They say every man has his price, no matter how deep the hate.
For the two biggest beasts of the Los Angeles underworld, MS-13 and the 18th Street Gang, that hatred has spanned decades, fueled by revenge killings and brutal blood feuds.
That is why the Los Angeles Police Department is increasingly alarmed that the longtime rivals have stopped killing each other and started chasing pure profit instead.
The 18th Street Gang, also known as Barrio 18, is now a sprawling transnational organization that sprang from Los Angeles’ first Hispanic gang, Clanton 14, in the 1950s.
From there, it spread across the United States before extending deep into Central America, particularly El Salvador.
In the 1980s, the gang gained a competitive edge by opening its ranks to members of all ethnic backgrounds, according to Insight Crime, a think tank that tracks organized crime. The strategy paid off, turning 18th Street into one of the largest gangs in Los Angeles, with tens of thousands of members.
Its long record of drug trafficking, extortion, and murder helped earn the gang a Foreign Terrorist designation from the FBI in 2025.
MS-13, meanwhile, also has deep roots in El Salvador, having formed in the 1980s among immigrants fleeing the country’s brutal civil war.
Originally known as the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners, or MSS, the gang was once associated with heavy metal music, long hair, and marijuana use, according to Insight Crime.
It quickly evolved into a bloodthirsty criminal enterprise notorious for murder and extortion, with a gruesome trademark of hacking rivals apart with machetes.
The Trump administration later designated MS-13 a Foreign Terrorist Organization. --->READ MORE HERE
A gang of illegal migrants running amok in Queens’ “Market of Sweethearts’’ — extorting brothels, beating rivals and selling drugs and phony IDs to finance an illicit network based in El Salvador — has been busted.
Eight members of the notorious “18th Street Gang” were named in a federal indictment unsealed Monday — part of a criminal roundup that put a dent in the seedy migrant prostitution operation along Roosevelt Avenue that has plagued the Big Apple for years, according to prosecutors in bombshell court papers.
“These violent members and associates of the 18th Street gang allegedly relied on violence—including assault of innocent civilians and rival gang members—to exert and maintain control over a busy commercial corridor along Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Christopher Raia said in a statement.
“Those arrested today acted and behaved with callous and cruel disregard for those around them.”
At least seven of the criminals are in the US illegally, prosecutors said.
According to the indictment, migrant gangbangers with street names such as “Pinocchio, Loco and Tanke” have been reigning over the Queens strip with the 18th Street offshoot “54 Tiny Locos.” Their crimes have included at least three mob beatings and exerting iron-fisted control over the sleazy sex-peddling market.
The gang — a rival to the notorious MS-13 gang — has trafficked drugs, strong-armed prostitution rings and peddled phony immigration documents, passports and driver’s licenses to fund the illegal operation, federal prosecutors said. --->READ MORE HERE
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