A second Aryan Brotherhood prison gang member has pleaded guilty to murder in aid of racketeering, a U.S. Attorney announced Wednesday.
Pat Brady, 53, of Lake Forest (U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of California)
Pat Brady, 53, of Lake Forest, entered his plea — part of a long-running investigation into the notorious gang — in a Sacramento courtroom, Phillip A. Talbert, who leads the Department of Justice’s Eastern District of of California, said in a press statement.
U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller is scheduled to sentence Brady — who faces a mandatory sentence of life in federal prison — on March 25.
According to court documents, between 2011 and 2016, Aryan Brotherhood, or AB, members and associates engaged in racketeering activity, “committing multiple acts involving murder, conspiracies to murder, and drug-trafficking crimes,” noted Talbert.
The charges allege that AB members oversaw a significant heroin and methamphetamine trafficking operation from their California prison cells, using smuggled cellphones to direct drug-trafficking activities, order murders, and oversee other criminal activities inside and outside the prisons.
According to the plea agreement, on July 28, 2018, Brady murdered an inmate at High Desert Prison in Susanville as part of an AB-related killing. Brady admitted that he committed the murder because the victim falsely claimed to be an AB member and had run up a significant drug debt at his previous prison — both violations of the AB’s expected codes of conduct.
“Brady willfully, deliberately, and with premeditation, murdered the victim in order to maintain his status within the gang,” Talbert added in the prepared statement.
This case is the product of an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration with assistance from the Vallejo Police Department, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office, and the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jason Hitt, Ross Pearson, and David Spencer are prosecuting the case, investigated under the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces.
Four remaining defendants — Ronald Yandell, Billy Sylvester, Danny Troxell, and Jason Corbett — are scheduled for trial in February.
Brady’s plea came on the heels of another AB member’s guilty plea last month.
After Brant Daniel, 49, of Sacramento, entered his plea, Judge Mueller immediately sentenced him to a mandatory life sentence in federal prison.
