by WorldTribune Staff, May 23, 2017

Federal prosecutors in Charlotte last week indicted 83 members of the United Blood Nation (UBN) gang, including the “Godfather” of the UBN.

Pedro Gutierrez, who also goes by the nicknames “Magoo,” “Inferno” and “Light,” was running the 15,000-member UBN from a prison in upstate New York where he routinely conducted business via visitations, including several from North Carolina residents, the Raleigh News & Observer reported on May 23.

On May 22, federal prosecutors named Gutierrez, who is serving a murder sentence, as the head of all UBN operations.

As with many of the suspected UBN members named in the indictment, Gutierrez is charged with one count of conspiracy to participate in racketeering activity, better know as a RICO violation. It carries a potential prison sentence of 20 years to life and a $250,000 fine. He is scheduled to appear in federal court in Charlotte next month.

UBN formed in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail in 1993.

The News & Observer report said that many of the gang’s top leaders remain in New York custody – “up top” in gang parlance – “and still sign off on everything from UBN’s lucrative multi-state drug and weapons sales to racketeering, robbery and murder.”

The indictment against the 83 gang members details several meetings between the “Godfather” and North Carolina residents:

• On May 8, 2011, Gutierrez discussed gang business inside Wende Correctional Facility with Cynthia “Lady Bynt” Gilmore of Raleigh.
• On May 8, 2013, Gutierrez met with Montraya “Hardbody” Atkinson, also of Raleigh.
• In October 2014, the North Carolina delegation at Gutierrez’s prison included David “Gunz” Watson of Jacksonville and Bianca “Lady Gunz” Harrison of Raleigh.

As the meetings went on, “a steady stream of money in the form of gang dues flowed into the prison accounts of Gutierrez and two other UBN leaders, known as ‘Big Homies’ or ‘Original Gangsters,’ ” the News & Observer report said.

In the indictment, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced it wnts to drain the inmate accounts of Gutierrez, James Buxton and Omario “Uno B” Rosario. It’s not clear how much money they contain.

The News & Observer noted that Charlotte and North Carolina are “painfully familiar” with the UBN’s ability to operate from behind bars.

• A 2012 UBN indictment in Charlotte revealed that both the gang’s top North Carolina leader and a member of its national council in New York continued to direct the gang’s day-to-day operations while in prison. “It’s troubling for this court that incarceration did not stop you,” U.S. District Judge Frank Whitney of Charlotte told Daryl “OG Powerful” Wilkinson, who was serving a murder sentence in New York when a Charlotte grand jury indicted him for racketeering, according to a transcript from Wilkinson’s 2014 trial.
• In 2014, an imprisoned UBN leader using a contraband cellphone, sent more than 100 texts to direct the kidnapping of the father of the Raleigh prosecutor who put him in prison.
• Also in 2014, Jamell “Murda Mel” Cureton of Charlotte, then an inmate of the Mecklenburg County Jail, ordered and helped plan the murders of Doug and Debbie London of Lake Wylie, S.C., to keep them from testifying against Cureton and two other gang members who tried to rob the couple’s mattress company.

  Feds indict 83 North Carolina members of United Blood Nation gang run by ‘Godfather’ in NY prison, Pedro Gutierrez, Rikers Island, WorldTribune.com