A 27-year-old Panorama City gang member convicted of murdering six people, including rivals killed near Malibu, in the Santa Clarita Valley and twice in Van Nuys, will have to wait longer to learn his fate. Walter Chavez Larin's federal sentencing hearing, originally set for Monday, has been postponed until October 6, 2026.
Chavez Larin was convicted in November 2025 following a nine-week trial in downtown Los Angeles, according to MyNewsLA.com. A federal jury found him guilty of two counts of violent crimes in aid of racketeering murder and one count of conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, while four co-defendants were also found guilty of various charges in the same case. The sentencing hearing had been scheduled before U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. in Western Division Courtroom 6C, according to court records filed with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. It is not clear from available records whether the delay stems from pre-sentencing motions, co-defendant scheduling, or other post-trial filings.
Whatever the reason for the delay, the outcome itself is not in doubt. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1959(a)(1), a conviction for violent crimes in aid of racketeering murder carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole or the death penalty, according to legal analysis published by attorneys at Grant Jones Law. The postponement changes the calendar, not the ultimate punishment Chavez Larin faces.
A String of Killings Across LA County's Wilds
Prosecutors said the murder victims included people who were, or were perceived to be, gang rivals, and that they were killed to help gang members gain entry into and increase their standing within the Los Angeles gang, per the same MyNewsLA.com account. The killings themselves were extraordinarily brutal: prosecutors described victims strangled, shot, stabbed with knives and a machete, beaten with a baseball bat, or thrown from cliffs and down hillsides, largely in the Angeles National Forest and other remote, mountainous parts of Los Angeles County.
One man rumored to be a rival gang member was strangled, beaten and stabbed before his body was thrown off a cliff in the Angeles National Forest in October 2017, according to prosecutors; he had reportedly been lured to the location by two teenage girls. In June 2017, another victim was stabbed and hacked to death by Chavez Larin and others in the forest, with assailants attempting to decapitate him, prosecutors said. A third man rumored to be a rival gang member was shot in the back of the head at a Malibu Hills scenic overlook in July 2018 before his body was thrown down a hill, prosecutors said. And on January 13, 2019, prosecutors said Chavez Larin helped murder a gang associate who was addicted to methamphetamine — a killing prosecutors linked to gang rules that prohibited membership by anyone using the drug.
An Initiation Rule Built on Bloodshed
Prosecutors in the case said gang cliques required members to use murder and extreme violence to rise within the gang's ranks, a policy that lines up with details from Chavez Larin's underlying 2021 federal indictment. That earlier filing, reported by the Los Angeles Times, alleged that in 2016, MS-13's Fulton clique instituted a rule requiring prospective members to commit a murder before becoming full-fledged “homeboys,” a shift the paper linked to violent recruits arriving from El Salvador. The Fulton clique is one of roughly 15 to 20 MS-13 cliques operating around Los Angeles, with strongholds in San Fernando Valley communities including North Hollywood, Panorama City and Van Nuys, the Times reported.
The same 2021 indictment detailed an earlier allegation against Chavez Larin: that he wore a long, curly wig and drove a U-Haul truck to shoot Santiago Octavio Martinez in the head outside a South El Monte store in September 2016, then burned his disguise at a Fulton clique leader's Palmdale ranch. That case was part of a sprawling federal racketeering indictment that, by August 2021, had expanded to charge 31 total members and associates with 11 killings spanning a decade across Los Angeles County.
Case Fits a Broader Federal Crackdown
Chavez Larin's prosecution unfolded as part of a cross-designation partnership in which Deputy District Attorney Eric Siddall served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, representing joint work between the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and federal prosecutors, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. Federal authorities have designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization, a classification that lets the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office and regional gang task forces pursue racketeering conspiracy charges against local cliques, as reported by SCV Signal.
Chavez Larin also tried to keep the case out of adult federal court altogether. In August 2025, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied his emergency interlocutory appeal seeking to block his adult prosecution under the Juvenile Delinquency Act, clearing the way for the trial that led to his November 2025 conviction.
His case is one piece of a much larger federal effort to dismantle the Fulton clique. Hoodline previously reported that fellow Fulton clique member Kevin Arteaga was sentenced to 35 years in federal prison in March after pleading guilty to racketeering conspiracy tied to an April 2018 initiation murder in the Angeles National Forest, admitting he had been required to take part in a killing to gain full membership. Unlike Arteaga, Chavez Larin did not plead guilty and instead faced a full trial, one that prosecutors say produced convictions carrying a far harsher, mandatory outcome. Barring further delay, Chavez Larin is due back before Judge Blumenfeld on October 6, when the mandatory life sentence is expected to be formally imposed.
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