A man described by law enforcement as one of Southern California’s most prominent street racing influencers has been charged by Los Angeles County prosecutors with 16 counts of conspiracy for organizing a number of so-called “street takeovers.”

Erick Romero Quintana, 22, pleaded not guilty during a brief court appearance Thursday in downtown L.A. He faces at least a decade in prison after authorities charged him with running the Instagram account @privatemeetz, which blasted out the locations of 16 different takeover events across South L.A. to its more than 60,000 followers from December 2022 to November 2023, according to a criminal complaint filed last month.

At one of those events, a 24-year-old girl died after a spinning car careened into the crowd.

Street racing events have long

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