Japanese Yakuza and Liver Transplants in the US

The UCLA Medical Center is a world-renown center for organ transplants. Between 2000 and 2004, organs were scarce, but Tadamasa Goto and three other Japanese gangsters got ahead of the line. Goto, who leads a Japanese gang called the Goto-gumi, is barred from the United States. The FBI helped him get the visa hoping for information on organized crime. They never got it, but Goto got a new liver. That's according to today's Los Angeles Times in a story co-written by Charles Ornstein.