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The plea-bargained sentence approved by a federal judge in Newark on Thursday, March 21, won’t require Jose Gimenez-Lobos, a 33-year-old Salvadoran national, to serve more time. It will run concurrently.
Gimenez-Lobos and two companions were ordered by a high-ranking member of La Mara Salvatrucha to execute a member of the rival 18th Street gang from the Maryland/Virginia area, U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger said.
A woman involved in the plot lured the target to New Jersey in May 2015, but glitches in the original plan forced the killers to switch up, Sellinger said.
Instead, they got him a room at a local motel and offered to bring him home the following day.
The plan was to stab the victim to death at some point along the way and then dump his body, the U.S. attorney said.
He got wise, however, and bailed out of their car outside a tollbooth.
Gimenez-Lobos and the others paid for it, Sellinger said. They were beaten when they got back.
Gimenez-Lobos – who’s also known by the nicknames “Infernal” and “Terrible” -- stabbed and beat a member of the rival Sureño gang to death in November 2014.
He was sentenced in the Eastern District of Virginia last year to four decades behind bars for the killing.
“This defendant has already amassed a history of death and mayhem on behalf of MS-13, a gang well-known for its appetite for violence,” Sellinger said. “There is no place in our communities for this wanton disregard of life.
“Gimenez-Lobos will remain behind bars for most of the remainder of his life, which is the punishment he has brought down on his own head,” the U.S. attorney said.
Sellinger credited special agents of the FBI, officers of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement – Enforcement and Removal Operations Newark Field Office, special agents of Homeland Security Investigations Newark, special agents of HIS Washington, D.C., the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office and West New York police.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Desiree Grace, the deputy chief of Sellinger’s Criminal Division in Newark, and Trial Attorney Matthew K. Hoff of the Department of Justice’s Organized Crime and Gang Section are handling the case for the government.
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