Numero Uno's George Torres Faces Murder Charges
Rags-to-riches story of L.A. grocery king goes sour
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Bringing an end to a decadelong investigation, federal task-force agents on Tuesday morning arrested George Torres, one of South Los Angeles’ largest property owners and the owner of the Numero Uno supermarket chain, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Agents with the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program took Torres into custody at his home in Arcadia, and searched his main place of business at 700 East Jefferson Street, also arresting his brother Manuel and his son Steven, in what figures to be a complex and riveting federal racketeering case against one of L.A.’s most mysterious businessmen. Authorities also confirmed that former Los Angeles city Central Area Planning Commissioner Steve Carmona is a defendant in the case.
Torres started out with a food cart on a street corner in the humble neighborhoods south of downtown Los Angeles, in the LAPD’s Newton Division, and amassed a small empire of grocery stores and real estate holdings stretching from Los Angeles to a horse farm in Santa Barbara County.
But with his arrest Tuesday, and further developments expected today, his rags-to-riches story will be tainted by federal charges of murder, extortion, bribery and theft, according to law enforcement sources. Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Searight confirmed the arrest of Torres, who is scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon in federal court. The federal indictment is scheduled to be unsealed at that time. Seawright would not detail the charges or the number of defendants in the case.
Torres is best known as a former business associate of Horacio “Carlos” Vignali, who in the late 1990s lobbied city officials, state legislators, U.S. congressmen, former U.S. Attorney Alejandro Mayorkas and Cardinal Roger Mahony to write letters urging President Bill Clinton to grant clemency to Vignali’s drug-dealer son, Carlos Vignali Jr., leading in part to a national scandal known as “Pardongate.”
However, a law-enforcement source said on Wednesday morning that Vignali is not named in the Torres indictment.
Torres is one of the largest, if not the largest, private landowners in South L.A., with his holdings starting at Washington Boulevard and extending south. His Numero Uno Markets have flourished throughout the Los Angeles area, and he was estimated at one time to have a net worth of at least $300 million, according to Drug Enforcement Administration documents obtained by the L.A. Weekly.
In the past, he has been convicted of several gun-possession charges, including a probation violation for being a felon in possession of a gun, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office. But DEA documents also state that the LAPD named him a suspect in two murders dating back to the 1990s. Those documents surfaced in 2002 as part of a congressional report resulting from Pardongate.
The Weekly explored Pardongate in detail in 2005, including the history of business and real estate transactions between Torres and Vignali. LAPD sources confirmed for the Weekly at the time that Torres was under investigation for the suspected murder of a former employee gone missing and presumed dead. At the time of his disappearance in the late 1990s, that employee, Ignacio Meza, was wanted for conspiracy to distribute cocaine by federal authorities in Alabama.
Torres’ attorneys, Michael Adelson and Robert Eisfelder, confirmed for the Weekly at that time that detectives searched Torres’ Jefferson Boulevard warehouse, which sits adjacent to his flagship market, in late 2004, but insist police found nothing to implicate Torres in anything illegal. In a 2005 interview, Eisfelder denied strenuously that his client was involved with any illegal activity.
“As we look closely into his affairs, we find him to be a Horatio Alger–type figure, a self-made man whose story is an inspiration,” Eisfelder said at the time.
The Torres-Vignali connection is explored in detail in a congressional report that resulted from Pardongate, when revelations surfaced that President Clinton granted clemency for Carlos Vignali Jr. — convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 15 years in federal prison in 1995 — along with other convicted criminals and onetime international fugitive Marc Rich. The granting of clemency occurred after payments were made to Clinton’s brother-in-law, Hugh Rodham, the brother of former first lady, New York state senator and 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Released in March 2002 by the congressional Committee on Government Reform, “Justice Undone: Clemency Decisions in the Clinton White House” details Hugh Rodham’s involvement in the Vignali affair, as well as the long business history Vignali once shared with George Torres.
The report takes to task top L.A. elected officials, including county Supervisor Gloria Molina, then–state Senator Richard Polanco, then–state Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa and U.S. Representative Xavier Becerra, among others, for lobbying on behalf of Vignali Jr., in light of his drug conviction and the fact that DEA agents long suspected Vignali Sr. to be involved in drug trafficking — along with Torres. While a member of the California state Assembly, Villaraigosa wrote the first letter on Vignali’s behalf on May 24, 1996.
In particular, L.A. Sheriff Lee Baca and former U.S. Attorney Alejandro Mayorkas were heavily criticized for lobbying for Vignali Jr.’s clemency. The report found the input of Baca and Mayorkas to the White House to be “instrumental” in the decision to grant clemency to Vignali Jr., who at his drug-trafficking trial in 1994 confirmed a close family association with Torres. Attorneys for Torres told the Weekly in 2005 that the association between the Vignalis and Torres has long since ended.
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