SACRAMENTO — A man who was known as a top moneymaker for the Aryan Brotherhood, but who later became a lead government witness after his gang was indicted, has been sentenced to seven years behind bars.
But Travis Burhop’s new prison term doesn’t mean much. He has been in federal custody since 2019 — giving him five years of time credits — and he is already serving life for murder. Senior U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller allowed Burhop’s sentence to run concurrently to the life term, court records show.
Burhop pleaded guilty in 2022 to running a large-scale heroin ring from his Southern California prison cell, but he wasn’t sentenced until last Friday. That’s probably because prosecutors were waiting to see how he performed from a witness stand; at a trial for three Aryan Brotherhood leaders earlier this year, Burhop testified about creating heroin markets inside and outside of prison and pulling in roughly $100,000 per year.
He also testified that he hopes to earn parole through his cooperation, but made some questionable statements as well. He denied buying his mother a $350,000 home with drug money, and was well-aware that such an admission would aid the federal government’s efforts to seize the home through asset forfeiture proceedings.
Burhop’s sentencing came weeks after two Aryan Brotherhood members, Jason Corbett and Patrick Brady, were sentenced to life in federal prison for murdering a fellow prisoner named Donald Pequeen, allegedly over a “large” drug debt.
Brady, a jailhouse lawyer whose ongoing lawsuits exposed Sacramento County Sheriff officials had secretly recorded attorney/client visits, remains at California State Prison Sacramento. So does Corbett, whose sentencing order says he must finish serving his life sentence in state prison before being transferred to federal custody.
Both men pleaded guilty weeks before they were set to go on trial in early 2024.
Brady, Corbett, and Burhop were all part of a string of 2019 indictments targeting two dozen Aryan Brotherhood members and associates, including two members of the gang’s three-man commission.
Since then, federal prosecutors have linked the gang has been linked to at least 15 murders, drug dealing, contraband smuggling schemes, arsons, robberies, and extortion plots. The most recent development was a 68-defendant indictment filed in Los Angeles against two Aryan Brotherhood members and dozens of others affiliated with a “peckerwoods” gang in the San Fernando Valley, court records show
