In the fall of 2023, police say, 17-year-old Carlos Ivan Oseguera Funez was seen climbing into a white sedan in Southeast Baltimore. Just prior, he had sent a message to a friend: He was on his way to meet a girl he had been speaking with over Instagram.

According to police, the Patterson High School senior wrote that if something happened to him, he wanted the friend to know he had travelled to the Frankford neighborhood.

Oseguera Funez would later be found face down on a wooded path in the neighborhood, dead from multiple gunshot wounds.

Now, a new federal indictment unsealed last week charges that Oseguera Funez’s killing was carried out by MS-13 members who posed as the girl and lured him to his death because they believed he “had ties” to a rival gang.

It’s one of three murders in Baltimore tied to alleged gang members in the new indictment, tying together cases not previously disclosed to be linked.

Federal authorities charged Eliseo Alexander Lopez Alvarez, 23, Josue Anibal Guerra Ramos, 20, Olvin Josue Posas Alvarenga, 23, and Kevin Cuestas, 20, all with racketeering conspiracy for their alleged membership in the MS-13 “clique” known as Centrales Locos Salvatrucha, or CLS.

Guerra Ramos’ attorney declined to comment. The other men do not yet have attorneys listed in the federal case.

Among the overt acts charged in the conspiracy are the killing of Oseguera Funez; the March 15, 2024, fatal shooting of 19-year-old Michael Ariel Chacon Nataren; and the April 15, 2024, fatal shooting of Jose Castron Merales, 38, in which another man was also shot and wounded.

While the federal indictment provides some information about the allegations, charges previously filed in the cases individually by Baltimore Police give additional details.

Oseguera Funez was remembered at the time of his death as an enthusiastic student who was a leader in the Hermanos Mios program and Soccer Without Borders, and who also volunteered at Clay Hill charter school and events sponsored by the Hispanic Organization for Leadership Advancement. His dream, according to HOLA, was to be in the military or a police officer.

“He was extremely loved by staff and students alike and has left a huge void,” HOLA wrote on a fundraiser page.

But he was targeted by MS-13 because of apparent “ties” to the rival 18th Street Gang, police wrote in charging documents. It’s not clear what those ties are or if they were validated.

Lopez Alvarez contacted another reputed gang member via the encrypted messaging app Telegram describing his “issues” with Oseguera Funez, and an agreement was made to kill him, police wrote in charging documents. They needed to get the killing cleared with a higher-ranking member known as “Marco,” whose identity police said was not known to them.

They created a fake Instagram account and began conversing with Oseguera Funez, then lured him to the 4900 block of Goodnow Road, giving him a series of locations to go to, police said. Investigators intercepted a call from an inmate at the Roxbury Correctional Center and Posas Alvarenga, asking him if he was “working today,” which police said was code for assaulting or killing someone.

In a call from the same inmate later that night after the killing had occurred, Posas Alvarenga allegedly said they had just come back from working and laughed, police wrote in charging documents. Then, two hours after Oseguera Funez’ body was found and before anyone had been notified of the discovery, an inmate at Baltimore’s Central Booking placed a recorded call to Lopez Alvarez, who said “yesterday we worked with Ivan,” police said.

Chacon Nataren was fatally shot in the 200 block of South Linwood Avenue just before 10 p.m. on March 15, 2024. Police had the gunmen on tape fleeing the scene through Patterson Park and climbing into a getaway vehicle in the 3700 block of Benefit Street.

Through “video evidence, physical and electronic surveillance, interviews, and other investigative methods” police said they determined the identity of the getaway driver and monitored jail calls of known MS-13 members.

Two days after the murder, an incarcerated “verified gang member” called a number associated with Cuestas, police said.

Cuestas, police said, was allegedly recorded saying: “Remember that chicken that got in your face? We cooked that chicken two days ago.” The federal indictment also quotes Cuestas as telling an incarcerated gang member that the “waters were hot” because he just recently “ate a roosted chicken.”

The federal indictment says Chacon Nataren was targeted because he was believed to be a rival gang member.

Guerra Ramos was charged last May with taking part in a double shooting in April of that year that claimed the life of Jose Castron Merales. In that case, police said a Ring camera recording showed two suspects approach the victims moments prior to the shooting. One of them was wearing a T-shirt depicting the Ghostface mask from the “Scream” movies. Seconds after the suspects walk out of the frame, shots can be heard. A witness told police Guerra Ramos was one of the shooters.

In April of this year, the federal indictment says, Posas Alvarenga called Cuestas from jail and told him and other MS-13 members to be alert because of recent law enforcement activity and to “leave on vacation.”

The state murder case against Guerra Ramos was dropped in April of this year, two days after federal prosecutors obtained a sealed indictment against him on a gun charge.

A superseding indictment against Guerra Ramos and the other alleged gang members was then handed up on July 9, and unsealed two days later.

Maryland’s federal prosecutors have another Baltimore-based MS-13 gang case already pending and slated for a fall trial. Prosecutors tried and failed earlier this year to pursue the death penalty in that case.