Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was joined today by Jody P. Weis, Chicago Police Superintendent; Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; and Richard A. Devine, Cook County State’s Attorney in announcing the arrests of more than twenty suspected members of the Spanish Cobras street gang. Twenty-five suspected gang members were arrested, without incident, earlier this morning by members of the FBI’s Joint Task Force on Gangs and Chicago Police Department’s Area 5 Deputy Chief’s Office Spanish Gang Task Force and Organized Crime Division.

In more than a dozen federal criminal complaints unsealed late this morning, the defendants are charged with a variety of federal drug charges, to include the distribution of cocaine, crack cocaine and marijuana. In all, 31 were charged, 18 federally and 13 on state drug and gun charges. Twenty-five of the 31 were in custody as of late this morning. Six remain outstanding and will be sought as fugitives.

Those charged federally and arrested today are scheduled to appear later today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan E. Cox in U.S. District Court at the Dirksen federal courthouse. If convicted of the charges against them, the defendants in this case face mandatory minimum sentences of five years incarceration to a maximum life in prison.

The two-year investigation, codenamed “Operation Snake Charmer” is part of a sustained, coordinated effort by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to dismantle the hierarchy of Chicago’s highly-organized drug trafficking street gangs. The investigation employed undercover cooperating witnesses, including former gang members, court authorized electronic surveillance and undercover audio and video surveillance of drug transactions.

“The Spanish Cobras are an organized, centrally-controlled, street gang whose members conspire together to sell drugs and protect and enforce their territory in the Chicago area,” Mr. Grant said. “We are under no illusions that today’s arrests will stop the dangerous gang activity in the Chicago area, but these arrests should remind gangs that law enforcement here is united in our efforts to eradicate the city and suburbs of this plague.”

“Today’s operation represents another example of how local and federal partnerships target gang hierarchies at the highest level. When we dismantle their trade and drug operations, we give communities back to law abiding citizens,” noted Superintendent Weis.