By PAUL ANDERSON
Three “foot soldiers” of the Orange County chapter of the Mexican Mafia were sentenced this week to life in federal prison for killing a Costa Mesa drug dealer in Orange allegedly on the orders of the reputed leader of the umbrella group for local gangs.
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Kevin Trejo, 38, James Mendez, 47, and Mike Escobar, 43, were sentenced Thursday, Aug. 6 to the mandated life terms by U.S. District Judge Fred W. Slaughter.
The three were convicted in 2023 of first-degree murder in aid of racketeering in the Aug. 21, 2017, killing of Richard Villeda, 28, in the 800 block of East Culver Avenue.
Villeda’s daughter told Slaughter how she was 10 when her father was killed. She said she was just getting acquainted with him after his release from prison.
“I know he loved me very much,” she said tearfully. “My heart will be forever broken. … It’s been nine years. … Nothing has been the same since he was taken from us.”
Johnny Martinez, the reputed leader of the Mexican Mafia, is scheduled to go on trial next year; he is accused of ordering the hit on Villeda.
Federal prosecutors argued the case was built on wiretaps, surveillance video, data recovered from the phones used by gang members and associates, and the triangulation of cellphone movement the night of Villeda’s killing.
“One night in August 2017 these three defendants lured Richard Villea into a car and they assassinated him, they shot him in the back and in the back of the head, and they left him in the street, moaning, bleeding to death,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Matthews said during the 2023 trial.
“Why? Why did they do this… Make no mistake. This was Mexican Mafia business. This was a hit ordered by Johnny Martinez. …
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“Richard Villeda was selling drugs,” Matthews said. “He was expected to pay taxes to Johnny Martinez to sell drugs… But when he came up short, just a few thousand dollars, they decided to cut short his life.”
Investigators collected nine shell casings at the crime scene, and they believe at least two guns were used in the killing.
Villeda worked with his girlfriend, a cousin of Martinez’s, but he was accused of stealing drugs or money intended for Martinez, prosecutors said. And it wasn’t the first time, they added.
Matthews argued that Martinez ordered the hit from jail, but authorities had not gotten a wiretap of his phone up yet so it was unrecorded.
In a later wiretapped call Martinez is heard discussing his order to kill Villeda, Matthews had argued.
Matthews argued that none of the three defendants “had any reason to” kill Villeda.
“They did it for the Mexican Mafia,” he said. “They increased their status, their position in the enterprise.”
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