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LOS ANGELES — Forty alleged members of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison-based gang, have been indicted on racketeering charges stemming from a series of violent crimes that included 16 murders and 16 attempted murders, federal officials announced Thursday. 

Thirty of the defendants are currently serving time in prisons around the country for other offenses. Eight other defendants were arrested Thursday, three in Southern California, while two remain at large, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office. 

The 10-count indictment was handed down Aug. 28 but kept under seal until Thursday. The indictment follows a six-year investigation and alleges that members of the Aryan Brotherhood murdered and committed attempted murder to control drug trafficking, gambling and extortion in the federal and California state prison systems, Mrozek said. 

The gang, which was founded by white inmates in 1964, has a reputation for assaulting or murdering anyone considered a threat to the organization, including those who acted as informants for law enforcement, Mrozek said. 

In addition to the arrests, officials executed 80 search warrants at residences, offices and prison cells in California, Louisiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Colorado, Massachusetts, Florida, Washington, Nebraska, Connecticut and New York.