A federal jury in Brooklyn has convicted Jason Soto, also known as “Twin,” a leader of the Cypress Gangsta Crips, on all three counts of a superseding indictment — murder in aid of racketeering, causing the death of fellow gang leader Shakim Rivera through the use of a firearm on February 22, 2015, and possession with intent to distribute cocaine in late 2024. The verdict, returned on October 26, 2026 after a two-week trial, means Soto faces a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment when he is sentenced.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice — Eastern District of New York
The trial was held before United States District Judge Ramón E. Reyes in the Eastern District of New York. The verdict was announced by Joseph Nocella, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, together with James C. Barnacle, Jr., Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's New York Field Office, and Jessica S. Tisch, Commissioner of the New York City Police Department.
A killing inside the gang, then a revenge killing
As proved at trial, Soto was a member of the Cypress Gangsta Crips (CGC), a subgroup of the Eight Trey Crips based in the Cypress Hills Houses in East New York, Brooklyn. Prosecutors said CGC members committed acts of violence to promote the gang, enforce its rules and keep rivals in fear, and earned money for the gang through robbery, fraud, and firearms and narcotics trafficking.
On February 19, 2015, CGC member Demetrius Graham, also known as “Duke,” was shot and killed while asleep in his girlfriend's bed in Brooklyn. According to the evidence at trial, that murder was ordered by Rivera, without the gang's authorization, because Rivera perceived that Graham had been disloyal. Graham's killing splintered the gang, with members siding either with Rivera or with members who remained loyal to Graham.
Soto believed Rivera was responsible for Graham's killing and plotted to kill him in retaliation for the unsanctioned murder. On the evening of February 22, 2015, Soto lured Rivera out of an apartment building in Cypress Hills and drove him to a residential street in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, where Soto and another CGC associate fatally shot Rivera.
The manuscript that came back as evidence
Between 2016 and 2017, while Soto was incarcerated, he wrote a manuscript describing his motive for killing Rivera, his membership in the Crips, and what he described as the necessity of retaliation for a “grievous act committed against [a] comrade.” Reporting on the trial records that prosecutors used those writings as evidence — a detail that helps explain how a murder committed more than a decade earlier could still be proved to a jury in 2026.
“Today's verdict sends a message not only to the residents of the Cypress Hills Houses who were terrorized by Soto and his Crips gang, but to all communities, that law enforcement will hold these criminal enterprises accountable for their violent crimes, especially cold-blooded murder as in this case, no matter how long it takes,” U.S. Attorney Nocella said. NYPD Commissioner Tisch said Soto “orchestrated the execution of one of his members in cold blood.”
Background: a decade-long investigation
The Justice Department said the case is the result of a decade-long investigation initiated by the FBI, the NYPD and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York in response to gang-related violence in and around the Cypress Hills Houses. That wider investigation has resulted in charges against more than 20 defendants for drug trafficking, illegal weapons possession, robbery and murder.
FBI Assistant Director in Charge Barnacle said the bureau and its partners used federal statutes — murder in aid of racketeering, causing death with a firearm, and possession with intent to distribute cocaine — to ensure Soto faces life behind bars, and that the FBI/NYPD Metro Safe Streets Task Force will continue working to identify and dismantle violent offenders. The government's case was handled by the office's Organized Crime and Gangs Section, with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Emily J. Dean, Andy Palacio and Raffaela S. Belizaire prosecuting.
What happens next
Soto, 37, of Brooklyn, now awaits sentencing before Judge Reyes; the Eastern District docket is No. 24-CR-511 (S-1) (RER). Because the murder-in-aid-of-racketeering conviction carries a mandatory life sentence, the sentencing hearing will set the formal terms of a term that, by law, cannot be less than life in federal prison. There is no parole in the U.S. federal prison system.
For residents of the Cypress Hills Houses — a large public-housing community in East New York — officials framed the verdict as the closing chapter of a feud that began inside one housing complex in February 2015 and split a gang against itself. For Punjabi and other immigrant families living in New York's outer-borough housing, the case is a reminder of how federal racketeering law is now routinely used against neighbourhood-level gangs, long after the original violence, when local cases alone have not ended it.