Two Huntington Station gang members have been sentenced to prison for a shooting in 2016 and conspiracy to murder, Suffolk County District Attorney Tim Sini said Tuesday.
Marvin Vilorio Ortes, 25, of Huntington Station, pleaded guilty on Oct. 8 to Conspiracy in the Second Degree, a B felony, and Attempted Assault in the First Degree, a C violent felony.
Felix Menjiver, 37, of Huntington Station, pleaded guilty on Aug. 8 to Conspiracy in the Second Degree, a B felony, and Attempted Assault in the First Degree, a C violent felony.
Ortes and Menjiver are both identified as high-ranking members of the Huntington Criminales Los Salvatrucha (“HCLS”) clique of MS-13.
Menjiver was sentenced Tuesday by Suffolk County Court Judge Timothy Mazzei to eight years in prison with five years of post-release supervision for the charges of Attempted Assault and Criminal Possession of a Weapon; four to eight years in prison on the charge of Conspiracy in the Second Degree; and two to four years in prison for the charge of Conspiracy in the Fourth Degree.
Ortes was sentenced on Dec. 9 by Suffolk County Court Judge Anthony S. Senft, Jr. to seven years in prison with five years of post-release supervision for the Attempted Assault and five to 10 years in prison for the Conspiracy.
“When my administration came into office, we made a pledge to the people that we were going to eradicate MS-13, and we are making incredible progress,” District Attorney Sini said. “We have shifted the paradigm: We are no longer responding to homicides; we are preventing homicides. We are collecting reliable, actionable intelligence on a daily basis, responding in real-time and preventing crimes from happening. By charging these murder conspiracies we are able to save lives, and this case is yet another example of that.”
On Aug. 4, 2016, Ortes and Menjiver shot a male victim, whom they considered a rival of MS-13, on East 20th Street in Huntington Station. The victim sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
Between August 2018 and February 2019, while Ortes was incarcerated on an unrelated conviction for illegal weapons possession, he and Menjiver conspired to murder a different identified victim in furtherance of the gang’s mission. The pair took various steps to plan the murder and to contact and threaten the victim, including messaging the victim on social media.
“These defendants conspired together and took steps in furtherance of that conspiracy to kill a victim, but we were able to collect intelligence in real time and prevent that murder from happening,” Sini said.
Menjiver was arrested by police on July 11, 2018, while attempting to illegally sell a loaded .32-caliber handgun and approximately 20 rounds of ammunition to an associate of the MS-13 gang. He pleaded guilty on Aug. 8 to Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree, a C felony, and Conspiracy in the Fourth Degree, an E felony, in connection with that case.