A leader of a notorious Brooklyn gang was sentenced to six decades in prison on Thursday for various crimes including drug trafficking and murder conspiracies.
Moeleek Harrell, also known as “Moe Money,” was sentenced to 60 years in prison for his crimes as the leader of the Bully Gang, a street gang based in the Bedford-Stuyvesant. Harrell, 36, was one of 53 defendants charged and convicted in connection with the federal government's case against the Bully Gang, according to Joseph Nocella, Jr., United States Attorney, Eastern District of New York.
Harrell and three other gang leaders were convicted in July 2024 of racketeering, two murder conspiracies, two assaults, two instances of using a gun during a crime of violence, two drug trafficking conspiracies, and two money laundering conspiracies.
The Bully Gang was described by enforcement officials as a criminal organization responsible for murder, brazen violence in public, and large-scale drug and weapons trafficking that stretched from New York to Maine.
The gang also murdered rivals, as well as a potential witness against them, regularly shot at adversaries in public streets, burned down a home with people inside, committed armed robberies with an arsenal of weapons trafficked from out of state, and engaged in multiple sprawling narcotics trafficking schemes.
These schemes included a multistate drug and money laundering conspiracy involving dozens of stash houses located in Maine, and a conspiracy to smuggle drugs into Rikers Island jail facilities, including by bribing prison guards. The illicit money generated from these schemes was used to benefit the gang by enriching its members and funding its operations to commit more crimes, according to prosecutors.
Harrell was personally involved in two murder conspiracies, targeting Christopher King and members of a rival gang known as the Stukes Crew. Harrell and the Bully Gang targeted King because King had killed Charles Williams, the founding leader of the Bully Gang. Over the course of several weeks, Harrell tracked dates on which King would be going to court (including for a case related to Williams’s killing) and confronted King at one of his court appearances, prosecutors said.
On one occasion, Harrell and his co-conspirators went to King’s house to try to find King. Harrell’s efforts to find King culminated in a shooting on October 1, 2017, in which King and an innocent bystander were both shot and wounded.
Harrell’s violent rivalry with the Stukes Crew lasted at least five years. During this time, Harrell and his co-conspirators made multiple attempts to murder members of the Stukes Crew, prosecutors said.
Harrell was also deeply involved in drug trafficking schemes, including running the day-to-day operations of the gang’s Rikers drug smuggling scheme. From 2019 to 2021, Harrell and his co-conspirators arranged for papers and comic books soaked in synthetic cannabinoids, also known as “K2,” to be delivered to Rikers. Once inmates received the K2-soaked papers, they sold smaller quantities to other inmates at a substantial profit. Harrell made hundreds of thousands of dollars from this scheme. To get drugs into Rikers, Harrell and his co-conspirators sent drugs through the mail, had visitors to the jail bring in drugs, and bribed corrupt corrections officers to bring drugs in themselves, according to prosecutors.
In addition, Harrell also had a leadership role in the gang’s scheme to sell heroin and cocaine base in Maine. As part of this scheme, the Bully Gang and its associates transported large quantities of drugs, including cocaine base, heroin and fentanyl, from New York and New Jersey to Maine, where they sold the drugs out of multiple stash houses spread throughout the state. The gang made millions of dollars from these drug sales, prosecutors said.
“Moeleek Harrell learned today that there is a heavy price to pay for leading a gang responsible for extensive criminal conduct, and his sentence should serve as a warning to those underlings who foolishly obeyed the defendant’s orders. They too will learn that following Harrell’s footsteps will lead a path straight to federal prison for a very long time,” Nocella said in a statement.
