By Adam Ferrise
cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — A gang that operated on Cleveland’s East Side emulated the Mafia, killed a person during a robbery, kidnapped and raped another and operated a drug-smuggling ring in federal and state prisons and detention centers, officials said on Wednesday.
Raven Mullins, 35, acted as the Fully Blooded Felons’ “godfather,” ordering up robberies and kidnappings of those he suspected of being rats and presiding over an open-air drug market outside one of Cleveland’s public-housing complexes, acting U.S. Attorney Becky Lutzko said.
“They’re particularly violent and have been wreaking havoc in the city’s Central neighborhood for quite some time,” Lutzko said.
Mullins and 17 others were charged Wednesday in a superseding indictment that detailed an organized gang structure that used Mafia terms like “capo” and “omerta,” the mob’s code of silence.
Mullins was arrested last year. He and 14 others were initially indicted in April on charges that accused them of running a drug-smuggling operation at the private Northeast Ohio Corrections Center in Youngstown. Three defendants have already pleaded guilty.
The remaining 18 suspected gang members are charged in a 33-count indictment with racketeering, murder, kidnapping and assault in aid of racketeering and conspiring to deal drugs, among other charges.
Mullins’ attorney, Noah Munyer, said hadn’t yet seen the new accusations and declined further comment.
Lutzko and other law enforcement officials on Wednesday revealed a more detailed description of the gang, its origins and the bloodshed gang members caused over a two-year span beginning in 2022.
Aided by two prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice’s organized crime section, the FBI targeted the Fully Blooded Felons gang more than two years ago, said David Jaffe, the U.S. Department of Justice’s chief of Crime and Racketeering Section.
Mullins led the gang since 2012, when it was a crew operating within the larger Heartless Felons, Cleveland’s most widespread and violent gang. The group broke off from the Heartless Felons in 2023 and operated mostly in the city’s Central neighborhood, but it had tentacles in Akron and Youngstown, Lutzko said.
Mullins structured the gang with himself at the top, a 10-member commission below him and 25 capos that carried out orders, the indictment said. The commission voted on punishment for gang members who violated its set of rules that they called the “Fully Commandments” and the “Fully Five” rules.
“Certainly, they were modeling themselves and using the kind of terms that would that you would see in a movie and that are associated with criminal syndicate and crime families,” Lutzo said.
Lutzko said gang members used violence against rivals, to exert power and evoke fear and protect its territory and drug business.
Mullins and four others on June 30, 2022, kidnapped a woman they believed cooperated with law enforcement against the gang and held her captive for six days, according to the indictment.
Mullins put a gun to her head, threatened to kill her, and sexually assaulted her over the next week, the indictment said.
Another group of gang members, including Mullins, on Sept. 12, 2023, fatally shot Ahmad Issa Faraj , 35, on West 73rd Street and Clark Avenue in the city’s West Boulevard neighborhood.
Lutzko said the shooting happened during an armed robbery and that Faraj had been targeted, but she declined further details. Mullins and three others sped away from the shooting in a stolen Honda Pilot that they later torched on East 186th Street, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors said in court filings on Wednesday they would not seek the death penalty against Mullins, Henry Burchett, 29, or the man accused of pulling the trigger, James Clemons, 32, in the slaying.
Agents listening in on wiretapped calls also broke up two other acts of violence before they could happen. In one incident, police arrested a gang member as he drove around looking for someone to rob to help post bond for his wife, who had been arrested. In another, agents stepped in as gang members drove to attack a gang member who defected to the Bloods gang, the indictment said.
The group also ran a robust drug trade, Lutzko said.
They imported fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine and suboxone from Texas and Arizona and sold the drugs in jails and prisons, outside a 28th Street liquor store and in a grassy patch near the Cedar Estates public housing complex on Cedar Road, near East 28th Street, prosecutors said. It used two apartments in the complex as a stash house.
Mullins also pushed for group members to become corrections officers at Northeast Ohio Corrections Center so members could more easily smuggle drugs, the indictment said.
He also talked on wiretapped phones about trying to get a gang member on juries when its members went on trial and to threaten jurors, according to the indictment.
“The drugs that they regularly peddled included fentanyl, methamphetamine and other types of deadly and addictive controlled substances that have wrecked lives and created havoc here in Northeast Ohio,” Lutzko said.
—
©2024 Advance Local Media LLC.
Visit cleveland.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.