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Federal authorities used the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law to secure a grand jury indictment charging the defendants with conspiracy, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said Tuesday, Sept. 20.
All seven are members or associates of the Bounty Hunter Bloods, which operated under the umbrella of neighborhood street gangs known as “Parkside” in Somerset and “The Ville” in New Brunswick, the U.S. attorney said.
Assaults, shootings, and murders committed by the gang members often targeted rivals, Sellinger said.
In one incident, he said, some who’d gone to a New Brunswick hospital to honor a high-ranking member who’d been shot by rivals just hours earlier chased down two adversaries riding in a Jeep and shot both of them, killing one, on Easton Avenue.
In another, some of them used a stolen car to commit a shooting that killed a rival gang member and a second victim while wounding seven other people, Sellinger said.
Another rival was shot and killed, and a companion wounded, during a confrontation over drug dealing in New Brunswick, the U.S. attorney said.
Bounty Hunter Bloods members fired shots at a rival’s funeral in the area of Churchill Avenue in Somerset County’s Franklin Township, Sellinger said.
Gunfire wounded another rival in a targeted shooting at the Hope Manor housing complex in the “Down Bottom” area of New Brunswick.
Several other shootings were cited in the indictment returned by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Newark.
Bounty Hunter Bloods members also “routinely distributed narcotics in and around the gang’s turf in both New Brunswick and Somerset,” Sellinger said.
They also “engaged in various wire and bank fraud schemes to enrich themselves and fellow members of the gang, including schemes to defraud the federal Paycheck Protection Program,” he said.
Charged with racketeering conspiracy are Middlesex and Somerset residents:
- Walter Boyd, a/k/a “Walt,” a/k/a “Walt Daddy,” 34;
- Isiah Daniels, a/k/a “Ice,” 33:
- Joel Lyons, a/k/a “Jayski,” 21;
- Gede Maccelus, a/k/a “G Baby,” 21;
- Armando Ortiz, a/k/a “Mando,” 24;
- Malik Stringer, a/k/a “Rambo,” 24;
- Kimani Wanyoike, a/k/a “Ki,” 21.
Daniels and Wanyoike are in federal custody on previously filed related federal charges.
Lyons and Ortiz are currently serving terms of imprisonment in state prison.
Boyd, Maccelus, and Stringer are currently in state custody on pending state charges related to the charges filed today.
All defendants’ will have initial appearances to be scheduled.
Sellinger credited special agents of the FBI, investigators of the Middlesex and Somerset county prosecutor’s offices and police from New Brunswick and Franklin Township for the joint investigation leading to the indictment, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kendall Randolph of his Organized Crime and Gangs Unit in Newark and Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracey Agnew of Sellinger’s Trenton Office.
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