In a sweeping federal case, thirty individuals alleged to be members and associates of the Sex Money Murder (SMM) gang, were indicted in Georgia on multiple charges, including racketeering conspiracy, murder, and drug trafficking, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia announced yesterday. According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office, the charges brought forward also encompass conspiracy to commit wire fraud, exploiting federal COVID-19 relief and unemployment benefit programs.
The indictment outlines a pattern of extreme violence used by SMM to enforce their set of rules where a former gang member was allegedly killed for desiring to exit the gang and another was near-fatally stabbed for purported homosexual activities while in jail, the Justice Department remarked, the group also flooded the streets of Savannah with dangerous narcotics such as methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin and they also participated in elaborate fraud schemes, which resulted in intended losses surpassing $850,000.
"As alleged, the Sex Money Murder gang, a derivative of the nationally known Bloods gang, brutally enforced its purported rules, killing a 19-year-old member, and engaged in rampant drug trafficking and federal program fraud to enrich themselves," Matthew Galeotti, Head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division was quoted in the indictment announcement. Each accused faces a spectrum of sentences, from up to 20 years to life imprisonment or possibly the death penalty, should they be convicted of the most severe charges.
The operation, which demonstrates the level of cooperation among federal, state, and local law enforcement, also saw the involvement of multiple agencies including the FBI, ATF, U.S. Department of Labor, and various police departments across Georgia, these agencies contributed their resources and expertise to unravel a gang's criminal web that spanned from the streets down through the very veins of the state's prison system, according to court documents, with seven defendants allegedly ordering or committing crimes from behind bars.
Prosecutors from the Criminal Division’s Violent Crime and Racketeering Section and the Southern District of Georgia are handling the case under the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, a program that aims at dismantling high-level criminal organizations. It's worth emphasizing that an indictment is not a declaration of guilt and that all defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court, as the U.S. Attorney's Office has reminded.
