Six men suspected of being members of the Nine Trey Gangster Bloods street gang, including four from metro Atlanta and three who were already in prison, have pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges.
The six men are among 10 people facing Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organization (RICO) conspiracy charges related to planning and carrying out acts of violence as well as trafficking drugs, including marijuana, methamphetamine and Xanax, acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Kurt Erskine said in a news release.
The Nine Trey Gangster Bloods (NTG) are a national gang that began in the prisons of New York as a subset of the United Bloods Nation, Erskine said. The NTG’s hierarchy divides members into separate groups called “lines,” and members hold different ranks within each line that confers specific duties and responsibilities upon them. The six defendants who pleaded guilty are part of NTG’s Fire line, Erskine said.
The defendants include: Tyrone Clark, 40, of Marietta, aka “Tight Eye”; Joseph Riley, 37, of Atlanta, aka “Joe Blow”; Gary Sartor, 37, of Atlanta, aka “G-Stacks”; Patrick Caple, 56, of Glennville, aka “Zoe”; Brandon Asberry, 32, of Atlanta, aka “B5″; and Michael Jackson, 27, of Chester, aka “MJ.”
Sartor, Caple and Jackson were in prison when they participated in the conspiracy, Erskine said.
Four of the men — Clark, Riley, Sartor and Caple — are considered high-ranking members of NTG, Erskine said. At the rank of “Fifth Floor,” the men were responsible for overseeing the members below them and reporting to the gang’s national leadership, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Jackson holds the rank of “Third Floor,” Erskine said, where he was responsible for planning conflicts with rivals and providing weapons to other NTG members. Asberry is “Second Floor,” a rank which Erskine said is responsible for taking collections from the gang’s members and overseeing the gang’s meetings, called “nines.”
“Members of the Nine Trey Gangsters showed a shocking indifference to human life, both in carrying out planned acts of violence, and in distributing drugs, including methamphetamine, throughout Georgia,” Erskine said. “While the gang offered members a sense of belonging and the opportunity to make money through illicit drug sales, it was those same members who were most often the targets of violence from the gang based solely on the whims of the gang’s leaders.”
Earlier this summer, the gang was linked to a nonprofit organization called Georgia Peach Youth Club (GPYC), which recruited children to sell candy and solicit donations in public places and by going door-to-door, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. An indictment in Cherokee County named 14 defendants who now face a variety of charges, including racketeering, human trafficking, charity fraud, money laundering and violating the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act.
According to the indictment, the adults running GPYC would gather children into vans, take them to a certain area and drop them off to solicit donations for hours without food, water or adult supervision. They promised rewards in the form of trips to theme parks and local attractions but rarely followed through. The money collected by the children was funneled directly to the NTG organization, the indictment said.
The case illustrates the breadth of NTG activities, which also include murder, assaults, robbery, firearms possession, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, drug trafficking and extortion, Erskine said.
“Members of Nine Trey Gangsters have plagued our streets with violence and drug trafficking for far too long,” FBI Atlanta Special Agent Chris Hacker said. “These pleas are an example of our commitment to dismantle organized, violent criminal enterprises. The community can rest assured these defendants won’t be on our streets for a very long time, thanks to the efforts of the FBI-led Safe Streets Gang Task Force and its state and local partners.”
Each of the six defendants will be sentenced separately in federal court “in the coming months,” according to Erskine’s announcement.
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