Eleven members of the criminal organization Makena were sentenced to 175 years in jail together. The Prosecutor General’s Office says they were found guilty of blackmail and of creating and managing a criminal group in prison, Info-Prim Neo reports. In a communiqué, the Prosecutor General’s Office says that the culprits form part of a criminal organization headed by the so-called ‘thief in law’ Vladimir Moscalciuc, alias Makena. Among the 11 convicts were the leader and ten members of the criminal group, including Lilian Chirica – the chief of a criminal group that operated in Pruncul penitentiary. The Chisinau Court of Appeals on April 27 gave them punishments of 12 to 20 years’ imprisonment at a time when the prosecutors asked for harsher sentences, of 19 to 30 years behind bars. The legal case was started at the beginning of 2010. The prosecutors established that in 1999-2010, Vladimir Moscalciuc, who was condemned and held in different national penitentiaries, founded he criminal organization Makena, which consisted of smaller criminal groups. In order to get money to fund the organization and attract new members from among detainees, the members of the organization blackmailed other convicts into paying large sums, threatening them with death.