Prosecutors announce massive mob takedown in NYC amid deadly turf war

Queens prosecutors on Tuesday unsealed a massive 151-count indictment against 33 rival gangbangers whose ongoing street feud has killed two people – including an innocent teenager – and injured at least half a dozen others.

Among the victims of the bloody row between the Money World crew and two rival gangs was Aamir Griffin, a promising 14-year-old hoopster who was gunned down in 2019 in a case of mistaken identity, police and prosecutors said.

“The streets of South Jamaica, Queens are a much safer place as a result of the events leading up to this shutdown,” NYPD Assistant Inspector Jerry O’Sullivan, commander of the 113th Precinct, said at a joint news conference with prosecutors.

“Amir didn’t play basketball alone,” he said. “We also assigned two cops to this basketball court. And for gang members to feel comfortable bringing a gun anywhere near a basketball court where cops are present and shooting and hitting an innocent person — that’s totally unacceptable.”

The feud between the Money World gang and the other two Queens crews – Local Trap Stars and Never Forget Loyalty – arose from the April 16, 2019 attack on a Trap Stars member by two rival gangsters who slashed and beat the victim .

On October 26, 2019, Money World member Sean Brown reportedly saw Griffin playing basketball in front of the Baisley Park Houses in NYCHA and mistook him for a rival mobster and killed the teenager with three shots from a .380 caliber handgun.

What followed were six retaliatory attacks between the gangs, including New Year’s Eve 2020, in which 26-year-old Sean Vance was shot and killed while sitting in the driver’s seat of a parked BMW on Sutphin Boulevard, prosecutors said.

The alleged shooter, Money World member Tymirth Bey-Foster, who planned the attack with three other gang members, wrongly believed Vance was involved in an attack on their fellow gangbanger earlier in the day, prosecutors said.

Bey-Foster is among the gang members charged with second-degree murder, with Jokai Coy, Justin Harvey, and Joel Lewis charged as co-conspirators in the murder.

Also charged with murder is Sean Brown, who is accused of pulling the trigger in Griffin’s mistaken killing in 2019, authorities said.

All 33 defendants face conspiracy to murder charges along with other charges, prosecutors said. As of Tuesday, 15 have been charged on the charges, three are awaiting charges and eight have already been detained on other counts.

Three more are awaiting extradition from North Carolina and New Jersey. Four of the suspects are still at large, according to prosecutors.

“We have seen law-abiding New Yorkers peacefully going about their business killed by mindless gang violence,” said Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz.

“At the heart of the indictment is a blood feud between southeast Queens street gangs to establish their territorial dominance,” Katz said. “Money World is on one side and local Trap Stars and Never Forget Royalty are on the other.”