Timothy “Young Money” Wimbush, 33, will have to serve out just about all of the sentence because there's no parole in the federal prison system.
Wimbush rejected a plea offer from the government after he was caught armed and dealing during a gun war in Trenton. Taking his chances with a jury, he was convicted in October 2021 of selling and conspiring to sell heroin and possessing a firearm and ammo as a convicted felon.
That led to a 300-month prison sentence handed down by Chief U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson in Trenton on Tuesday, July 18, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
Detectives stopped Wimbush’s 2002 Volkswagen Passat on Sept. 6, 2018 after spotting another ex-con, Taquan Williams, carrying a bag containing what they believed was ammunition, the U.S. attorney said.
A search of the vehicle turned up 57 bricks of heroin and four semiautomatic firearms, including a .223-caliber assault rifle linked to a shooting in Trenton four days earlier, Sellinger said.
They also seized hundreds of rounds of ammunition, along with the bag that Williams was carrying. In it was two boxes of .45-caliber ammunition and three .45-caliber magazines, which matched one of the semiautomatic firearms found in the secret compartment.
Four of Wimbush’s associates were wounded in a Sept. 2, 2018 drive-by shooting in the area of Stuyvesant and Bryn Mawr Avenues, Sellinger said.
His crew retaliated with a shooting later that day at Lee and West State streets, the U.S. attorney said.
Ballistics analysis tied a shell casing to the rifle found in Wimbush’s VW, Sellinger said.
Wiretapped phone calls among crew members “linked Wimbush and his associates to back-and-forth shootings on and after September 2 and to heroin trafficking activity in the City of Trenton,” he said.
Williams also went to trial and lost. Two other associates took plea deals. Wolfson sent all to prison.
Sellinger credited special agents of the FBI Newark Field Office’s Trenton Resident Agency; special agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Newark Division’s Trenton Satellite Office, police from Trenton, Princeton, Ewing, Burlington Township and detectives from the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office with the investigation leading to the pleas, convictions and sentences secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Ramey of his Criminal Division in Trenton.
The U.S. attorney also thanked officers of the New Jersey State Police, detectives of the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, Mercer County sheriff’s officers and the New Jersey State Board of Parole for their assistance in the investigation and prosecution of the case.
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