Melinda Katz, District Attorney, Queens: Good morning, everyone. Once again, we're back in this room. Always happy to be here with everyone. Thank you for joining us once again. We're here to announce the indictments of 12 reputed gang members of the Floss Money Ballers who were, how we allege, became the driving force behind violent crime in Southeast Queens for more than one year.
I would like to introduce up here, obviously, Mayor Adams, Mayor Eric Adams, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, and members of my team, Jonathan Sennett, who is the bureau chief of Violent Crime, Barry Frankenstein, who is the deputy, Andres Sanchez, who is the prosecuting attorney, and Loren Vetrano, who is also the prosecuting attorney for this indictment and these prosecutions.
The defendants are charged in a 33-count indictment with attempted murder, conspiracy in the second and fourth degrees, criminal use of a firearm, reckless endangerment, criminal possession of a weapon, and attempted assault. They each face up to 25 years in prison if convicted of the top charges.
Eight of the defendants were apprehended on Thursday, August 28th, by our partners in the NYPD, while four others were already incarcerated on other matters. Nine out of the 12 of defendants, by the way, ages 18 to 26, were arraigned on Thursday. Each of these defendants are remanded and they are being held.
We allege that six out of the 12 of the defendants are actual shooters, firing indiscriminately on the streets of Queens County, attempting to kill. I will note to all of you that these arrests were made, and the last few days after the apprehension of these alleged gang members, it was a very quiet weekend for violent crime in Southeast Queens. It is a direct correlation between the arrests and remand of these gang members and the streets of our city.
For the last year, there has been an ongoing feud between Floss Money Ballers and Blitz Gang 4, also known as BG4. The groups are battling for dominance in our neighborhoods in Southeast Queens, Laurelton, Queens Village, Springfield Gardens, Baisley Park Houses, and other parts of Southeast Queens.
Many of you were in this room in March 2023 when we announced the takedown of 33 alleged gang members of the Money World, Local Trap Stars and Never Forget Loyalty gangs. That was in March of 2023. These groups are also alleged in years of fighting with one another and responsible for multiple murders, but after the takedown in March of 2023, these guys filled the vacuum that was created and formed the new gangs that were created in order to fill that vacuum.
Floss Money Ballers were formed on the ashes of Money World Gang, while their rivals, BG4, emerged on the remains of the Local Trap Stars. This takedown is a reminder that as these gangs form in our borough, we will dismantle them. It is a direct correlation. We know it is. We're going to keep with that theory. We're going to keep moving forward and making sure that we take them off the street and have other peaceful weekends ahead in Queens County.
On September 20, so these events you'll see on the chart, if I'm not mistaken, the timing of all of these events started on September 27th was the opening of the chapter of this indictment. An 18-year-old Floss Money Ballers member was murdered by a BG4 associate outside of the McDonald's in Springfield Gardens. Just three hours later, in retaliation, Floss Money Ballers members shot up a house associated with BG4.
Later that day, one of the gang members also was arrested with a glock with a switch that turned into a machine gun, literally a machine gun. He was carrying 59 rounds of ammunition. Imagine the damage that can be done with a machine gun with almost 60 rounds of ammunition.
In January, a BG4 member was lured to a fake marijuana deal by Floss Money Ballers and was shot at multiple times. In May, a BG4 member was nearly murdered when he was shot at in the back and in the arm as he greeted his grandmother on Mother's Day. In between these events, we recovered multiple weapons including a ghost gun as a result of search warrants and a car stop.
So again, on September 27th, 2024— I'd like to note, by the way, this investigation was a year from beginning to end, a year and almost a day or two, a few days. So the impetus was September 27th, an 18-year-old named Akim Cisse, a Floss Money Baller, was seated in an Ultima outside the McDonald's, like we said, in Springfield Gardens.
Cisse was believed to be the Moneyballer gang. He was targeted by BG4 member Rayvon Phillip, who fired multiple rounds into the vehicle. Phillip, by the way, has pledged 21 years for manslaughter, and so that has been disposed of.
Just a few hours after Cisse's murder, we allege that members of the Floss Money Ballers went out for revenge, and on September 28th, just a few hours later at 1:45 a.m., a car occupied by five Money Ballers drove to a house on 119th Avenue in South Jamaica and was believed to be the home of a BG4 member. Two occupants of the car, defendants Kaimi Davis and Jamari Spaulding, sprayed bullets into three different homes. Thankfully, no one was struck.
And thankfully, my office and the NYPD had excellent intelligence, because we realized there was more violence to come, and that's when precision policing really pays off. Members of the 105th were specifically stationed in Laurelton in response to the violence the night before. At 4.50 p.m., less than 24 hours, the NYPD members observed approximately eight men, including defendant and alleged Floss Money member Jackson Cross, coming out of a house.
All the members were observed wearing black clothing, face coverings, including surgical masks, and several of them were wearing gloves. Defendant Cross was the only member of the group wearing a backpack. Police officers went up to the group. Jackson Cross fled through the backyards. He emerged several minutes later without the backpack, and the officers secured the weapon.
That was the 9mm that was outfitted with a laser sight and selector switch, a modification that turns a firearm into a machine gun. Two additional magazines were found, and we allege the 60 bullets. We have no idea what type of violence the NYPD stopped that day. Lives were saved, and I want to thank all of the officers who apprehended the suspect.
Two weeks later, on October 11th, police officers entered the home of an alleged gang member and shooter, Kaimi Davis, with a court-authorized search warrant and recovered two more loaded firearms. While these arrests are going on, all the social media and music videos were being particularly provocative to the Money Baller gang. They elevated the death of Cisse, the one that was killed at McDonald's, into almost an icon, you know, with songs like Flossing for Akim, Long Live Akim 18.
Then, a few months later, on January 12th, we allege that the members of the Floss Money Ballers lured a rival BG4 member into a marijuana deal as part of a setup. Three of the indicted defendants shot at the perceived rival. Fortunately, the young man was not hit, the police officer recovered nine shell casings at the scene, and five days later, a defendant, Jordan McFarlane, was stopped operating a vehicle with excessively tinted windows, and the gun was found.
A month later, while police officers were executing a search warrant at defendant Hankey's house, a police officer saw Hankey throw a couch cushion out the window, and they recovered a glock in that couch cushion. Then the violence peaked on Mother's Day. Based on our intelligence, defendant Larry Spencer, who acts as a leader within the gang, organized a caravan of Floss Money Ballers and drove to BG4 territory, and they went to the vicinity of Baisley Houses.
And their orders were very clear, to shoot any rival on sight. Spencer and his co-defendants spotted a perceived rival, shot him at 116-80 Guy Brewer Boulevard, and we're going to play a video of that shooting for you.
[Video plays.]
I believe at that moment he's looking to get his grandmother out of the car, and he's trying to help her. Again, trying to assist his grandmother out of the car, he was shot. The victim was shot in the back and the forearm. He was left for dead, and miraculously he survived. We show this video, by the way, so that anybody who is watching, who has any information on that crime and on that shooting, can please come forward and let us know. We need to keep our neighborhoods safe again. I want to point out, the shooting was on Mother's Day.
We went to a grand jury, we built a strong case, we secured the indictments, and we took these alleged drivers of crime off the streets. In law enforcement, we are very well aware of the fact that taking alleged gang members off the street produces more peaceful times in the City of New York. With these arrests, we made the neighborhoods in Southeast Queens much safer.
I would like to now introduce for comments, and thank for his assistance of the Police Department, our mayor, Eric Adams.
Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you, DA Katz, and really our entire team, the men and women who are standing to the left and the right of me, and the partnership that we put in place. There are clear terminologies that we should all listen to as the district attorney was sharing the unraveling of this case.
Gangs, retaliatory shootings, total disregard for family members, innocent people from grandmothers to children walking down the streets, face covering, wearing face masks as they start the process of going after who they call their ops, the opposition, and just a total disregard for public safety. And then the collaboration and the coordination.
When the police commissioner talks about the decrease in shootings and victims of shootings, it is not only with the men and women of the New York City Police Department, what they are doing, but it's what the district attorney is doing here in Queens and really across our city. These gang takedowns, there's a clear correlation to the decrease in violence. The commissioner talks about it all the time, the number of shootings we have that have gang involvement.
These are organized individuals who have a total disregard for safety. If the bullet takes the life of a grandmother or maims an innocent child, they continue with their action. And so the work that we're doing, collaborating with our crisis management teams, the Police Department, our district attorney, our Gun Suppression Units, this is how we keep our city safe and how we were able to remove 23,000 illegal guns off our streets and continue to see the progress of gun violence.
But we can't do it alone. We have created a revolving door criminal justice system. We talk about it all the time. Many of the laws that are made in a sterilized environment of a legislative chamber are hurting our community. We're seeing it in the Bronx where the shooters are getting younger and younger associated with Raise the Age. We see the revolving door associated with the bail laws and reforms. It is hurting innocent New Yorkers.
And in spite of that, the District Attorney Office have really taken a hands-on approach of going after these shooters, these trigger pullers, and going after those who have a total disregard for our safety. So DA, we thank you. We wanted to be here to really show the partnership that it takes to keep our city safe.
Here in Southeast Queens, when I hear of those addresses, when I hear of those locations, I'm not hearing it from being a mayor. I'm hearing it from being a child walking these streets. I know 119th Avenue. I know the homes on that block. I know what has happened in this community throughout the years. And these locations are personal to me. My family still has a home in Southeast Queens. And these shootings have a total disregard for the hardworking people.
When you talk about Springfield Garden, you talk about Laurelton, when you talk about Cambria Heights, you're talking about the bedrock of the Black and brown working class people. Those areas are crucial to the foundation of working class people of color, Caribbean diaspora, African American community, the East Indian community. This is where our working class people come from.
And these guns are destroying their communities and their sense of safety. And when we do these gangs take down, we're reclaiming our streets for the working class people of the city. DA, thank you so much. And I'm going to turn it over to the police commissioner, Commissioner Tisch.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch: Good morning. Today, the DA said we are announcing charges against 12 members of the Floss Money [Ballers] Gang, a violent subset of the Mac Baller Bloods operating out of the Rosedale and Laurelton neighborhoods of Queens. This is a crew that used violence as currency.
For more than a year, they waged a campaign of retaliatory shootings across South Jamaica, targeting Blitz Gang 4 rivals, escalating petty beefs into gun battles. Detectives from our Gun Violence Suppression Division built this case, identifying the shooters, connecting the acts of violence, and tying it all back to gang war that began last September with the murder of one of their own, Akim Cisse. They vowed revenge. And from then on, every grudge became a gunfight, every rival a target.
On one occasion, they opened fire from a moving car, striking a gang rival who was assisting, as you saw, his elderly grandmother in a wheelchair in the Baisley Park Houses on Mother's Day weekend. Another time, three members waited outside a residence looking to ambush their rivals. As soon as they thought they had a target, they began shooting, firing 18 rounds from three different guns. Thankfully, no one was hit.
But in both instances, they did not care who got caught in the crossfire, and they showed no regard for human life. These weren't one-off cases either. This investigation includes 10 separate acts of ruthless violence, attempted murders, reckless shootings, gun possession charges, and in many cases, repeat offenses. Eight are accused of pulling the trigger in at least two separate shootings. Two of them allegedly fired a gun on three or more occasions. And several of them were already facing gun charges when they allegedly picked up another weapon and fired again.
This isn't a group that dabbled in violence. It was both their method and their message. But the NYPD's response was clear, if you carry a gun, if you shoot at people on our streets, if you treat neighborhoods like war zones, we will work tirelessly to take you off the streets. Of the 12 case subjects, every single one of them is entered in the NYPD's criminal group database, and with this takedown, we've taken off the streets nearly all of the known members of Floss Money [Ballers].
This case shows exactly why the database matters, and it proves, again, why calls from the City Council to abolish it are so dangerous and so reckless. But this operation wasn't just about arrests. It was about prevention. We timed this takedown just before Labor Day weekend, a time when shootings often spike, to stop the next act of violence before it could happen. And this is all part of the NYPD's broader strategy to drive down violence across the city, target the most violent crews, remove the most dangerous individuals, flood high-crime areas with officers, and deliver real consequences for those who carry illegal guns.
In the first eight months of 2025 alone, the NYPD executed 55 gang takedowns, arresting 396 gang members. And for the Gun Violence Suppression Division, this is the most gang takedowns in any year since their inception in 2016. Each one of those cases chipped away at the networks, fueling gun violence in our communities, and the results are so clear.
Just this week, we announced that New York City has reached a milestone, the lowest number of shooting victims and shooting incidents for the first eight months of any year in recorded history. And that's not a coincidence. It's because of cases like this. That is precision policing. That's how you make neighborhoods safer.
I want to thank Mayor Eric Adams, who from day one made it very clear that public safety is the foundation of New York City. He gave us the support and the tools to take down crews like Floss Money [Ballers]. And I of course want to thank our great Queens DA, Melinda Katz, and her entire team for their exceptional partnership in this case and in so many others. Queens is safer today, DA, because of your work.
And finally, the NYPD detectives and investigators, especially those in our Gun Violence Suppression Division, including Detectives Christopher Sanabria and John Frank. Thank you guys so much. Your persistence, your skill, and your courage made this case possible.
District Attorney Katz: So, before we go and answer questions on topic, I would like to just point out a few things. Number one, I think it's important for people to know in the borough of Queens that as gang members are arrested and as gangs are taken down, we will arrest and find those that fill the vacuum.
You know, this was a gang that really developed in ‘23. And the members, for all intents and purposes, seem to have been on different paths. One was a student at St. John's. One had a security license. Another one was a security guard at the U.S. Open. And I know that there's other stories for the other defendants. But they were on different paths. And when there was a vacuum filled because of the takedown by the NYPD in my office, they filled that vacuum.
If you're filling that vacuum and you're part of a gang, we're coming to get you. And we're going to arrest you. We're going to find you. And we're not going to allow you to take over the streets of Queens. You don't own the streets of Queens. The people of Queens County do. And so we will stay on top of it every single moment. And so I really just want to point out that.
I also wanted to point out that countless lives were saved when eight of these defendants walked out of a house in tact guard, in dark clothing, gloves, masks, and going to commit violence on our streets. The issue is we'll never know how many lives were saved. But we do know that they were. Happy to answer questions on topic.
Question: DA Katz, two questions, were any innocent bystanders hit as a result of these shootings? And also, are you seeing a proliferation of ghost guns? I know there's one here.
District Attorney Katz: So there were no innocent bystanders hit because of the violence here. I only know that because there's no assault one charges, right? So there's no innocent bystanders hit here, luckily. By the way, but for the grace of God, were no innocent bystanders hit. Because clearly from that video, as you know, in front of Baisley houses, they didn't care who they were hitting. So there was no one hit.
Out of these groups, I don't know how many are ghost guns, there was one ghost gun. So these would be products of what we would call the iron pipeline, ostensibly.
Question: For the DA or even any of the investigators, can you talk about how it may be more difficult in investigating these maybe smaller crews or gangs instead of what we might have seen 10 years ago, which was a more Trinitario or MS-13 or Blood or Crip. These are now kind of maybe more localized gangs. Is it more difficult? And with the, I guess, the introduction of a lot of different other multimedia elements, does it make it easier then to find people?
District Attorney Katz: Well, we know that we found a lot of comments about some of these hits on social media. But as far as the investigation goes—
Police Commissioner Tisch: I'll just say, Katie, that's really among the reasons that our criminal group database is so important. There are so many gangs and crews out there and keeping track of who is associated with which gang and crew is quite important for many reasons. But among them, when we see violence from a specific gang or a specific crew, we often know who they're beefing with, so who their rivals are. And then we are able to deploy our cops to stop retaliatory violence.
So the calls to get rid of the criminal group database are irresponsible for a number of reasons. But among them, the fact that
we use that database mainly or in large part to stop retaliatory violence when it occurs.
Question: And just as a follow-up, I know with the critics of the gang database, and I don't know if this comes up, you know, how does the NYPD or the DA and the investigators differentiate between someone liking a song about a gang and then being a member of the gang?
Police Commissioner Tisch: Yeah, so we have very specific criteria that we use before we put individuals into the gang database. And certainly, liking a song is not one of them. We also have in recent years put in place criteria to constantly review people so that they don't just sit in the gang or the criminal group database forever.
We have taken measures over the past several years, I think, to quite responsibly use that criminal group database. But make no mistake about it. It is as important a law enforcement and public safety tool as I can think of.
District Attorney Katz: I'd also like to point out that, you know, standing in a picture with someone doesn't get you prosecuted. We follow the evidence, and the evidence takes us to the conclusion of the case. We present that evidence to a jury, and they make their determination as to guilt or innocence.
Question: Yeah, I wanted to ask about the database. Do you know cases where the wrong person was placed in the database or where people are wrongly stopped or arrested as a result of being in the database?
Police Commissioner Tisch: I'm sorry?
Question: Does the Police Department track whether the wrong people were stopped or arrested because of [inaudible]?
Police Commissioner Tisch: So we don't stop or arrest people because of their existence in the gang database. The DA can tell you that she doesn't use their existence in the gang database for prosecutions. The fact of being in the gang database is not evidentiary in any way.
District Attorney Katz: Yes, exactly what I was going to say. We don't use it as part of our prosecution. It's not evidence. It's not presented as evidence. We use hard, cold facts and evidence for our prosecution.
Police Commissioner Tisch: And, sorry, not only does she not use it in her cases, we don't use it to build probable cause.
Question: So we're going to be speaking to the people of Queens immediately following this press conference. For many of you guys, a message to them will likely be watching this later on this evening.
District Attorney Katz: The message from me is that we will continue to take down gangs all over the borough of Queens County. And in Southeast Queens, this gang was formed as a direct result of a takedown that we did with the NYPD years ago. And so, to some extent, the system works, right? As one gang is formed to fill the vacuum that is left by other gangs that are now doing jail time for their activities, we now will go after the ones that are formed as a result of it. And so, hopefully, we make Southeast Queens a bit safer.
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