Dwayne Murray, a 36-year-old Coram man known on the street as “Wayno,” stood before a federal judge in Central Islip on Friday and admitted he helped run a Long Island Bloods set responsible for a 2020 murder, a standing order to kill rival gang members, and a cocaine pipeline that stretched across state lines. He now faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison, with a maximum of life, and a sentencing date set for March 10, 2027.
Murray entered his guilty plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven L. Tiscione, according to Newsday, closing out a case that began with a violent killing in a vacant Baywood backyard six years ago. Federal prosecutors say Murray admitted to participating in the robbery and killing of Wayne Cherry, who was shot twice, including once in the head, on June 12, 2020. Suffolk County police did not find Cherry's body until two days later.
As part of Friday's plea, Murray also admitted responsibility for trafficking more than five kilograms of cocaine through a multistate distribution network and for enforcing a standing order to murder rival gang members, the Newsday report states. FBI New York, which helped lead the investigation, said on social media that Murray “wreaked havoc across Long Island, putting innocent residents in the crosshairs of drug trafficking and retaliatory murders.”
Kaves, Kill Orders and a Gang Structure Built for Violence
Murray led a set known as “Money Gang Kave,” a Long Island branch of the Almighty Gorilla Stone Nation Bloods that used designated safehouses, called kaves, in towns across Suffolk County to coordinate shootings and drug deals, according to the Department of Justice. The federal case against him grew over several years, starting with a 32-count indictment in January 2024 and expanding to a 46-count second superseding indictment in February 2025 that added charges tied to a September 2016 attempted murder and a May 2020 attempted murder.
That same 2025 indictment accused Murray and co-defendant Lavalle Wilson of conspiring to run financial fraud schemes between 2020 and 2022 to help finance gang activities, the DOJ notes, showing the set had branched well beyond drugs and violence for revenue. Investigators also tracked down Murray's co-defendant, Sheim Tevin Ramsey-Davis, a high-ranking Gorilla Stone Bloods leader who fled to Augusta, Georgia, before federal agents and local police found him and extradited him back to New York in January 2025, per the same DOJ account. Ramsey-Davis had co-led Money Gang Kave alongside Murray.
Death Penalty Taken Off the Table
Because some of the racketeering murder charges against Murray were capital-eligible, prosecutors needed explicit Justice Department sign-off to pursue the death penalty. In December 2024, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed federal prosecutors not to seek it against Murray, according to Patch. That decision left the case to proceed toward the plea deal finalized this past Friday.
The case was built through the FBI's Long Island Gang Task Force, which pools resources from the FBI, Suffolk County Police, Nassau County Police, New York State Police, and county sheriff and probation departments, the Justice Department has said in a separate release. That kind of multi-agency structure has become the backbone of recent federal efforts to dismantle Bloods subsets operating across Long Island.
Part of a Broader Federal Push on Long Island
Murray's plea came just two days after federal prosecutors in Central Islip secured a 27-year prison sentence against Bloods member Joshua Crowell for a 2021 Southampton house party shooting and fatal fentanyl distribution, a case the Justice Department has pointed to as part of an ongoing crackdown on Bloods gang violence in Suffolk County. Hoodline previously reported on the 46-count charges against Murray when they were first filed in February 2025, and has also covered a related federal racketeering case out of Poughkeepsie involving another Bloods-affiliated defendant sentenced to 34 years.
FBI New York's Assistant Director in Charge, James C. Barnacle, Jr., framed Friday's plea as a milestone for the agency's Safe Streets Task Force. “May today's plea emphasize the FBI Safe Streets Task Force's determination to eliminate the plague of gang violence in our communities to protect New Yorkers,” Barnacle said, according to the FBI New York statement. Murray is scheduled to be sentenced on March 10, 2027, when a federal judge will determine where within the 10-years-to-life range his punishment falls.
