Bloods Gang Members Charged in Rikers Island-Based Crime Ring, Officials Say
About half of the 29 people named in seven indictments were arrested last week and charged with participating in a criminal ring run by the Mac Balla Bloods gang, Bronx prosecutors said.
Credit
Bronx District Attorney's Office

By Ali Winston
Dec. 13, 2018

Jailhouse slashings. Weapons and drug smuggling inside correctional facilities. Attempted murder. Social media-driven jewelry heists.

These were among the charges laid out Wednesday in indictments against 29 people suspected of being members or associates of the Mac Balla Bloods, one of the oldest and most influential street gangs in New York City that is particularly powerful within the city’s jail system.

The Mac Balla Bloods operated “an enterprise of violence emanating from Rikers Island,” the Bronx district attorney, Darcel Clark, said in announcing the charges.

Investigators described a smuggling operation that moved information and contraband among city jails and an upstate prison. The network shuttled scalpel blades into lockups and organized the sale of crack cocaine and suboxone strips, which are prescribed to treat opioid addiction but were sold for $100 each inside a maximum security prison in Pine City, N.Y., according to the indictments.

Thirty of the scalpel blades, which Ms. Clark called “tiny instruments of terror,” were intercepted by the authorities during the yearlong investigation by the Police Department, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Investigation.

“This case exemplifies what the N.Y.P.D. will do to dismantle the gangs that continue to drive violence on our streets,” said Deputy Chief Timothy McCormack, head of the Bronx detective bureau.


The investigation involved wiretaps and close monitoring of social media that targeted a highly coordinated group of gang members believed to be at the heart of both drug sales and violence on and off Rikers Island. Outside city jails, gang members sold crack cocaine at multiple locations in the Bronx and counterfeited large-denomination currency, the indictments charge.

About half of the 29 defendants were arrested during a sweep by law enforcement officials last week, and six of the suspects were already in custody. Six others are still being sought.

Some of the charges included in the seven indictments announced on Wednesday were linked to violent infighting among the Mac Balla Bloods and a slashing attack on a member of a rival gang, the Trinitarios, that left an eight-inch facial gash.

Investigators said they were also able to thwart an attempted killing in Harlem that stemmed from an affront against the mother of a jailed gang member.

On the afternoon of June 29, detectives monitoring a wiretap recorded a conversation about buying a firearm. Plainclothes officers trailed two men, who according to the wiretap were unnerved by the presence of a Police Department patrol car and decided against the vendetta attack. Investigators later arrested the pair and recovered a loaded .357-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, court documents show.

The two were indicted on charges of conspiracy, attempted murder and assault.

The gang also used social media to target victims, instructing a woman to interact online with men and women who conspicuously displayed valuable jewelry on Instagram, according to the indictments. Two gang members were documented discussing plans to lure potential victims to hotels and restaurants where they could be robbed.

Wednesday’s indictments follow other recent large-scale efforts to dismantle the Mac Balla Bloods’ criminal enterprises.

Earlier this year, the United States attorney in Brooklyn filed drug conspiracy charges against 12 people suspected of being Mac Balla members who were accused of selling crack and heroin in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Maine. In 2014, more than 60 people suspected of being Mac Balla Bloods were charged by the Bronx district attorney’s office with murder, kidnapping, drug distribution, weapons possession, assault and home-invasion robberies.