, spewing orders in "dozens and dozens" of wiretapped phone calls authorities say were the key in dismantling a ring that helped feed the city's cocaine cravings.
Police said they busted up the brutal Boylston band following a 13-month probe dubbed Operation Rodeo -- a sweep by local and federal agents Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley called the largest "investigation and takedown" of a Boston drug ring in the past decade.
Dispersing scores of FBI agents and local police in a series of pre-dawn raids yesterday, authorities report they arrested 14 people and seized 10 kilos of cocaine, four vehicles including a Mercedes SUV, and $500,000 in cash.
Four suspects were ordered held on bail ranging from $10,000 to $25,000 yesterday at Boston Municipal Court, among them Guzman's sister, Maria Guzman, a judicial secretary at Dorchester Juvenile Court who has a master's degree from Northeastern University, according to her lawyer.
Also arraigned was Guzman's fiance, Melissa Mejia, who prosecutors called the "CEO of a drug operation" run by Guzman. She is also the mother of a 3-year-old girl, according to court testimony.
Police said the 33-year-old Guzman of Hyde Park oversaw drug shipments of up to 100 kilos of cocaine a year and was an "impact player" in the Boylston Street Gang, which became embroiled in a violent feud with its rival Mozart Street Gang in the last five years.
Their back-and-forth bloodshed sparked seven murders and at least a dozen shootings since 2007, law enforcement officials said, starting in September 2007 with the murder of Alan Peguero and four months later with the shooting death of Carlos Sierra, both alleged Mozart associates.
Then, in April 2008, Luis Troncoso, tied to the Boylston gang, was killed, and in October, Garibaldis Pena, who police said had ties to the Mozart gang, was murdered. The slayings reached a head in a November 2010 shootout at a Jamaica Plain pizzeria, where Ariel Dume, an alleged Mozart associate, and Johnel Nova and Winzisky Soto, both with Boylston ties, were all killed, police said.
"We've made various arrests on the shootings and the homicides, but this was the key to it," said Boston police Commissioner Edward F. Davis, who called Guzman's cartel his "No. 1 priority" since starting the probe. "This was the core group behind it all," Davis told the Herald.
Attorney Elliot M. Weinstein, who represented Mejia yesterday and was Guzman's lawyer when he was convicted last year, said Guzman had not been formally charged as of yesterday and "promises of future charges may or may also not be correct."
A district attorney spokesman said Guzman will be arraigned at a later date on charges including, but not limited to, conspiracy to traffic in more than 200 grams of cocaine.
Luis Spencer, commissioner of the Department of Correction, said Guzman was removed from the general population at the Concord state prison yesterday and put in a "special management unit," where all activity -- including exercise and showers -- "is controlled."
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