You CAN'T be that stupid. Can you? NOBODY can be that stupid, and still breathe....
The MS stands for Mara Salvatrucha, said to be a combination of Mara, meaning gang, Salva, for Salvador, and trucha, which translates roughly into street smarts. The 13 represents the position of M in the alphabet.
MS-13 established a reputation for extreme violence and for killing with machetes. It took root in neighbourhoods dominated by Mexican gangs, and later expanded to other parts of the country.
According to the FBI, the gang has spread to 46 states.
In 2012, the US Treasury designated the gang a "transnational criminal organisation". It was the first street gang to receive the dubious honour, placing it alongside much larger international cartels like the Mexican Zetas, Japanese Yakuza and Italian Camorra.
Brutal initiations
MS-13 has been accused of recruiting poor and at-risk teenagers. Joining is said to require being "jumped in" - subjected to a vicious 13-second beating - and "getting wet" - carrying out a crime, often a murder, for the gang.
Leaving is potentially even more dangerous. Large chest tattoos brand members for life, and some factions are said to murder members who attempt to leave.
A 2008 FBI threat assessment put the size of MS-13 between 6,000 and 10,000 members in the US, making it one of the largest criminal enterprises in the country.
It is now larger outside the country, according to the agency. An anti-gang crackdown in the late 1990s saw hundreds of early members shipped back to Central American countries, where they established offshoots. Estimates put the number of members in Central American countries at at least 60,000.
The gang's annual revenue is about $31.2m (£23.4m) according to information from a large-scale Salvadorean police operation obtained by the El Faro newspaper - mainly from from drugs and extortion.
'Kill, rape, control'
Recent high-profile cases linked to the gang include the murder of two female high-school students who were attacked with a machete and baseball bat as they walked through their neighbourhood in New York last month - a revenge attack over a minor dispute, according to police.
Four alleged MS-13 members were charged with that crime. Another two alleged members were charged at the same time with the murder of a fellow gang member said to have violated gang protocol.
The same month, two alleged members of the gang in Houston, Texas were charged with kidnapping three teenage girls, holding them hostage and raping them before shooting one dead on the side of the road.
Miguel Alvarez-Flores, 22, and Diego Hernandez-Rivera, 18, laughed and waved at the cameras during their court appearance.
MS-13's motto is "kill, rape, control",
according to one FBI gang specialist who investigated the group.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39645640