A federal jury in Washington, D.C. has convicted two accused MS-13 leaders of running a criminal enterprise blamed for murders and drug trafficking across the region, a verdict that came after prosecutors twice failed to get a jury to agree on the fate of one of the men. Moises Humberto Rivera-Luna, 56, and Tokiro Rodas-Ramirez, 44, were found guilty following a federal trial on Friday, October 2, capping a case that stretched back to alleged violence committed in 2008.
Rivera-Luna, a citizen of El Salvador who went by the alias Viejo Santos, was convicted of running the MS-13 enterprise responsible for murders and drug trafficking in the D.C. area, according to the seed facts underlying this report from WJLA. He was the leader of MS-13’s Normandie group while imprisoned in El Salvador, and prosecutors say he directed an MS-13 group operating in both El Salvador and the D.C. region from behind bars, authorizing killings of gang members accused of breaking MS-13 rules as well as the killings of two MS-13 members specifically. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said in a statement that “these two MS-13 leaders ran a violent criminal enterprise fueled by murder, violence, and drug trafficking,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Prosecutors alleged Rivera-Luna sat atop MS-13’s hierarchy during the years when members carried out shootings and stabbings in the D.C. area between 2008 and 2010, and that he was recorded on phone calls during that period, according to CNN. One of those alleged calls became a centerpiece of the case: prosecutors said Rivera-Luna communicated with an MS-13 contact from inside a Latin American prison and issued a chilling warning — “You have 13 days to eat chicken,” the prosecutor said, per the same account.
A Pattern of Violence Tied to 2008 and 2010
The violence prosecutors described spanned multiple jurisdictions. An MS-13 member was fatally stabbed at least 20 times in Northwest D.C. in 2008, and another MS-13 member was shot and killed at a Montgomery County park in 2010, according to the seed facts in WJLA’s reporting. A man was also killed in a shooting in Maryland in 2008, and a suspected rival gang member survived a separate shooting in D.C.
Rodas-Ramirez, who used the alias Perverso and holds dual citizenship in Honduras and El Salvador, was described by prosecutors as second-in-command of the MS-13 group’s D.C.-area operations. He was tied to two shootings of suspected rival gang members in 2008. U.S. authorities had already identified him as an MS-13 leader in El Salvador and Honduras, according to elsalvador.com, which reported he carried Salvadoran and Honduran nationality.
Arrests Years Apart, Then Extradition
The two men’s paths to a Washington courtroom were years in the making. Rodas-Ramirez was arrested by Honduran authorities in the capital during a soccer game in 2022, and he was extradited to the United States that August. Rivera-Luna was arrested while serving a prison sentence in Guatemala in August 2022 and was not extradited to the United States until March 2025.
Both men were convicted of a RICO conspiracy involving murder and drug trafficking. Rodas-Ramirez was additionally convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering and a firearms offense. A related Justice Department filing describes a broader 32-count superseding indictment that charged defendants in the case with participating in a racketeering conspiracy and with murder in aid of racketeering, among other offenses, according to the Justice Department.
Two Mistrials Before a Verdict
Friday’s conviction followed a bumpy road through the federal courthouse. Rivera-Luna’s case first went to a jury in December, which hung without reaching a verdict; prosecutors retried him in April, and for a second time his jury failed to reach a verdict, resulting in another mistrial, per CNN’s reporting on the case.
The repeated mistrials came amid what CNN describes as an unusually rocky stretch for federal prosecutors in Washington. Before the MS-13 case was finally retried and resolved, the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office had secured convictions in only four of the eight federal cases tried before Washington juries since January, the outlet reported. In nearly a dozen federal criminal trials following the April hung jury, two defendants were acquitted and four trials ended in deadlock, according to the same CNN account — a notable contrast with the roughly 90% conviction rate federal juries typically deliver nationwide.
Elsewhere, MS-13 prosecutions have moved more smoothly. A federal jury in Maryland convicted three men in September 2025 in a case involving two murders and multiple attempted murders, according to the Justice Department. Rivera-Luna and Rodas-Ramirez are now scheduled to be sentenced on January 7, 2027.
