The U.S. Attorney in South Carolina says federal prosecutors have busted up the largest racketeering case in state history, a ‘sprawling criminal enterprise’ involving inmates in state prisons who were conducting murder and major drug deals behind bars.
U.S. Attorney Peter McCoy Jr., along with over a dozen law enforcement officers in the state, held a news conference outside a Columbia prison Thursday to make the announcement.
In the 102 page indictment, prosecutors lay out the case against 40 suspects who are facing different and sometimes overlapping charges.
The document claims several prison gang members ran a drug empire using contraband cell phones and other means. They group would order violent retaliation against anyone they thought was giving information to law enforcement about their drug money and money owed to the gangs.
Its estimated the gangs were trafficking $50 million in meth a year for the last three years.
Among the killings believed to be involved an inmate murder in 2017 and a drive-by shooting in Greenville back in January of this year outside prison walls. The acts of violence were carried out by fellow gang members on the outside.
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