Morozov Cartel hit by arrest wave following 6 month joint investigation (Character Story: Michael Grayson)

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The following has been republished from the Los Angeles Observer. Dated April 11th, 2460.

The U.S. Justice Department, alongside representatives from the Solarian Interstellar Policing & Crime Prevention Agency, Solarian Interstellar Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration and local agencies like the Los Angeles Police Department and Sheriff's Department have announced over two-hundred arrests of alleged members of the "Morozov Organization", a cartel operating out of hubs in Los Angeles, Mexico City, Paris and even New Valletta on Callisto. In the joint-agency press briefing, the seizure of multiple vessels, properties, large quantities of drugs, firearms & more were announced as part of the crackdown on the criminal organization which for years has had its hand in drug production, smuggling, money laundering, arms trafficking and more. The majority of the announced arrests and seizures took place on Earth, where the organization holds the vast majority of its influence and conducts most of its affairs. 

Special Prosecutor Emanuel Brooks, who was brought in to oversee the investigation and lead prosecutions of the arrested members across the varied jurisdictions, had this to say:

"The Morozov Organization has for over a decade been involved in the manufacture and sale of illicit narcotics, the trafficking of stolen and illegal weapons, the laundering of money and smuggling of goods past Customs Officials on various planets as well as Earth nations. These are not the only crimes members of the organization are guilty of - they are guilty of the murders, kidnappings, violence and destruction naturally associated with such an enterprise. Today's announcement is one we hope will give people faith that we treat organized crime seriously, to exemplify the work done by a myriad of agencies across Earth and the Alliance to deal a significant blow to criminals who try to get wealthy off of the violence and misery they inflict on others."

The news comes after six months of investigation by a host of different law enforcement and intelligence agencies across both Earth and the wider Alliance culminated in a batch of arrest and search warrants being issued, which were executed over the last two weeks. The organization has been known to law enforcement since its inception, but the announcement marks the first time a targeted pushback against the cartel has been made on such a scale. Prosecutor Brooks promised that more arrests were on the way, as the search warrants uncovered evidence tying many more people to the organization, and vowed not to let up on chasing every single last member of the cartel down.

 

Locally, the investigation by the LAPD and LASD alongside the FBI and DEA did not begin until a recent homicide was investigated by members of the LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division. The murder of Markus Evans, a Bureau of Gambling Control employee, was tied to the Cartel and solved by local homicide detectives. Read More.

Dated September 2nd, 2459.

The Los Angeles Police Department today announced the arrest of three murder suspects in the investigation into the homicide of Markus Evans, an employee at the State Department of Justice's Bureau of Gambling Control. Initially thought to be a fatal street mugging, Detectives at the LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division instead found evidence of a pre-meditated murder, chasing down leads over the course of a month long homicide inquiry. The work of Detectives Moore, Grayson and Garcia of the LAPD's RHD found that instead of a random street mugging, Evans had been planning to meet someone near the alleyway he was killed in. Investigators located his phone at his home and were able to obtain a warrant to compel the phone manufacturer to unlock the device, granting police access to the data on it. Texts uncovered by detectives showed that Evans had arranged to meet with an informant of his shortly before his murder. An LAPD Spokesman indicated that investigations were still ongoing into the disappearance of said informant, but stated that the man who Evans had been speaking to was actually Morozov Organization enforcer Gerald Angelov, one of the three arrested suspects. 

A complex investigation into Markus Evans' work history and home computer found that Evans had uncovered suspicious reporting of earnings by GoldStar Betting, an L.A. area gambling agency. According to files found on Evans' computer, the earnings reported by the agency were considerably inflated when compared to the number of games and races available to bet on during the listed period, as well as compared to the bet receipts turned in for the same period. The documents found on Evans' home computer did not match the corresponding documents on his work computer, prompting an investigation into the Bureau of Gambling Control itself. Forensic analysis of work computers and servers determined that the file had been altered after Evans' death in an effort to cover up what he had found, implicating the second suspect, Martin Rogers, Evans' supervisor at the Bureau in the murder. Evans' had turned to his supervisor to report the discrepancies in the earnings, but unbeknownst to him, his superior was on the payroll of GoldStar Betting, now realized to be a front for the Morozov Organization. 

The LAPD have also arrested Andrei Wood, another member of the Morozov Organization, after phone data evidence was uncovered of a conspiracy between Angelov and Wood to lure Evans to a secluded area and stage a mugging gone wrong. L.A. County District Attorney Lauren Eisenhower revealed a list of charges against the three suspects, with Angelov and Wood most notably charged with first degree murder while Rogers has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder and a host of obstruction of justice and corruption charges. The LAPD have indicated that investigation into the murder is ongoing and that more suspects may be arrested in the near future as the case progresses.