George Torres-Ramos is the owner of a successful chain of supermarkets situated throughout low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. He’s also under indictment, facing 59 counts of charges spanning from racketeering, violence in aid of racketeering, conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants and several types of fraud that netted over $100 million. Along the way, Torres has been accused of bribing several officials to help secure liquor licenses. Heâs also suspected of orchestrating three murders.
The trail to his indictment traces back to the end of the Clinton era. Officials at the Drug Enforcement Agency had long held suspicions that Torres was trafficking cocaine in his grocery trucks, but had never had enough evidence to to charge him. Torresâs business association with one Horacio Vignali eventually changed that.
Vignali had been identified as one of Torresâ business partners by the DEA, but any investigation into Torres had subsequently run out of steam. But Vignali became public news when his son’s prison sentence for cocaine trafficking was commuted by President Clinton on the way out of office. Remarkably, President Clinton had received commutation requests from the sheriff, the U.S. Attorney, two Congressmen, the L.A. County Supervisor and the current mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
The commutation caused an outrage, spawning among other things, a 2002 congressional investigation. But it was this commutation, combined with the business relationship between Vignali and Torres, that spurred investigators to take a broader look at the Los Angeles grocer. What they found was a trail of evidence connecting Torres to extortion, racketeering, bribery and murder.
According to investigators, Torres exploited and even physically abused illegal immigrants working for him. And he allegedly bribed two city officials with the hopes of gaining a liquor license. Torres provided a former planning commissioner with a truck, tickets to sporting events as well as an apartment to ensure that the man was living in the right district to help him. He is additionally accused of conspiring with a member of the Los Angeles Central Area Planning Commission in order to help procure additional liquor licenses.
And while Torres has not been indicted for drug trafficking, it’s clear why the DEA had suspected him. Torres allegedly employed drug dealers to muscle out his competition. According to the indictment, he ordered one of his employees, Ignacio Meza, to kill two members of rival gangs; later, Torres had Meza killed as well.
Throughout all of this, Torres was able to avoid being convicted of any charges, despite plenty of suspicion and two charges of carrying a concealed weapon. But there are worries that his lack of a record was more than just luck. A raid of one of Torresâ business sites produced a copy of a confidential DEA report, suggesting inside connections. And an unsettling story has recently come forward from Deputy City Attorney Asha Greenberg.
It happened when Greenberg was investigating a complaint that Torres was illegally demolishing low-income housing in order to build a parking lot. She claims that during her investigation she received two calls from staff members of L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, followed by a call from Delgadillo himself. Greenberg recalls that Torres had told Delgadillo that an indictment would hinder his ability to procure and maintain liquor licenses. Greenberg says âIt was very unusual for Rocky to call meâ¦. Given the calls that came earlier, I felt pressured.â Nevertheless, Greenberg continued her investigation, and the case was eventually plea bargained down to a misdemeanor.
Delgadillo for his part denies the nature of his call, claiming that he never pressured Greenberg and he ultimately deferred to her recommendation. He also says that his call was in response to an âexternal inquiryâ about the case. However, Delgadillo is engrossed in his own problems currently. He is facing ethics complaints from the local bar for giving his wife access to a city car, and for using staff members to run errands and baby-sit his children. Last week, the LA Times editorial board called for his resignation.
So it’s an understatement to say that George Torres-Ramos had long-reaching influence in Los Angeles politics. And as interesting as this case has been recently, it will be even more interesting to see if the case reveals more of Torres’ friends in high places.
