It looks like LA’s Rollin’ 60s Neighborhood Crips was getting checks from USAID. Their leader, Eugene Henley Jr., aka “Big U,” was one of 18 members “charged in a federal complaint with a litany of federal crimes including drug trafficking, conspiracy, and firearms offenses.” You don’t have to be a member of Tren de Aragua to get shipped off to El Salvador. Their president assured Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently that he’ll take criminals from anywhere.
Crips on aid payroll
Federal officials are making a big deal of arresting “a longtime leader” of a Los Angeles branch of the Crips. Big U, they say, “ran a ‘mafia-like‘ criminal enterprise that included murder, human trafficking and extortion.” But only, they add, as a hobby.
His day job was “entertainment entrepreneur.” He also, they mumble, was laundering donation money. They don’t confirm his “anti-gang charity” was getting USAID money but it’s real likely.
On Wednesday, March 19, he was taken into custody, “after a brief search.” Henley and 17 of his close associates in the Rollin’ 60s Neighborhood Crips are facing stiff charges. Earlier in the week ten members of the gang were rounded up.
At the time, 58-year-old Henley and “one other” were “considered fugitives.” That status didn’t hold for long. “The FBI announced on X Wednesday evening that both had been taken into custody.”
Once the feds started taking a look at what he was doing with donation money, they realized he was really masterminding “a criminal operation.”
They started calling it the “Big U Enterprise.” They’re especially interested in how the Crips (allegedly) embezzled “donations to Developing Options, an anti-gang charity he founded.”
A front for fraud
According to federal prosecutors, Developing Options was really just a “front for fraudulent purposes and to insulate its members from suspicion by law enforcement.”
Los Angeles Police like Eugene for the “2021 killing of an aspiring rap musician who was signed to his recording company, Uneek Music.” The Crips “Original Gangster” wasn’t happy at what the musician had to say about him.
The case paperwork notes that rapper “R.W.” was “allegedly shot and killed by Henley after he recorded a ‘defamatory song‘ about the gang leader at a Las Vegas studio.” You don’t do that when he runs a crew of Crips and get away with it.
“R.W.’s body was found in a ditch off Interstate 15 in the Nevada desert.” Henley managed to collect “anti-gang” donation money with one hand while using “his stature and long-standing association with the Rollin’ 60s and other street gangs to intimidate businesses and individuals in Los Angeles” to rake it in with the other.
“Not only did the enterprise expand its power through violence, fear, and intimidation, but it also used social media platforms, documentaries, podcasts, interviews, and Henley’s reputation and status as an ‘O.G.‘ (original gangster) to create fame for — and stoke fear of — the Big U Enterprise, its members, and its associates,” the feds declare in the indictment.
Since the Crips are considered organized “criminal activity,” having his USAID canceled was the least of his worries. The new FBI management is actually prosecuting criminals for a change.
