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TRENTON
– Attorney General Anne Milgram announced
that two members of the Sex Money Murder
set of the Bloods street gang were sentenced
to prison today as a result of an investigation
led by the New Jersey State Police and the
Division of Criminal Justice.
Rafael
Gonzales, 29, of Passaic, was sentenced
to four years in state prison by Superior
Court Judge Anthony J. Mellaci Jr. in Monmouth
County. Gonzales pleaded guilty on June
16 to distributing cocaine within 1,000
feet of Passaic High School in February
2007.
In
addition, Judge Mellaci sentenced Henry
Lopez, 29, to three years in state prison.
Lopez, who had been serving a prior sentence
in South Woods State Prison, pleaded guilty
on Aug. 8 to second-degree racketeering
before Judge Mellaci. He admitted that as
a member of Sex Money Murder, he communicated
information within the prison system regarding
assaults to be carried out by the gang.
Deputy
Attorney General David Noble represented
the state at the sentencing hearing. Supervising
Deputy Attorney General Mark Eliades, chief
of the Division of Criminal Justice Gangs
& Organized Crime Bureau, prosecuted
the cases.
The
two men were indicted in September 2007
with nine other gang members, including
the gang’s three-person state leadership
committee, as a result of an investigation
by the New Jersey State Police, Division
of Criminal Justice, State Parole Board,
Passaic County Sheriff’s Department,
Paterson Police Department, Newark Police
Department and state Department of Corrections.
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