Federal and local law enforcement officials announced a sweeping racketeering case on Monday, federally indicting 11 men described as members and associates of a violent crew tied to the Trinitarios gang, a group known as the Bad Boy 7, in connection with a string of crimes that included at least five murders across the New York region.
According to authorities, the defendants are part of a subset of the Trinitarios, one of the gangs that has long operated in the area. The indictment accuses them of running a racketeering conspiracy, a charge that allows prosecutors to tie together a pattern of otherwise separate crimes committed on behalf of the same criminal enterprise.
The alleged crime spree stretched from September 2023 through 2025, officials said. Over that roughly two-year span, prosecutors say the crew carried out a series of violent offenses, including assaults, armed robberies, carjackings and killings, leaving a trail of victims across the region in their wake.
What set the case apart, authorities said, was its geographic reach. The violence spanned the Bronx, Manhattan, Westchester, Bergen County, Nassau County and Essex County, and in some instances the members were accused of striking in multiple cities, and even multiple states, on the very same night.
Among the most prominent cases folded into the indictment is the killing of Ariela Mejia-Polanco, a 33-year-old social media influencer and mother of two with a large following online. Officials said she was shot multiple times during an attempted carjacking on the eastbound Cross County Parkway in Mount Vernon last August, found behind the wheel of her Mercedes near the Broad Street exit only yards from her home, and that they believe she was targeted because she was driving a luxury car.
The indictment also ties the crew to a series of other killings. Officials said the defendants were charged in the shooting death of Franchelis Tavares in March 2024 in the Bronx, in the deaths of Gabriel Alvarez and Adam Waldroft at a car meet in the Throgs Neck section in July of last year, and in the killing of Alvis Perez Liriano outside a barbershop in Newark in August 2025.
Prosecutors described a group willing to use extreme violence in the course of robberies and carjackings, with at least five deaths attributed to its members. The racketeering framework lets authorities pursue the defendants collectively, casting the individual attacks as part of a single, coordinated operation rather than isolated incidents.
The announcement, made jointly by federal and local law enforcement, marks the latest effort to dismantle the violent factions operating across the New York metropolitan area. Officials said the charges were meant to hold the group accountable for a campaign of violence that crossed city and state lines and claimed multiple lives.