A leader of the Lowell-based gang One Family Clique (OFC) pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering conspiracies yesterday. The decades-long reign of terror and violence, swallowed in the darkness of illegal drug trade, seems to finally be nearing its end. But this story starts much earlier, with its roots formed deep in the underbelly of America's war on drugs.
In August 2018, law enforcement agents initiated an investigation into the OFC gang, an alliance of several gangs in and around Lowell with connections to gangs in other parts of the United States. The impetus for the investigation was a significant increase in shootings and gang violence in the city. When a community finds itself terrorized by such actions, it is often in the name of so-called justice that overwhelming force is mustered against the perpetrators.
Over the years, the OFC and its associates, including the now incarcerated Virak Prum, delved into various forms of criminal activities, which included but were not limited to the trafficking of wholesale quantities of cocaine and laundering millions of dollars in drug proceeds through Canadian casinos. As time wore on, the thirst for blood and the need for profit led the OFC down a path that expanded into the laundering of European drug proceeds from black tar heroin trafficking via the Department of Justice.
In May 2021, an operation led by Prum involving the laundering of 8 million Euros in drug proceeds exposed the extent to which the Lowell gang leader and his co-conspirators were willing to go in the underworld of crime. The curtain fell when Prum and his cohorts were charged in June 2021.
A two-year investigation brought down a criminal empire and further unravelled the threads that bound OFC to a dark past. Prum is now set to be sentenced on December 14, 2023.
The sentences for conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute cocaine, as well as money laundering conspiracy, each carry a hefty maximum penalty of up to twenty years in prison, supervised release of up to life, and fines reaching millions of dollars.
