Following a 134-count federal grand jury indictment, the FBI arrested the 35-year-old leader of a notorious South Carolina criminal gang United Blood Nation (AKA Bloods Street Gang) in Huntington Beach this week.
South Carolina-native David Andrea Jenkins (AKA “Dread”) and his gang members used sophisticated codes–but ones not good enough to stump federal agents–to communicate while they committed murders, aggravated assaults, kidnappings, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, wire fraud and prostitution, according to a 100-page indictment reviewed by the Weekly.
By 1999, Jenkins had taken over the gang's South Carolina operations from James Powell (AKA “Munchie”), who'd come from New York and the Gangsta Killa Bloods (GKB), according to law enforcement.
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Jenkins and his fellow hoodlums did not know the extent the FBI monitored their activities, including their telephone calls, and spoke
freely about distributing crack cocaine, committing violence against
rivals and discovering snitches.
In South Carolina, federal
agents arrested more than 20 other alleged gangsters with nicknames like
Arsonist, Tater Head, Shotgun, Gucci, Red Boy, Big Mama Blood, Buck,
Bnezzy, Fish, Kapone, Southside, Junior, Teazy, Metro, Rockaroni and
Killer.
According to police records, Jenkins has been transferred out of the Santa Ana Jail, where he was originally housed by U.S. marshals.
United States Attorney David Nettles in South Carolina and FBI Agent David A. Thomas hailed the arrests as a major blow to the gang's activities.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.