The Feds Dismantled This Memphis Gang in 2017. The Name Came Back.

On the afternoon of August twenty-eighth, two thousand thirteen, a man named Robbie Webb was having his car washed on Lamar Avenue in Memphis.

A car circled the lot. Two men opened fire from it. One had two handguns with extended clips. The other had a rifle the witnesses called a Chopper.

Robbie Webb was hit and died. A second man washing a Corvette was shot in the arm. A third was shot in the buttocks.

The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals later described him in a single clause. Struck and killed by the fusillade was Mister Robbie Webb, who was having his car washed, and was not involved.

He was not involved. That is the shortest true summary of this story.

This is what the public record says about a Memphis street gang called Young Mob, across thirteen years, four federal cases, and one indictment that has still not been tried.

Everything here comes from court filings, appellate opinions, and Justice Department releases. Where the record says a thing is alleged, this video says it is alleged.

That distinction is going to matter more than usual, because the newest case in this story is still pending, and eight men are presumed innocent of every count in it.

Start with the name.

In two thousand sixteen, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals decided an appeal by a man named Marico Means, convicted of aggravated robbery in Shelby County.

The robbery itself was ordinary and ugly. A woman came home, parked, and walked up her own driveway carrying a dress and a purse. A man got out of a car behind her with a gun in his left hand.

She dropped everything, screamed, and hid under a neighbor's truck. Her purse was never recovered.

Means was convicted. The interesting part is the sentencing hearing.

The State put photographs from his Facebook page into evidence. Cash. A pistol. A magazine.

And three photographs of a letterman jacket. Across the back it read, MOB MUZIK GANG. The O in MOB was replaced with a billiards eight ball.

Then the State called a witness listed in the opinion as Gang Expert Byron Willis of the Memphis Police Department.

Willis testified that a rapper known as O.G. Boo Dirty was a member of the Young Mob, a criminal street gang in Memphis. He testified that the eight ball is a symbol associated with the Young Mob.

Another photograph showed a tattoo. The letters MOB, with the eight ball, on the defendant's left forearm.

The trial court found that Means was involved in criminal gang activity. On appeal, the court declined to decide whether that was proper, because his sentence stood on other grounds anyway.

So the finding is narrow. But the testimony is on the record, in two thousand sixteen, from a Memphis police gang expert, under oath.

A gang called Young Mob. A symbol that is an eight ball. And a connection to music.

Hold on to that last one. It comes back in nine years, in a federal indictment, almost word for word.

Now back to the car wash.

According to the appellate opinion, the shooting on Lamar Avenue was retaliation. Somebody had burglarized the house of a man the witnesses called Money Machine D, and also Little D.

The take was about one hundred thousand dollars in cash and eighty pounds of marijuana.

The men who did it then went out and spent it in a way that got noticed. One of them told the court he received about thirty thousand dollars, and bought clothes, drugs, and a car.

A witness named Keith Howell testified that Little D was a member of the Young Mob gang, and that the shooting was retaliation for the burglary of his house.

Three men were charged. Deredious Otis. Brashard Gibbs. Carlos Key.

The opinion does not describe those three as Young Mob members. It describes two of them as associates of Little D. That distinction is the court's, and it is kept here.

Three weeks after the car wash, one of the surviving burglars was driving on Interstate Two Forty with his cousin and her boyfriend in the car.

A white Dodge Dart came up behind them and shot out the back window. The woman in the back seat was cut by flying glass and grazed by a bullet.

He pulled off the expressway and called nine one one. And then he did the thing the whole case turned on. He decided to talk to the police.

He told the court why. He believed the men would keep trying to kill him.

Otis, Gibbs, and Key were convicted of first degree premeditated murder for Robbie Webb, and of attempted first degree murder for the people they missed.

Otis and Key each received life, plus twenty-five years for each attempted murder, consecutive.

Gibbs received life, plus twenty-five years on each of five counts, plus six years on each of three firearm counts. All consecutive.

At sentencing the trial judge said the thing plainly. You just pull up there, and you unload on a car wash where there's people, there's a store, there's traffic going up and down the street.

In two thousand eighteen the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed all of it.

Those convictions are final. Nothing in the rest of this video is.

In two thousand sixteen, federal agents opened an investigation into the Young Mob gang.

The case was opened in the Western District of Tennessee in January of two thousand seventeen. A superseding indictment followed. The arrests came in March.

On March twenty-first, agents went out and made the arrests.

The next day the United States Attorney's Office for the Western District of Tennessee put out a press release.

Twenty-nine indicted on federal drug trafficking charges. Fourteen are Young Mob gang members.

Fourteen defendants of a violent drug trafficking street gang, along with fifteen individuals not affiliated with Young Mob, were indicted on federal drug charges.

The arrests were made by the A.T.F. Memphis Field Office, the U.S. Marshals, the Tipton County Sheriff's Office, and the Shelby County Sheriff's Office.

The investigation, the office said, had produced more than forty firearms, several of them stolen. Hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Fifteen to twenty digital scales.

And eighty-five thousand six hundred sixty-one dollars in cash.

The Acting U.S. Attorney said the office would exhaust every available resource. Dismantling violent gangs at the highest levels, he said, remains a priority.

Remember that sentence.

Two months later, in the same courthouse, a second and separate indictment came down.

It was filed under seal on May twenty-fifth, two thousand seventeen, and it charged nineteen people.

Drug conspiracy. Possession with intent to distribute. Money laundering. Conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States. And structuring.

Structuring means breaking cash deposits into pieces small enough that a bank does not have to report them.

Seventh on the list of defendants was a name that connects this case to the testimony you heard a few minutes ago.

Fred McCaster Junior. Also known as Boo Dirty. Also known as Dirty. Also known as O.G.

A magistrate judge signed the order unsealing the indictment and the arrest warrants.

The warrant for McCaster is one page. It commands any authorized law enforcement officer to arrest him and bring him before a magistrate without unnecessary delay.

His aliases are typed onto the line where the defendant's name goes.

At the bottom, in pen, an officer wrote the date the warrant was received and the date it was served. June twenty-second, two thousand seventeen. Memphis, Tennessee.

Now, an important line. Nothing in this second indictment calls it a Young Mob case.

The only thing tying it to the gang is the sworn testimony of a Memphis police gang expert, in a different courtroom, a year earlier, about the man he called O.G. Boo Dirty.

That is the honest limit of the connection, and it is stated here on purpose.

Now, the piece of paper that made this episode worth making.

On September eighth, two thousand seventeen, there was a hearing in McCaster's case. The clerk filled out a standard form. Exhibit and witness list.

One witness was sworn. Special Agent Christopher Brent Beavers of the A.T.F.

One exhibit was marked, and admitted.

Post Office spreadsheet. Tracking numbers, shipping addresses, and indicated seized packages.

In two thousand seventeen, the government's evidence in this Memphis case was a list of parcels.

On November sixteenth, two thousand eighteen, Fred McCaster Junior pleaded guilty to counts one and nine of the indictment.

With leave of the court, the defendant entered a plea of guilty. Plea colloquy was held, and the court accepted the defendant's plea.

That is a conviction. Not an allegation.

Meanwhile, in the other case, the one that actually was a Young Mob case, the arithmetic was working itself out.

We know that because one of the fourteen filed a motion from prison during the pandemic, and a federal judge wrote an order summarizing his history.

In March two thousand seventeen, the order says, Pack was indicted for various crimes arising from his participation in a drug trafficking organization.

In October two thousand eighteen, Pack pleaded guilty to two counts of a superseding indictment.

In February two thousand nineteen, the court sentenced him to fifty-one months in prison on each count, to be served concurrently.

Fifty-one months. Four years and three months. The order lists his expected release date as October twentieth, two thousand twenty-one.

That is what dismantling a gang at the highest levels looked like in dollars and years. And it is not a criticism of the sentence. It was within the guidelines for what he pleaded to.

It is just the arithmetic. Federal drug sentences end. People come home.

And in the years after that, the name Young Mob came back into a federal courtroom.

From here on, everything is an allegation. Say it out loud before every sentence if you like. The case has not been tried.

On May thirtieth, two thousand twenty-five, a federal grand jury in Memphis returned a sealed indictment charging racketeering conspiracy.

It was unsealed in July. On July eighteenth the Justice Department announced it.

Eight Young Mob gang members indicted in Memphis on racketeering, murder, robbery, firearm and drug charges.

Larry Wilson. Brian Lack-land. Paul Nelson. Mohamed Samba. Braxton Beck. Edgar Smith. Jerrod Cox. Cedric Jackson. All Tennessee residents. Ages twenty-five to thirty-nine.

And here is the sentence that reaches back nine years.

Y.M. members signify their membership by wearing red or black clothing, and jewelry with an Eight Ball, or the letters Y.M. or Y.M.M.

The same symbol a Memphis police detective described from a witness stand in two thousand sixteen. The government is now alleging it as an element of a racketeering enterprise.

The indictment alleges four episodes. Read them for who was standing nearby.

May twenty-eighth, two thousand twenty-two. Samba and other, not yet identified, Y.M. members allegedly shot suspected rival gang members, murdering one and attempting to murder two others, in a McDonald's restaurant drive-through in Memphis.

Afterward, the indictment alleges, they burned the stolen car they had used.

May thirteenth, two thousand twenty-three. At Tug's Casual Grill, a Memphis restaurant, Nelson, Cox, and another unnamed Y.M. member allegedly robbed customers at gunpoint.

In that robbery, the government says, their own man was shot and killed.

And then, according to the indictment, Nelson and Cox left the mortally wounded man in a nearby fire station parking lot, drove their stolen vehicle somewhere else, and burned it.

March seventeenth, two thousand twenty-four. Lack-land and Beck allegedly attempted the murder of a suspected gang rival. It was thwarted, the release says, in part due to police presence in the area.

June eleventh and twelfth, two thousand twenty-four. Four of the men allegedly tried to rob customers at a Memphis tattoo shop, and left because police were nearby.

Undeterred, the release says, the same group, along with Smith this time, returned to the tattoo shop after police left the area, and robbed multiple customers.

A drive-through. A grill. A tattoo shop. In each of the four, the people described as being robbed or endangered are customers.

And then the money.

As alleged, Y.M. receives money and income from drug trafficking, kidnappings, and robberies. Those funds go to weapons, to narcotics, and to supporting members in prison.

And then this. Y.M. also receives money and income from various musical interests, with defendant Lack-land being a well-known rapper who goes by the stage name Stupid Duke.

Nine years earlier, a Memphis police gang expert told a Shelby County judge that a rapper was a member of the Young Mob, and that the eight ball was its symbol.

The federal government is now making a version of the same argument, in a racketeering indictment, as a theory of how the enterprise is funded.

Whether a jury agrees is a question nobody has answered yet. Brian Lack-land has not been tried, and is presumed innocent.

There is also a drug conspiracy. Four hundred grams or more of fentanyl. Five hundred grams or more of methamphetamine.

If convicted, five of the eight face a maximum of life. One faces sixty years, one forty-five, one twenty.

Some of that drug case did go to trial, and it is the one part of the newest chapter that has actually been decided.

On November twelfth, two thousand twenty-five, a jury convicted three Memphis men of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl.

Darius Moore, thirty-nine. Mervin Anderson, forty. Mario Gardner, forty-nine.

In April of this year, the court sentenced Darius Moore to two hundred ten months. Anderson had already received one hundred fifty months, and Gardner fifty-one.

Seventeen and a half years, twelve and a half years, and four years and three months.

The Justice Department described the three as members or associates of the Memphis street gang Young Mob Military, or Young Mob.

And it described how the drugs moved. Thousands of fentanyl pills, sent through the United States Postal Service.

Pills pressed to mimic Oxycodone. Blue. The conspiracy called them blues.

Eight years after an A.T.F. agent walked into a Memphis courtroom with a Post Office spreadsheet of tracking numbers and seized packages.

Same district. Same method. Different men.

That is not a claim that the two cases are connected. It is a claim that the mail kept working.

So where does it stand, right now.

In that April two thousand twenty-six announcement, the Justice Department added one sentence about the rest of the case.

Other alleged members of the drug conspiracy, including the leader of the Young Mob, are charged in separate indictment with racketeering conspiracy.

Charged. Not convicted.

The public docket for that racketeering case runs from the sealed indictment in May two thousand twenty-five through a string of scheduling orders and setting letters.

In May of this year the court granted a motion to continue. The last entry on the docket is dated the twenty-fifth of June, two thousand twenty-six.

There has been no trial. There has been no verdict. Thirteen months after the indictment, the eight men named in it have not been convicted of anything in this case.

So here is what the record actually establishes, and what it does not.

It establishes that a Memphis gang using an eight ball as its symbol has been named in Shelby County courtrooms since at least two thousand sixteen.

It establishes that in two thousand seventeen the federal government indicted fourteen of its members, seized more than forty guns, and said it was dismantling the gang at the highest levels.

It establishes that at least one man convicted in that case served a sentence measured in months, not decades, and came home.

It establishes that three men were convicted at trial last November of moving fentanyl through the mail, and that they are now in federal prison.

And it establishes that the same gang name is currently in an open federal racketeering indictment that nobody has yet had to prove.

What the record does not establish is the thing the press releases keep implying. That any of this ended.

Two takedowns, nine years apart, both described as dismantling the organization. The name outlived both.

And there is one more thing the record does not settle, which bothered me the whole time I was reading it.

In two thousand fifteen, a different Tennessee appeal mentions a rap artist nicknamed Boo Dirty, driving a car stopped by police after a shooting outside a Memphis skating rink.

That opinion gives the man a different legal name than the federal arrest warrant does.

Two records. One nickname. Two different men's names attached to it. This video does not claim they are the same person, because the record does not say so.

That is the kind of thing that gets a story wrong. Somebody in Memphis knows which is which. I don't.

The record does not say how old Robbie Webb was, or what he did for a living, or whose Corvette was in the next bay. It says he was getting his car washed.

The court's phrase for him was, not involved in the earlier burglary or theft which precipitated the shooting.

That is the whole shape of this. Fourteen years of filings, and the clearest sentence in all of them is about a man who had nothing to do with any of it.

If you know that stretch of Lamar Avenue, or you were in Memphis for any of this, the comments are the useful part of this video. I'll be reading them.