6 Drug Crews More Dangerous Than the Mafia in New York – HT

 

 

 

In 2001, a group of Albanian gangsters sat across from 20 armed members of the Gambino crime family at a New Jersey gas station. The Gambinos had bats, they had guns, they outnumbered the Albanians more than three to one. The Albanians pointed a shotgun at a gas pump and told everyone to back off or die in the explosion.

The Gambinos backed down. That moment said everything about where New York’s criminal underworld was heading. For most of the 20th century, the five Italian-American mafia families ran the city. They controlled the docks, the garbage, the gambling, and the drugs. They were untouchable. And then, one by one, crews started showing up that didn’t care about the rules, didn’t care about the history, didn’t care about the consequences.

These six drug crews didn’t just compete with the mafia in New York. Some of them outgrew it entirely. Before we get into it, if you’re new here, we cover organized crime, street gangs, and the real stories behind America’s criminal underground every week. Hit subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming next.

 We drop new videos every week, and this channel is growing fast. [music] Number six, the Trinitarios. In June 2018, a group of men spotted a teenager outside [music] a Bronx bodega and chased him down with machetes. His name was Lesandro Guzman-Feliz. He was 15 years old. The attack was caught on security camera and played on news stations across the country.

Lessandro, who friends called Junior, was an innocent kid who had nothing to do with any gang. His killers had the wrong person. The attackers were members of the Trinitarios. The gang was founded in the late 1980s inside New York’s prison system, primarily at Rikers Island. Dominican inmates formed the group for mutual protection against rival gangs like the Latin Kings and the Netas.

The name comes from the concept of the Trinity. What started as a survival mechanism inside a jail turned into one of the most violent street and drug trafficking organizations on the East Coast. By the early 2000s, the Trinitarios had spread far beyond prison walls. Growth in the Dominican population across the Northeast gave the gang a ready recruitment base in the Bronx, Upper Manhattan, and Brooklyn.

The FBI’s 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment named them one of the fastest growing Hispanic gangs in the country. Their structure was organized. The gang had a national leader, Carlos Sierra, who ran operations from inside New York state prisons, issuing orders through a central committee that communicated with street-level leadership.

 A former US attorney once called them a dangerous and bloodthirsty organization. Sierra was serving 22 and a half years for a 1989 murder when he received an additional 19-year federal sentence in 2014 for his role leading the gang. Those two sentences run back-to-back. Federal prosecutors have brought case after case against Trinitarios factions across the city.

In one indictment alone, 50 members of the Bronx Trinitarios were charged with racketeering, narcotics trafficking, and murder. A separate set called the Sunset Trinitarios operated in Brooklyn from 2010 to 2024, committing multiple murders, gunpoint robberies across the metro area, and drug trafficking throughout that entire period.

 Their leader, Carlos Ramirez, known as Guera, was convicted in September 2024 for two murders he ordered, including the killings of two teenagers in 2013 and 2014. As recently as April 2026, a Trinitarios faction called A-Town was indicted in the Bronx for racketeering, attempted murder, firearms offenses, and narcotics trafficking tied to operations running since at least 2018.

This gang is not historical. It is active right now. Number five, MS-13. The name alone carries a certain weight. Mara Salvatrucha formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s among Salvadoran immigrants who had fled a brutal civil war. The gang spread east over the following decades, and by the early 2000s, Long Island had become one of its most active territories in the country.

The structure of MS-13 in New York operates through cliques. Each clique is a semi-autonomous unit that operates under the broader gangs rules and leadership structure, which runs through a national command called La Mesa, or the table, made up mostly of incarcerated senior leaders. Since approximately 2021, virtually all MS-13 cliques in the United States [music] have operated under a single unified hierarchy, the US program.

Those leaders coordinate murders and direct operations from prison. The body count in New York [music] is staggering. The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York has prosecuted MS-13 members for more than 80 murders committed in the Eastern District between 2009 and the present. Hundreds of members, including dozens of clique leaders, have been convicted on federal racketeering charges.

One of the most nationally known incidents came in 2016 when two teenage girls, Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas, were killed on Long Island. The clique leader responsible, Alexis Santos, was eventually sentenced to 68 years in federal prison in a case involving eight Long Island murders. President Trump referenced the killings multiple times in public remarks and visited Long Island specifically because of MS-13’s violence there.

The gang primarily funded itself through drug trafficking, particularly cocaine and marijuana, and through extortion. MS-13 leaders brokered deals with Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa and Zetas organizations, to secure drug supplies. In 2017, four young men were lured to a wooded park in central Islip under the pretense of smoking marijuana.

MS-13 members, armed with machetes, knives, an axe, and wooden clubs, surrounded them in the dark and attacked. Three of the four were killed. The fourth escaped. The killings were ordered in retaliation for social media posts [music] that disrespected the gang. That is what this organization considers a legitimate reason to murder someone.

Number four, the Latin Kings Black Mob. In 1986, a man named Luis Felipe founded the Latin Kings of New York while incarcerated at the Collins Correctional Facility. Within two months, the gang had over 60 members. By the 1990s, the Latin Kings were estimated to have between 2,000 and 5,000 members in New York City alone, and the FBI labeled them >> [music] >> the most violent gang in the city.

But the Latin Kings chapter that truly rivaled a mafia family was a specific set called [music] the Black Mob, founded in the Bronx in 2002 by a man named Mateo. He built the Black Mob from nothing into the largest Latin King set in the entire New York area. By the time federal prosecutors caught up with him, the Black Mob had approximately 300 active members, and Mateo had become the highest-ranking Latin King on the entire East Coast.

The Black Mob ran a massive drug operation trafficking heroin, fentanyl, and crack cocaine [music] throughout the Bronx and beyond. They protected their business with constant violence including a 2012 shooting at a rival gang members funeral and a 2016 arson of a Connecticut wedding venue. Members committed robberies, carried out retaliatory attacks on other gangs, and used firearms as a matter of course.

In 2022, Mateo pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess narcotics. He was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison. US Attorney Damian Williams said at sentencing that Mateo had recruited hundreds of young men into his gang and used them to run a massive drug operation that committed countless acts of violence.

20 years, one man, 300 members. That is not a street gang. That is a corporation. And speaking of channels you should be subscribed to, if this kind of deep dive organized crime content is what you’re here for, hit that subscribe button right now. We cover stories like this every single week and we’re just getting started.

Number three, the Nine Trey Gangster Bloods. In 1993, two men named Omar Portee and Leonard McKenzie were locked up at Rikers Island. They formed a gang for protection against the dominant forces inside, namely the Latin Kings and the Netas. They called it the United Blood Nation. [music] The Nine Trey Gangsters grew out of that organization as its citywide street-level branch.

What followed was three decades of drug trafficking, shootings, robberies, and violence across New York. Nine Trey initially built its narcotics business in Harlem using vacant buildings near Lenox Avenue as sales points. Homeless people, prostitutes, and children were allegedly used to sell drugs for the gang on the street, according to federal prosecutors.

The drugs themselves included heroin, crack cocaine, PCP, fentanyl, and MDMA. The gang operated in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, Baltimore, and beyond. In 2014, a federal jury convicted gang leader Thaddeus Snow and 24 associates for racketeering, robbery, cocaine distribution, sex trafficking, and weapons charges.

Most people know Nine Trey today because of rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine. In 2018, Tekashi and five associates were arrested by federal agents on charges of racketeering, robbery, and firearms offenses. The investigation had been running for five years led by Homeland Security Investigations alongside the NYPD and ATF.

When Tekashi took a plea deal and agreed to cooperate, he testified openly about the gang’s operations in federal court. His manager, Kifano Jordan, received 15 years in prison. Associate Aljermiah Mack, one of Nine Trey’s leaders, received 17 years for racketeering and drug charges. Tekashi was released in April 2020 after serving roughly 2 years.

 What the trial revealed was a gang that had reached into the music industry, used celebrity visibility as cover, and corrupted at least one NYPD officer in the process. A former police officer named Alisha Robinson pleaded guilty to transporting more than 100 g of heroin on behalf of the Nine Trey Bloods, moving it from the Bronx to Manhattan.

And a high-ranking Nine Trey member with documented ties to the Lucchese crime family was arrested at Teterboro Airport in December 2023. The Mafia Connection, still active. Number two, the Albanian Corporation. You heard about the gas station standoff at the top of this video. That was the Albanian Corporation, a multi-ethnic criminal organization that federal prosecutors called New York’s sixth crime family, standing alongside the traditional five Italian-American Mafia families.

The organization was founded in 1993 in the Bronx by Alex Rudaj, an ethnic Albanian from Montenegro who had immigrated to the United States in 1987, and his partner, Nardino Colotti, an Italian-American with existing Gambino connections. When a Gambino soldier they worked under died and they were cut out of his territory, they went independent and built their own operation.

 The corporation ran gambling dens across New York that generated millions annually. But they weren’t satisfied with the scraps the Italian families were willing to hand them. They muscled into Gambino-controlled Greek gambling houses in Queens, beating patrons, overturning tables, and stealing cash. Collotti then sat across from the Gambino family’s second-in-command and negotiated terms on their behalf.

The gas station meeting happened when the Gambinos finally demanded they stop expanding. Arnold Squitieri, the Gambino acting boss, showed up with 20 armed men. Rude brought six. One of his men pointed a gun at Squitieri’s head. Another aimed a shotgun at a gas pump. The message was clear. “Blow us up and everyone dies.

” The Gambinos backed off. A year later, Rude walked into Rao’s, the legendary East Harlem Italian restaurant, and demanded John Gotti’s old table. Gotti had been dead less than a year. When staff refused, Rude returned with dozens of men and a short conversation happened. The table became his.

 The FBI spent 5 years on the case. Wiretaps, surveillance, informants. On October the 26th, 2004, they arrested Rude and 21 others on charges of racketeering, attempted murder, extortion, and illegal gambling. It was the first federal racketeering case ever brought against an organized Albanian criminal enterprise. On June the 16th, 2006, Rude was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison.

More than 20 members were ultimately charged. >> [music] >> Number one, the Enos Jerkovic Network. If the corporation was the face of Albanian organized crime in New York, Enos Jerkovic, known simply as E, was the infrastructure. Federal prosecutors described Jerkovic as the underboss of the Albanian mafia. For nearly a decade, from 2000 to 2009, he ran one of the largest marijuana trafficking operations ever prosecuted on the East Coast.

His network imported over 100,000 kg of high-grade hydroponic marijuana from Canada into the United States. That is over 220,000 lb. Grown in hydroponic farms inside homes in British Columbia, then driven east to the Saint Regis Mohawk Reservation on the Canada-New York border, where smugglers crossed into New York State using speedboats, ATVs, tractor-trailers with hidden compartments, and regular vehicles modified for concealment.

From there, the marijuana moved through Forest Hills in Queens and up and down the entire East Coast. The Akwesasne Native American Reservation, straddling the border, became the central corridor. Federal agents mapped connections stretching to Chicago, Detroit, Texas, and back to Macedonia and Albania. What finally broke the operation wasn’t brilliant law enforcement work.

 It was a traffic stop on February the 20th, 2008, a man named Mersin Kolenovic was pulled over in Queens for driving without license plates. Police searched his 2006 Lexus and found 18 ziplock bags of marijuana in the trunk. >> [music] >> Kolenovic cracked immediately and agreed to cooperate with federal [music] authorities, wearing a wire straight into the heart of Jerkovic’s operation.

[music] When the DEA moved in, they seized 50,000 lb of marijuana in a single bust. Street value estimated between 120 and 150 million dollars. In 2012, Jerkovic was sentenced to 30 years in prison and a 2 million dollars fine. But even in custody, while waiting for sentencing, he manufactured death threats against the judge, prosecutors, and DEA agents, >> [music] >> enlisting his own sister to deliver threatening notes.

That earned him an obstruction of justice charge on top of everything else. He was released in late 2025. He is reportedly back on the street. The five Italian-American Mafia families are still around. Diminished, monitored, fractured by decades of RICO prosecutions. The gangs on this list came up while the Mafia was being locked away.

They filled the vacuum. Some [music] are gone. Some are very much not. And if you want to know more about how organized crime actually works in New York, the Albanian Mafia video linked on screen right now goes deeper into the corporation and the other crews that challenge the five families. Watch it next.

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