Original subtitles

MS13 is the most violent street gang

I've ever investigated.

[reporter] Rape, murders, and violence,

MS13 has left a trail of victims

throughout Greater Boston.

Their moniker stands for control, rape, murder.

They wanted to take over the drug business here in Boston.

[in Spanish]

[reporter] Three teenagers murdered

and an innocent mother killed in MS13 crossfire.

They're recruiting kids as young as 10 and 11 years old.

[Mako] MS13, they are like animals

because they make young kids into psychos.

[woman speaking]

[Mario] They were trafficking in violence.

And that violence is everything to them.

[Maria] They stabbed him 38 times.

[man] MS13 turned a hard working

blue-collared community

into their own hunting ground for murders.

And so my job is to protect those kids.

I do it because I want our communities to be safer.

I wanna protect our country.

My name is Special Agent Jeff Wood.

[theme music playing]

[narrator] This isFEDS.

[sirens wailing]

[indistinct shouting]

I've never seen a gang so quick to kill somebody

as MS13 was.

[indistinct chatter]

[Mario] Violence is everything to them.

They're able to recruit through the violence.

They're able to keep the territory through the violence.

They're able to make money through the violence.

MS13's origins start back to a really horrific civil war

in El Salvador.

A lot of people fled to LA.

Some of the younger generation became their own sort of gang.

[Jeff] 1979, there was Mara Salvatrucha

which means this El Salvadorian gang wars.

But in the 1980s, they morphed

into an American street gang

doing drive-by shootings, selling drugs.

People started getting locked up.

The Mexican Mafia and the California prison systems

was ruling all the Hispanic gangs.

Mara Salvatrucha showed their respect

adopted 13 because 13 is the number

associated with the Mexican Mafia.

The fact that MS13 gang members were not US citizens,

they were deported back to El Salvador.

Once they were in El Salvador,

it became more terrorizing than before.

And as a result of that,

the power structure which had always been LA,

it transferred to El Salvador.

[indistinct chatter]

[Jeff] This case was different.

It was more violent.

It was faster.

It was bigger than my other cases.

I had to separate myself

from the human aspect,

so I can do this job because it's horrifying.

[tense music playing]

Started 2012, we began looking at MS13

because we knew the problem was around the rest of the country.

And we were starting to see an uptick in violence

that MS13 was committing in the Greater Boston area.

In this condensed area,

we have one of the highest populations

of Central Americans in the country.

It was frightening to know that this existed

in our communities.

They work really, really hard.

They work in the back of a house or restaurants.

They work jobs that nobody wants to work.

You've got mothers and fathers who are afraid that their kids

will be forced into gangs.

You've got mothers and fathers that are afraid

that their kids walking home at night

could be shot during a drive-by.

[Mario] I was assigned to the gang unit

for the Mass. State Police.

My job was to be

on the streets all the time.

We developed information

that the majority of the recruiting for MS13

was being conducted at the local schools.

And unfortunately, we are blind

to this Central American community

because they don't come to law enforcement

for fear of retribution.

My name is Maria.

I came to the United States for a better life.

I felt scared of the gun violence in El Salvador.

And there was no future for my family.

I didn't have the money for a ticket to America.

So I came by jumping on the freight train.

When I get here, I took two jobs

and saved for a year so my family could come, too.

When my son arrived, I was so happy.

He went to high school and started doing well.

I thought I was removing him from danger.

But he started getting harassed in school

by people who want him to join MS13 in Boston.

He said no because he wanted to be an engineer.

Then two months after we got here,

some guys threatened to kill him if he didn't join.

[Mario] Maria is an incredible story.

She endured so much to get here.

And all she wants to do is bring her family back.

And here I am investigating crimes and not understanding

there's a community out there that doesn't have a voice.

[Mario] Jeff and I have been partners since 2000.

He and I probably spent more time together

than we did with our families.

The FBI can't do violent street gang operations,

investigations without our local and state

law enforcement partners.

So we created the North Shore Gang Task Force

here in Boston.

[Mario] In 2012, we saw violence

in a manner that we had just never seen before.

We saw youth being hunted down

by gang members.

They'd be tracked off of bus lines.

They'd be followed home from school.

There were assaults.

There were robberies.

And it all can be attributed back to MS13.

Our goal with Operation Mean Streets

was to infiltrate the gang with informants,

gather evidence of the criminal activities,

and then prosecute them.

And remove them from our streets.

[Peter] We wanted to take out a high quantity

and a high quality of MS13 members.

And eliminate the effectiveness

of MS13 in the Boston area.

[Mario] Throughout any investigation,

having an informant is critical to its success.

It gives you eyes and ears to things

that you just would not see

if you didn't have somebody on the inside.

In this case with MS13,

we just had difficulty finding somebody that we could use.

They will murder you. Murder your family.

Murder anybody associated with you

for cooperating with the police.

[Mario] I was out in El Salvador

for an exchange program

learning more about the gang.

That was 2012.

While in El Salvador, a colleague introduced me

to an individual who could potentially

develop into an informant.

That individual we named Mako

was actually not a member of MS13

but was a member of a cartel.

Mako had been arrested as a member of that cartel

and deported back to El Salvador.

He had a very lucrative drug trafficking business.

And now he suddenly has nothing.

He wanted to come back to the states

and live back here in the states with his family,

and go on to be a productive member of society,

and not be a criminal anymore.

[Mario] He had expressed an interest

in helping to get rid of MS13 in Massachusetts.

[Mako] When I meet Mario,

I know it's time to fix my life.

So I offered to work with the FBI.

This is the only way I can clear my life

and I can help young people.

He was convinced that he would be able to infiltrate.

[Mako] I grew up with MS13 the whole of my life.

They are animals.

I've seen people cut in pieces and then they eat them.

When Mako was introduced to the FBI,

it was an outstanding opportunity for us.

He's a known criminal.

That gives him credibility because he can talk the talk.

You can't send a rabbit into the snake den

and expect the rabbit to survive.

You need to send a snake into the snake den.

When we first brought Mako in the States,

we had him pretend that he was an illegal immigrant

in Chelsea, East Boston.

[Mario] Mako, in the very beginning

in this investigation,

was purchasing fake passports

or fake ID cards,

you know, asking a few of them for narcotics.

And that builds up his reputation now

as somebody who's involved in the narcotics trade.

I gave Mako authority

under my direction to go buy drugs.

Our goal was to have him,

once he made these friendships,

to use his old backstory as a drug dealer

to show that MS13 was willing to use their resources

to protect this drug dealer, so we could prosecute them.

We were always strategizing what we were gonna do

for the case to move forward

to accomplish the goal of removing these violent

gang members from the streets.

[Mako] The first time I arrived in Boston,

I'd be afraid all the time. I don't know nobody.

And I feel the FBI,

maybe he thinking now,

this guy, he's not gonna do it.

Like in my mind, I say like, I have to do it.

Over here, you got opportunity.

In my country, you get nothing.

But to get a better life first,

I must live a double life with MS13.

[Mario] So Mako arrives in Massachusetts

and initially we got him embedded into the community.

He was then introduced to Muerto.

And Muerto means death or the dead one.

Muerto is an MS13 homeboy,

which means he'd already committed

several violent crimes.

[Mako] First time I meet Muerto is right here

where everyone comes to hang out.

When Mako met Muerto,

that was key for our investigation.

That first introduction enabled him

to make a good friend within the gang.

[Mako] Everybody listen to Muerto right here in Chelsea,

because he's a tough man.

As soon as I meet him, me and him connected.

And after that, I got a power here in Boston.

[Mario] They become friendly.

And from that,

Mako is introduced to other MS members.

That opened up the door for us to infiltrate the gang.

[Mario] I would meet Mako on a regular basis

couple times a day.

This is where we were able to put Mako

in the majority of this investigation.

I would go underneath this carport.

On the inside, we would exchange information

out of view from everybody in the city.

The city has eyes everywhere.

[Peter] At this stage, we're mostly learning about

who some of the players are, what they were doing.

We were building up trust.

His trust with them,

so that they would confide in him and tell him things.

He also was gathering a lot of information,

intelligence on what the gang look like.

They have very clear leadership structure.

The Eastside clique was led by Casper.

And then the second in charge, Playa.

And underneath them, we'd call them homeboys.

They are significant contributor to the gang.

They have a Chequeo and a Paro.

We were able to determine that there was

a significant clique that Muerto belong to.

We also learned of all of the cliques in that area,

which totaled eight at the time.

It just blew the lid off the case for us.

He was able to infiltrate

the world's most dangerous gang.

We were cautious about everything

that we were doing with him.

We were very, very aware

of how risky it was for him and his safety.

[Jeff] I always had more stress in this investigation

than I had at any time in my life

including my tour in Afghanistan,

just worried for his safety.

[Peter] At this point now, we were thinking about

gathering evidence that could be used

to charge people with federal crimes,

but every plan works until,

you know, you get punched in the mouth.

[Mako] One day, Muerto, he rings me and says,

"What are you doing now?" I tell him nothing.

But I worry the way that he say it.

I think something is wrong.

It's very nerve-wracking.

If the gang now knows that he's cooperating,

he's wearing a wire, then they're gonna kill him.

Muerto asked me to pick up some other gang members

and drive out to an MS13 meeting place.

[Mario] This location caused us a lot of stress.

It's so isolated.

This is a tough place to watch.

We were always afraid that Mako would be killed here.

[Mako] I open the garage door and everybody looks at me

and I say, "Oh, my God,

they found out I'm working with the FBI."

This is a situation where this could be

closing our case down long before

we're ready to close it.

[in Spanish]

[Mako] Casper, he's the leader.

He get out of, like, the couch.

And then he say, "You're not scared?"

And I say, "I never be scared, bro."

But I'm scared.

I waited, expecting he's coming

to stab me or something.

And he said, "Now, you're going to be

initiated in the gang.

You're going to be jumping tonight."

So, in MS13

to become a homeboy, you get jumped in.

You have a leader who counts to 13 slowly.

And during that 13 seconds, you have up to four, five

members of the gang beating you up.

[Casper speaking Spanish]

The leader counts to 13, he's picked up,

and he's celebrated now as a homeboy.

[man in Spanish]

[Mako] When the guys finish everything, I'm not happy.

I feel sad.

I'm scared to tell to the FBI I get jump in,

because I think the FBI are going to take me back

to El Salvador.

[Jeff] When Mako called us and said he had been jumped in,

first thought, "Holy crap. He's a member."

At the same time,

I'm thinking, this is fantastic.

He's now a full member, it's gonna even open up

more access to the gang.

So, I'm thinking, "How am I gonna handle this?"

[Peter] Option one was to pull him out.

Even that would have to be done delicately,

because you can't just pull him out in a way

that makes it clear that he was cooperating.

Option two is, can we keep him in?

Another really fortunate part about this investigation was

the other cliques that were in the area,

they were really adhering to that rule

of you have to commit a homicide

to become a homeboy.

Not so much Eastside.

For them, the rules were a little bit different.

They were legal residents here.

They didn't really wanna forfeit that.

So they weren't as violent as the other cliques.

That enabled us to say we can continue this case,

taking it day by day and seeing what happen.

[gunshots]

[woman speaking]

[Mario] In 2014,

we were seeing spikes in violence.

The leadership in El Salvador

was creating a new way of running the gang.

They were giving out punishment to gang members

that have violated the rules.

[woman speaking]

[woman 2 speaking]

They made sure that in order to become a homeboy,

you had to commit murder.

If you were gonna say, "Oh, I'm not gonna do that,"

then you just became the target.

[gunshots]

[woman speaking]

[Mario] That new rule was horrific for us.

We were seeing high school MS13 gang members

taking their machetes

and hacking their rival gang members

to try and kill them.

[woman speaking]

It's power. It's fear.

They wanna control their territory.

[woman speaking]

[Mario] In a span of months,

there were multiple machete attacks

where, like, people's arms were hacked off.

Just complete carnage.

And so, we had to move quickly on those cases

to remove the people responsible.

It was very stressful.

They're recruiting kids in high school

to kill somebody.

The next step of the investigation was

infiltrating the rest of the cliques

and gather evidence against them.

We had to sit down with Mako and talk to Mako

and he came up with an idea.

Mako said, "Hey, I'm gonna be

a gypsy taxi cab driver to make money."

And the gypsy cabs are a very common thing

in our communities. It's like an Uber for cheap.

It started when people need a ride.

When they are drunk to go home because I'm not drinking

when the rest are drinking

and suddenly everyone feels comfortable with me

and boom, all MS, he got my number.

[Jeff] And we were like, "Great,

because now we're gonna outfit your car

with audio, video surveillance equipment."

It's a great way to gather evidence

because you can see everybody's face clearly,

everybody's sitting in one position

as opposed to walking around on the street.

[man in Spanish]

[Mako in Spanish]

[man in Spanish]

We get a phone call from an MS13 gang member,

picks him up, and then he'd start

engaging them in conversation.

[in Spanish]

[laughter]

[Mako in Spanish]

[Jeff] And because he was so trusted,

people just started telling him different things

that they were involved in.

[Mako] Also, when I get a call from MS,

they got an address and a phone number,

and I give it to the FBI.

[man in Spanish]

[Mako in Spanish]

[man in Spanish]

On multiple occasions during this investigation,

he will learn of a potential crime beforehand.

And so, Mako was able to give us eyes and ears on things

to prevent that violence

and to resolve some of the violence.

[man in Spanish]

I got my respect because I come from El Salvador.

So when the guys come in my car, like, they start to talk.

But always I'm scared in case someone finds me out.

[man in Spanish]

[man over the phone in Spanish]

[Mako] My experience, you know, with the cartel

is always useful, but MS is more dangerous.

So my rule is simple.

I don't trust nobody.

It's easier when I don't trust nobody.

[Jeff] It's dangerous, like the fact Mako had a car

opened up a world of wonders to us.

It was the gold mine.

[Mario] It wasn't long after we had Mako

driving in a gypsy cab

that we were able to affect our first arrest.

December 2014, a murder occurs in Chelsea.

[Mario] MS13 members entered a house,

shooting one person in the face

and shooting another in the heart,

leaving one dead

and one clinging on to life.

Mako gets a call from Big Crazy.

Big Crazy is the leader

of the Everett Locos Salvatrucha.

They're gonna smuggle the murderer

out of Massachusetts to New Jersey.

[Mako] I tell Big Crazy, "Hey, bro, I can pick you up later."

I tried to delay things to give time for the Feds

to make a plan.

I pick up Big Crazy,

and then the hitman gets in.

A guy called Vida Loca, who's from New Jersey.

[Jeff] Big Crazy and the murderer jump in the car.

[Mario] We certainly weren't gonna let the killer leave the area.

So we told Mako we're gonna... we're gonna stop.

We're gonna pretend that we're just pulling it over

on his brake light.

[Jeff] We followed him.

[Mario] It's nerve-wracking.

It's extremely dangerous for Mako.

[Jeff] Mario is in an unmarked cruiser

and he pulls Mako over.

[Mario] I go up to the driver side.

[Jeff] And as Mario is giving Mako a citation,

he's able to identify everyone in the car

and he sees the murderer and takes him, cuffs him,

puts him in the back of the cruiser and leaves.

Big Crazy immediately accuses Mako

of being an informant that led to this guy's arrest.

[Mako] I feel scared.

Vida Loca, the hitman, he got arrested.

Now, maybe I'm dead.

Big Crazy, the gang leader tells me,

"I wanna check the brake light."

I say, "Okay.

He goes back and when I push the brake,

he sees it's not working.

Mako, before he got into his car,

came up with a plan of disabling his taillight.

He didn't tell us. We didn't know about it.

We didn't have time. He just did it.

[Mako] I know how criminals work,

so I have to protect myself.

And I told him, "Yeah, man,

this is what the police told me."

Crazy say, "Okay, take me back home."

And after that, Crazy, like, calmed down.

He was cooler.

Every day in this investigation,

our concerns were that they would learn

that he was cooperating,

that would result in his death.

Every day.

In 2015, there was a directive

from leadership in El Salvador

to the leadership in the United States

that they needed to commit more acts of violence.

Install fear in their enemies.

[woman speaking]

[Mario] They wanted to continuously demonstrate

that murder, rape, control mantra was real.

You know, we got to make sure that everybody

was playing a role in the violence.

[Maria] The last day I saw my son, it was a Sunday.

He wore the new clothes that I bought him on

which he never wore.

And one day, a boy who says he is the cousin

of a girl my son is talking to online.

He came and took him to meet her.

He said the girl was waiting on the beach,

that when they were walking along the sandy shore,

the gang was waiting.

They struck him over the head with a big rock.

And when he fell, the other guy

stabbed him using kitchen knives.

They stabbed him 38 times.

The impact was so strong,

half of the knife got stuck inside him.

He was just 15 years old.

The truth is that I didn't think

they could kill him here.

I thought that here, they could threaten him,

but not kill him.

But that wasn't the case.

There was no difference between here and El Salvador

because they were killing so many children.

It was awful for every mother.

It was brutal and it just brought to life again

how horrific these MS13 gang members are

when they go and plan and execute their victims

in order to become full blown members.

He had been catfished by the gang,

and so through the course of two to three months,

the gang pretended to be a pretty girl

to this little 15-year-old

who thought he had a girlfriend.

They assumed that he was part of the Rivals,

uh, 18th Street Gang.

That was never the case.

[Mako] I feel like angry because I don't like it,

you know, the way they did it.

MS13, they are like animals

because they make young kids into psychos.

It was always a worry for the FBI and the task force

that Mako could be discovered as an informant.

He's providing us the information

that could somehow lead back to Mako

and result in his death.

Every day, they looked at different people

and accuse them of cooperating with the police.

In April 2015, Mako gave us the information

that MS13 wanted to kill a gang member

with his street name Clacker.

A few months earlier,

we arrested the guy for a gun. He's in jail.

That leader thinks Clacker informed on him

and directs Mako to go down to New Jersey

to pick up a homeboy,

bring him back, and go kill Clacker.

[man in Spanish]

[Mako in Spanish]

People think Clacker, he's the one who's snitching.

Like, for real.

But it's not Clacker, it's me.

Clacker, he's innocent.

[Mario] Mako brings the hitman

and they're circling around,

we're conducting surveillance.

We are on high alert.

-[Mako in Spanish] -[man in Spanish]

If they found a recording device on him,

they would kill him immediately.

Word would go down to El Salvador immediately

and, uh, his entire family would be killed.

[Mario] I was in a unmarked vehicle following him.

My job was to make sure that Mako was safe.

[man in Spanish]

[man in Spanish]

[Mako] I feel bad because I don't want him

to get killed. But it's no easy for me

because I tried to be a criminal

and at the same time, I want to save his life.

At some point, Chucky in the backseat

pulls out a machete and they start describing

what they're gonna do to him.

[man in Spanish]

[man in Spanish]

The hitman was gonna come up behind him,

take his garrote and start choking him out.

While the chaqueo was supposed to come up

and start hitting him

with the machete and killing him.

[man in Spanish]

[Mako] I was worried. They are so ready to kill,

they could go kill anyone.

I feel so angry because this guy,

he has no heart.

When he sees a lot of love, he's so happy.

[Jeff] Eventually the hitman goes,

"We can't find him.

It's time for me to go back to New Jersey."

[Mario] At the time of this, though,

we had already moved Clacker

and his entire family.

And in fact, Clacker was in grand jury

testifying about the entire thing.

And we had him telling us for two days

his whole story about his involvement in the gang.

[Peter] You're always looking for the opportunity

to roll somebody, to get somebody to cooperate,

because that's how cases are made.

One of the things that I always tell cooperators

is that we need to know all the bad stuff you did.

So probably the sixth time we're talking to him,

Clacker tells us that he was involved

in robbing gypsy cab drivers.

But he says Mako was like the setup guy.

Mako would call a gypsy cab driver

and say, "You know, meet me at the corner

of such and such street."

And then when the gypsy cab driver showed up,

the gang members would rob him.

It was a shock. It was a blow.

Mako has committed what we call in the FBI

unauthorized illegal activity.

[Mario] When I heard about that, I felt betrayed

because we were so involved with Mako.

At that point,

our relationship changes, right?

Because we have a partnership to a degree,

when he does something that is,

uh, that blatantly hurts

other members of the community,

it's offensive.

It's a huge deal. That was...

That was the biggest deal.

And my heart is sinking

because I'm thinking my case is destroyed.

When I got notification that Mako had participated

in some armed robberies, my first thought is,

I'm gonna have to arrest Mako

because he's broken the law.

This is something that I would lock him up for.

I was disappointed.

I was upset.

And now I have to report this up the chain of command.

The first thing you wanna do in a situation like that

is you wanna bring him in, confront him with it.

[Mako] I feel bad, you know, I make a mistake, you know,

and I don't like that.

But I say I'm not part in the actual robbery.

[Peter] He said he did it to gain these guys' trust.

It's not an acceptable answer.

The normal course, you shut him down.

But there were tactical reasons

to keep him in play

and real life reasons to keep him in play.

One is, if we pull him out,

then MS13 is gonna believe he was cooperating

and we're putting his entire family in El Salvador

in jeopardy, likely to be killed.

Two, this was sort of the height of the violence.

[gunshots]

[man speaking]

And it would compromise our ability

to protect the community

where Mako is our only eyes and ears.

So me and the other members of the task force agreed

that we should keep him in play.

At this point, we are actively in the process

of getting ready to take the case now.

We had the leadership of all the different cliques

in the Boston area that were chargeable

and we had a significant quantity of members.

But we have a problem.

We don't know the names

of every single person, their true name.

[Peter] Frequently, all we had was their

street names, their code names.

So there's a lot to do

to be able to charge them and arrest them.

One of the things that happened

in the investigation that helped with that

was that there was gonna be a jump in.

We knew that there'd be leadership there.

We knew that there'd be homeboys there.

So, on December 6, 2015,

we followed Mako to this location.

We didn't follow him all the way to Deer Island

because we didn't want anyone to observe us.

Obviously, it's winter, it's dark.

And we're sitting there, the meeting's going on.

[man in Spanish]

[man speaking in Spanish]

[Jeff] So when they get done their jump in,

we had state police do the car stop.

[officer] Hands, hands, hands, put your hands on the wheel!

And we came up with the story and we said,

"Hey, look, you're here at this water treatment facility.

We got a tip there were people here.

We're here to make sure you're not terrorists."

[Jeff] They take photographs of everybody,

take their IDs, write their names.

So that way, when we obtained our arrest warrants,

we had some pretty good ideas of exact locations

where to go hunt and find our subjects

and make arrests.

By the time we're done, we realized we're going

to indict 62 MS13 gang leaders,

members, and associates.

So, we're in December of 2015.

We're wrapping up our investigation

because we could fill in

the identities of our suspects.

But then we get notice from Mako

that a Boston leader

is called to an East Coast program,

United States meeting in Virginia.

And that leader asked Mako for a ride to the meeting

and ends up inviting him into the meeting.

We don't know what's going on,

but we know that the East Coast program leadership

was not pleased

with the leaders of Mako's clique.

So we followed Mako and this leader

all the way to Richmond, Virginia.

[Mako] People are like saying Casper is too old

because he don't want to do

a lot of criminal things no more.

Our leaders in Salvador,

they want more murder all the time.

Casper is scared because he don't want

to be part of these crimes no more.

When we arrived there in Richmond,

we observe MS13 gang members

doing counter-surveillance,

looking for either law enforcement

or rival gang members.

It's very nerve-wracking for us.

We don't know what's going on.

And during the meeting, the US leader

for East Coast program asked Mako,

"Why have you not removed Casper?

Why have you not taken over?"

He wanted to remove Casper and Playa as leaders

and have Muerto and Mako

take over the leadership of the clique.

[in Spanish]

[Mako] He said to me, "What happened?

You leader Casper, he has to be gone.

He don't listen to the rules."

[Jeff] This is a huge shock to us.

I feel scared because I don't want to refuse,

but I don't wanna be in charge.

But Mako had the trust

from all these different leaders.

And so Mako would now have been put into a position

where he would have to authorize violent crimes,

authorize murders, and he's gonna be

in a position where his life may be in danger

if he doesn't follow an order.

Knowing that there was a possibility

that Mako was going to get a leadership role,

we knew this case was over. It had to be taken down.

At that point, I wanted to prevent any future murders,

and I wanted to make sure I kept everyone safe.

So my clock was ticking.

[Mario] First, we had to make sure

that Mako was made safe and his family were made safe.

There were so many moving parts and layers.

[Jeff] I started working approximately

eighteen hours a day, seven days a week,

filling in the gaps of making sure

we knew where everyone was

so we could do one big sweep

and arrest everyone at once.

January 29th, 2016 was the day of our takedown.

I did not sleep that night.

We planned everything

down to the smallest detail that we could.

It's always nerve-wracking.

We wanna make sure that we were able

to grab all of the people involved.

[Jeff] This is the first time where we're doing

62 takedowns at once.

It's a lot of work.

[Mario] We wanted to really have a dynamic takedown

so that we could just remove

that criminal element right from this community.

So all our teams, 500 plus law enforcement officers,

they roll up at the houses.

We have what I call the universal key.

It's a big ram. You come in,

you smash the door handle, breaks the lock,

opens the door for you, and in you go.

We had a couple of people who escaped the net that day.

But over the course of the next couple of weeks,

we did catch everyone that we needed to catch.

By 5:00, we're having a few beers

celebrating our victory,

knowing that we've done our job.

We impacted the East Coast program

by arresting their leader here,

indicting their leader in El Salvador.

And then after our arrest, we help solve several murders

throughout the entire country.

It made national news.

Today, we arrested the head of the East Coast program.

That is the head who oversees MS13 cliques,

gang groups in 10 states.

People were really excited and glad

that here we were, we're doing something.

I look back at it, I mean that was pretty cool.

[Jeff] That community's gonna go to bed that night

knowing that these gang members

that terrorized their lives are off the street.

[Mako] When I got the call to say the case is over,

I say, "Oh, God, thank you.

I survive. No more working like 24 hours.

No more living with MS13. They're animals."

Maybe now I can work a regular job,

you know, and do the right things.

It's hard to be an informant.

If the FBI go pay me a million dollars,

I'm not going to do it again.

We would have never accomplished

this case without Mako.

Mako was one of my best sources

I've ever operated.

[Mario] He was intelligent, he was brave.

He had slipups for sure, but he was unlike any other

cooperator I've ever worked with.

[Jeff] MS13 will try to go after Mako

until he passes away by natural.

And the fact that he took that risk is amazing.

[Mario] Going into this investigation,

we did not know what we had.

And as the case progressed, thanks to Mako,

we got a front side seat

to how the gang destroys its own community.

When I was in El Salvador talking to Mako day one,

I would have never thought that.

Mako is now in a safe location.

He's living the American life.

He is a great family man

and he's doing the right thing.

The first trial took place

in the end of 2017 and rolled into 2018.

We had a few people that we never identified.

So, out of the 62 people indicted,

we arrested 50 and we convicted all 50,

and our sentences were very large.

We had several life sentences all the way down

to, I think, the shortest time frame was in the teens.

There are lots of people who've lost children

and have families who feel safer

after they arrested all the gangbangers.

There have been no more deaths.

They did a great job.

[Peter] We have largely eradicated

MS13 in the Boston area.

And to me, that's the measure of success.

The long term impact of this investigation

continues to this day and MS13 has yet to recover.

I feel a huge amount of accomplishment.

I take great pride in the fact

that we did this case

and we helped our communities out.

I don't do these cases for recognition.

I do it because I want our communities to be safer.

I wanna protect our country.

They wanted to take out as many muslims as they could.

My dad was an undercover informant.

He knew what was at stake.

This is an Oklahoma City magnitude attack.