Corey Hamlet, second from the left, in a photo from his Instagram account, entered into evidence during his federal trial. (U.S. Attorney's office)

By Ted Sherman | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Corey Hamlet met up with Almalik Anderson in October 2013 at the Mall in Short Hills, the suburban shopping mecca known for its high-end stores such as Ermenegildo Zenga, Fendi and Bulgari.

The two men that day were not seeking to buy designer clothes, Italian leather or expensive jewelry.

Hamlet, better known on the street as "C-Blaze," was a top member of Newark's feared Grape Street Crips. Anderson, who went by the name of "Sco," was a long-time rival.

And the tense summit at the upscale mall—a world away from the run-down tenements and corner bodegas of the city’s deadly gang territory—was set up by Anwar West, another gang member who was known as “BD,” in an attempt to broker a truce between the two.

Asked later if he was armed, Hamlet scoffed. “In Short Hills Mall? Nobody take no gun to Short Hills Mall,” he testified in federal court.

Whatever was said apparently did little to ease the enmity.

Days later, after Hamlet used his Instagram account to accuse Anderson of being an informant, gunmen opened fire on his Porsche Panamera at a busy intersection in Newark. Shot multiple times and seriously wounded, he somehow managed make his way to University Hospital where doctors in the trauma unit were able to save his life.

West was not so fortunate. Not long after the mall meeting, he was driving in Newark with gang member Rashan Washington, who casually parked the blue Cherokee in a residential neighborhood at around 6:10 p.m., leaving West alone. As he waited, prosecutors said Aaron Terrell—who claimed he was acting on orders from Hamlet—walked up to the Jeep, stuck a 9mm semi-automatic into the open window, and fired point-blank into the head of West.

In court, Hamlet professed ignorance of what went down, as he took the stand in his own defense to refute charges of murder, assault and racketeering.

“That had nothing to do with me,” he declared of the execution-style murder of West and Anderson’s near fatal encounter in Newark.

“Just a coincidence, right?” asked assistant U.S. attorney Osmar J. Benvenuto.

“Had nothing to do with me,” Hamlet insisted.

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Hamlet, who was known on the street as C-Blaze, and on Instagram as Blizzie103. (Essex County Correctional Facility)

Drugs, shootings and a charismatic gang leader

Over the past five years, federal authorities have arrested more than 70 members of the Grape Street Crips, a violent street gang with roots in Los Angeles that now controls much of the heroin trade in Newark and its nearby suburbs, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

In addition to drug-trafficking, gang members were charged with multiple murders, shootings, aggravated assault, and witness intimidation.

The takedown of the Grape Street Crips is a story of drugs and firepower, betrayal and cold violence, involving a multi-million-dollar drug enterprise with a reach far beyond the state’s largest city. It played out against a background of dozens of murders, daylight shootings, street corner drug sales to suburban kids in cars, and out-of-state heroin shipments.

"Corey Hamlet is as smart as any CEO we've ever prosecuted..."

— U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito

And at the center of it all, say federal prosecutors, was Hamlet, a 41-year-old charismatic gang leader who was more than wary about staying under the radar of law enforcement.

Nothing directly linked Hamlet to drug dealing or the city’s ruthless gang violence. He did no business on his phone. His name did not come up on government wiretaps. Prosecutors, though, said those who defied him frequently turned up dead.

And yet as the bodies “started stacking up and drug volumes increased,” they realized his name was on the lips of just about everyone.

“People think street gang members are not as smart as white-collar criminals. But Corey Hamlet is as smart as any CEO we’ve prosecuted,” said U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito.

Carpenito, as an assistant U.S. attorney. was part of the team that won a securities fraud conviction against the former chairman of Cendant Corp. in one of the largest accounting scandals of the 1990s.

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Crips members (from l. to r.) Rashan Washington, known as "Shoota," Justin Carnegie, whose street name was "Dew Hi," and Kwasi Mack, or "Welches," carrying a Ruger 9mm that prosecutors said was used 5 days after the October 2013 photo was taken in an attempted murder of members of the Bloods street gang. The photo was entered into evidence during trial. (U.S. Attorney's office)

A group where nobody used their names

According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, Newark’s Grape Street Crips were responsible for one of the biggest heroin distribution networks in North Jersey.

“They controlled neighborhood close to 280,” said assistant U.S. attorney Ronnell Wilson, chief of the office’s Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force, referring to Interstate 280, one of the main arteries to get in and out of the state’s largest city.

From the Colonnade Apartments, the high-rise towers in the University Heights district of Newark, to the city’s public housing projects and beyond, and even on NJ Transit trains, the Crips moves kilos upon kilos of heroin every week, according to Wilson. Cash was laundered through restaurants and retail businesses, including a downtown clothing store.

The Crips themselves were very much an enigma. No one in the gang used their real names, going instead by chosen street names. There was Sco and BD. Live Wire. Pac Man. Shoota. Welches. Wheels. Zelly. Mini Me. Rah Rah and C-Murder, and dozens of others. Often gang members themselves did not know each other’s given names, they acknowledged during trial

“It ain’t important to know a person’s real name, know what I mean?” explained Aaron Terrell, who everyone knew as “Push,” and could only identify gang members who grew up with him. “If anything go wrong and somebody telling on them, you going to go, ‘I don’t even know you, I only call you by your street name.’”

Hamlet took the name “C-Blaze” even before he joined the Crips, he said, because he used a lot of marijuana as a teenager. A friend said he was always “blazed up,” so he became Blaze. Then it was C-Blaze. And then Blizzie, because Hamlet thought it was “kind of like a cooler version of Blaze.”

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The plea deal signed by Batts

Getting someone to flip

In an effort to figure out who was who, the U.S. Attorney’s office began using spreadsheets and charts to index all the names and faces.

“When you’re trying to get someone to flip, you have to do your homework,” said Benvenuto, who was brought into the case in 2013 as part of an already widening investigation.

Flipping, in fact, was to become their strategy. The effort would be to find gang members willing to cooperate—however distasteful and unsavory they might appear before a jury.

Using criminals to convict criminals is a time-honored tactic, especially in organized crime. It was the testimony of mob turncoat Sammy “The Bull” Gravano—who confessed to 19 murders—that put “Dapper Don” John Gotti in prison.

Despite the baggage they would bring to any prosecution of the Grape Street Crips, gang members who had committed acts of murder could still serve as native guides into the far-flung criminal enterprise, no matter how despicable they might appear.

One of those who cooperated, in fact, was Corey Batts, who shot a long-time friend allegedly on orders of Hamlet, firing at such close range that he said he put his hand up to shield himself from the splattered blood and brains that sprayed back at him.

In addition, they soon learned there was one other window they had into the gang.

Hamlet was hooked on Instagram.

As Blizzie103, Hamlet had more than 12,400 followers on the social media platform and was often curiously unguarded—as if he thought his privacy settings would keep his posts from the view of law enforcement.

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East Side High School, in red, in an October 1994 win over Rahway, when Corey Hamlet caught a 12-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter to finish a seven-play, 40-yard drive. (Star-Ledger file photo)

A star athlete

Born in Newark, Corey Hamlet grew up in the city’s public housing projects. He lived in the Hayes Home projects until he was about 11, and then to Hyatt Court with his grandmother until she passed away, and then moved with his mom to Prince Street.

He is physically a big man.

At six-one and 230 pounds, it was not hard to imagine his playing days for East Side High School in Newark. Old newspaper clips from 1994 tell of the 90-yard touchdown pass caught by Hamlet in the first quarter in what would turn into a 41-0 victory over Kearny, and the 12-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter from quarterback Migel Rodriguez to help the Red Raiders cruise to a 20-0 victory over Rahway.

Following graduation, he earned a full ride to play football at Lackawanna College, a two-year junior college in Scranton. He never graduated. After a year, he said he was kicked out of school.

“Corey left the team because of issues relating to the coaching staff and their policies on certain team-related matters,” said his attorney, Anthony Iacullo of Nutley. “Since Corey was not playing, he did not receive his scholarship and he could not afford the tuition.”

Hamlet soon came back to his old neighborhood where the Crips ruled the streets.

“I ain’t really had no sense of direction, I ain’t really know like what was my next phase or next step in life, and I just gravitated towards it,” he explained in court of his involvement in the gang. “Before I looked up, I was kind of like caught up in it.”

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Hamlet at a Ten-Trey celebration. "It was a cookout," he testified. "Music, a DJ, you got drinks out, people kicking it." he said. Why were so many people wearing purple? "There's no like a dress code for being Crip or whatever the case may be," said Hamlet. "Purple is...is our color. (U.S. Attorney's office)

Saving Ourselves

Even as a young gang member, there was magnetism to him.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, then a councilman serving as deputy mayor, recruited Hamlet to take part in an anti-gang initiative. The city was then gripped in an epidemic of gang violence, and there was an effort to negotiate a so-called "peace treaty."

Hamlet testified that he was tapped to join the effort “because I’m so in tune with the youth that they asked me would I mind sitting on the council and to help defuse issues.” He said that through Baraka, they created an organization called SOS, Saving Ourselves.

“In the process of us dealing with this organization, the City of Newark paid for our plane tickets to fly out west, so we could combat some of the issues dealing with the gang culture here in the City of Newark,” he testified.

"So at the same time that you're meeting with Mayor Baraka and going out to California, you're also selling heroin?"

— Assistant U.S. attorney Osmar J. Benvenuto

He met there with California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters. A picture of their meeting was introduced at trial. Ha volunteered to speak to students in Newark and in Plainfield about gang violence, and said once he sat down with Baraka and others and heard them out.

“I really understood that the youth out here in the City of Newark, New Jersey is really out of control, but they only listen to—they only listen to individuals who they perceive deals with popularity; like, if you cool, then the kids may listen to you,” he testified.

At trial, Benvenuto was dismissive of Hamlet’s apparent seeing of the light. “So at the same time that you're meeting with Mayor Baraka and going out to California, right, while you are doing that, you’re also selling heroin.”

“I did that. Yes. Yes,” admitted Hamlet.

The mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

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Hamlet stands in front of dozens of Crips members during "Ten Trey Day," a celebration on Oct. 3 that marks the founding of the Grape Street Crips. Federal prosecutors said the 2013 photo, which was entered as evidence, was posted on Instagram. (U.S. Attorney's office)

Life on Instagram

Some 20 years later, Hamlet still cut an intimidating figure.

Gang tattoos covered his torso and arms. “100% Grape Street” was etched cross his back.

“Feared By Many, Hated By Most, Loved By Few, and Respected By All,” was on his chest. He wore the inked phrase “No Regrets” like a necklace. There were grape tattoos up and down his arms, shoulders and chest. Also, between his thumb and forefinger. A scar was the graphic reminder of a stabbing in the face while he was at the county jail.

In court, he donned a pair of glasses and a tailored suit jacket.

Newark Public Safety Directory Anthony Ambrose said Hamlet’s name had come up repeatedly over the years, was at the top of the food chain. “He was flashy and flamboyant with his money. He had it all figured out,” he said.

However, federal prosecutors said an earlier drug conviction on state charges that sent him to prison had taught Hamlet to be cautious. There was nothing on his phone to link him to the Grape Street Crips heroin trade. No texts sending out marching orders to gang members. No burner phones, nothing on paper, no code words.

“He was very, very careful,” said Benvenuto. “He was a ghost.”

Except on Instagram.

Blizzie103 was big on Instagram, the photo and video-sharing social networking service where Hamlet had a particularly large following, posting frequently about his moods, as well as the rap artists that his fledgling music business and party promotion and event planning company, Bottom Music, sought to boost.

Hamlet may have been a ghost, but prosecutors saw his Instagram account as a picture into his soul, showing dozens of his posts to a jury in an effort to convince them that the gang member was not just someone looking to make it big in the music business.

"I used it on that day to show that you trying to come at me when, all actuality, you the rat..."

— Corey Hamlet

His screen name was one clue. The use of the number “103” was a reference to 10/3 or October 3, which gang members celebrate as “ten-trey day,” the date of the founding of the Grape Street Crips at the Jordan Downs public-housing complex located on 103rd Street in Los Angeles.

Then there was a picture of Hamlet in the front with dozens of others behind him in purple—the color of the Crips. It was captioned. "F—k with me you know I got it!!!!! #Literally."

Questioned about it, Hamlet shrugged it off. “Rap lyrics from a Rick Ross song,” he said.

And the picture Hamlet posted to his Instagram account of a lioness.

“Snarling,” observed Benvenuto in his cross-examination at trial.

“Yes,” acknowledged Hamlet.

“With blood on its mouth.”

“Yes.”

“Because it just finished killing something…” the prosecutor suggested drily.

Beyond photos and rap lyrics, social media became a major part of the government’s case against Hamlet when Almalik Anderson himself turned to social media to spread rumors in the community before the meeting at the Short Hills Mall that accused Hamlet of being an informant.

It wasn’t true. But Hamlet soon found out that Anderson had himself been a cooperating informant for the Essex County Prosecutor’s office.

“I just put it on Instagram,” said Hamlet in court. “Social media has a lot of benefits. Social media has a way to get people to understand like maybe a mood you were in or what you, like, see where you at the moment—you might be in the park, it might got nice scenery, whatever the case may be, or even promote events. But I used it on that day to show that you trying to come at me when, all actuality, you the rat.”

The rat in this case being Anderson.

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(Pixabay)

A product of his age

Timothy Lauger, an associate professor of criminal justice at Niagara University in New York, said the presence of gangs on social media is a relatively new phenomenon.

"Social media represents a new forum for gang members to communicate, posture, present themselves as they want to be seen, and beef with other gangs," said Lauger, an expert on street culture among gang youth and author of "Real Gangstas: Legitimacy, Reputation, and Violence in the Intergang Environment."

Platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook and Twitter allow people to post pictures, messages, and videos, and it is no different for gangs, he said, allowing a member’s words and actions to live beyond just the moment, for anyone to view—building reputations, often by demonstrating a capacity for violence, with gang members posing with guns and threatening others. But gangs often exaggerate, and Lauger said the issue presents challenges for law enforcement. Rap music and videos may incorporate violent images, but some question whether it should be used to “convict people who are nothing more than rappers.”

Why gang members stay off cell phones for fear of surveillance, or turn them off when involved in criminal activity so they cannot be tracked by the phone’s location—yet post their lives on Instagram—is hard to know.

Assistant U.S. attorney Barry Kamar, who tried the case against Hamlet with Benvenuto, said the gang leader was a product of his age, and used Instagram pretty effectively.

“He could harness it to promote his reputation,” he said.

Lauger said wondered whether gang members realize or think about law enforcement monitoring their online content.

“More likely, the social pressures they face in the streets combined with the perceived social benefits of their online content likely outweighs their concern for the legal system,” he remarked.

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A shooting at the Zap Lube on the corner of Court Street and Washington Street, across the street from the former Star-Ledger newsroom, where Corey Hamlet was wounded in a gang-related shooting in 2010. (Star-Ledger file photo)

'Putting in work'

Hamlet insisted he was a non-violent man.

“I never shot nobody,” he declared at his trial. “You can check my criminal history. I never been locked up, I don't have no violence on my jacket. I have no violence on my criminal history.”

Indeed, he denied he even was a gang leader, portraying himself more as an elder statesman of a tight group of people. “I’m older than all them guys, like, so it's like an age gap, but people look up to me because of my popularity, so that’s kind of like my role,” he said in court.

At trial, he was articulate and thoughtful. The father of two, he has a three-year-old grandson.

While he admitted he was a member of the Grape Street Crips, he brushed it aside as if one were talking about nothing more somebody’s membership in a fraternal lodge. He claimed his goal in life was just to “get my music brand off the ground and be successful, become a millionaire, just like everybody else, and take care of momma.”

Violence, though, was endemic in the realm of the Grape Street Crips. They called it “Putting in work.”

What did that mean? “Shooting and killing people,” said one Crips member at trial.

Even gaining acceptance to the gang began with bloodshed. To be accepted, you had to be “jumped in.” That meant fighting three people for three minutes. Someone usually kept time to keep it honest.

Aaron Terrell, the gang member who admitted killing Anwar West in cold blood, was a 28-year-old high school dropout who began selling drugs on the street at an early age, was “jumped in” when he was about 15 or 16, he said. Asked why he hooked up with the Crips, he did not hesitate.

“Power,” he replied.

“What kind of power?” a federal prosecutor asked him during Hamlet’s trial.

“Be able to sell drugs and get money and have power, have people respect you,” he said. “When you selling drugs, you need—you need a army and you need people behind you, so if stuff is going on, they have your back.”

Without that army, Terrell continued, selling drugs on the streets in Newark could get one robbed, or “pushed out of the way.” He told the jury that it was Hamlet who gave the orders in the Grape Street Crips. “He was like a big brother, like a father figure. Like a god, like,” said Terrell. “Original gangster.” And when he was told to do something, Terrell said he would do it. There was no question about that.

“You don't tell no person that's the top of the food chain that, you know, you do it yourself, 'cause there'd be consequences for it,” he said. “Probably get killed…”

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Colored straws mark the trajectory of bullets fired into Almalik Anderson's Porsche Panamera. (U.S. Attorney's office)

Street attack on a Porsche

The killing of Anwar West and the attempt on Almalik Anderson’s life was such an order, Terrell testified, and he said that Hamlet was the one who gave it after the meeting at the Short Hills Mall.

“Sco was getting on his nerves, and BD was playing both sides,” Terrell told the jury, referring to Anderson and West. The command to kill them came in a face-to-face meeting.

“Why did you never discuss it with him on the phone?”

“‘Cause you never know who's listening,” said Terrell.

The task to hit Almalik Anderson went to Corey Batts, a 33-year-old Grape Street Crips member who dropped out of school in 9th grade, authorities said.

Batts said he and three others climbed into a black Jeep Cherokee and went searching for Anderson.

Batts held a MAC-11, a subcompact machine pistol equipped with a silencer. Noted for an extremely high fire rate that can discharge an entire magazine in little more than two seconds, it was a weapon considered notoriously inaccurate for those not prepared for the recoil.

Another gunman wielded a Calico M960A mini-submachine gun and two others had handguns.

They finally came upon Anderson’s silver, four-door Porsche SUV stopped at a red light on Wright Street. Swerving into the incoming traffic lane to cut him off, Batts leaped out with the MAC-11. He had no idea who was actually in the car, he conceded—the windows were tinted and could not see inside.

“I leaned out the window and I started to open fire on the car,” he said.

It quickly went very bad.

The Porsche was riddled with bullets. While he could not say how many shots he fired, he had the weapon on fully automatic. But the Calico malfunctioned and didn’t fire at all. And then one guy reached around Batts to fire into the car, but instead shot Batts in the hand.

Out of the corner of his eye, Batts saw a figure jump out the Porsche.

As it turned out, Anderson was not in the driver’s seat. A woman who was his cousin was driving. Anderson was in the right-hand passenger seat.

Wounded and bleeding, Batts could no longer pull the trigger. The four gunmen scrambled back into the Cherokee to make their getaway before police arrived on the scene.

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Shattered glass and blood on the front seat of the Porsche. (U.S. Attorney's office)

A murder in Newark

Both Anderson and his cousin made it to University Hospital in Newark and survived the shooting.

Batts, knowing that trauma center at University Hospital would be swarming with police, said he went to St. Michael’s Hospital in Newark for treatment of his bullet wound. Once there, he gave a fake name and claimed to have been wounded when he tried to wrest a gun away from a would-be attacker.

Police did not believe him, and he was soon arrested.

Not long afterward, West, the facilitator of the Short Hills Meeting was set up and murdered. Terrell said West was driven by another Grape Street Crip, who took him to 7th Avenue in Newark and parked, leaving him alone.

“I walked over to the truck, and I stuck the gun through the window and I shot him,” Terrell told the jury.

“Did you say anything to him?”

“No,” he said. In fact, he admitted he did not really know BD, or have any issue with him. He said he killed him "'cause Blaze ordered me to."

He left and threw the gun in the river.

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Then-U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announcing the arrests of dozens of Grape Street Crips. (Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media file photo)

Takedown

Federal authorities, including the FBI, already had the Grape Street Crips in their sights before the murder of West and the attack on Anderson.

Typically, gang prosecutions fall to the state.

Officials in the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a case that required cooperators, the expectation was that the far tougher federal sentencing mandates they faced would ultimately serve as strong motivation to get Crips members to turn, when they make the calculus of whether to testify.

“When you look at state charges, you’re going to summer camp with your buddies. They don’t take it seriously,” said Carpenito, the U.S. Attorney.

But he said there is no way out of the consequences of a federal conviction, putting potential cooperators in a box., with the fear of sitting in prison for 20 to 25 years serving as a powerful incentive to testify.

Even before the meeting at the Short Hills Mall, and the shootings of West and Anderson,the U.S. Attorney's office said an investigation into the Crips organization was already underway. But they said the shootings, as well as an unrelated 2014 double-murder (in which another associate of Hamlet fired wildly after a car chase and crash, killing an unfortunate bystander), led to the creation of a joint task force. That brought in local and other federal law enforcement agencies.

That task force included members of the Newark Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Essex County Prosecutor's Office, and the Essex County Sheriff's Office, which met every two weeks in an eighth-floor conference room at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Newark.

“We were working real time,” recalled Ronnell Wilson, the office’s drug enforcement chief. “The sharing of information gave us insight into how this organization worked.”

Ultimately, they charged not only Hamlet, but dozens of upper and lower tier members.

In May 2015, 71 people were charged following three waves of arrests on charges ranging from drug-trafficking to multiple murders, assault and witness intimidation.

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An Instagram photo entered into evidence by the government of Rashan Washington and Hamlet. "What are those signals? It looks like it's the same signal that they're both throwing up," a prosecutor asked a witness. "That's the G," he replied. "Stands for Grape Street. That's a gang sign." (U.S. Attorney's office)

Trial

And as they expected, there were those who decided to cooperate.

Batts, who pleaded guilty to one murder and the attempt on Anderson’s life, testified against Hamlet. His deal was not especially sweet. He was promised a letter recommending that the judge give him something less than life.

Terrell, who pleaded guilty not only to shooting West, but to three other murders as well, also turned, in an effort to avoid spending the rest of his life in jail. He was a major witness at Hamlet’s trial.

Anderson, following the attempt on his life, was arrested on federal drug trafficking charges and pleaded guilty in February 2016. He faces 20 years to life and is awaiting sentencing.

Rashan Washington pleaded guilty in September 2017 to conspiracy, racketeering, drug trafficking and assault charges in connection with the murder of West and the shooting of Anderson. He faces a maximum of life in prison, but prosecutors agreed to seek no more than 30 year. He is also awaiting sentencing.

Hamlet, whose first trial ended with a deadlocked jury earlier this year, was convicted in July of racketeering and a host of murders, shootings and drug trafficking crimes, following a second two-month trial.

His attorney, Anthony Iacullo, plans an appeal.

“Our position was Corey is not responsible for any of these murders,” he said following the trial. “There is no leader as they portray of the Grape Street Crips. It’s not one entity. It’s an affiliation of people from different neighborhoods. It’s a bunch of guys from different neighborhoods who did their own things.”

He declined a request to allow an interview with Hamlet in jail.

Iacullo said Batts and Terrell and others became cooperating witnesses because they got caught, and pointed a figure to the oldest guy—Hamlet.

“It was an opportunity for admitted killers to get out of multiple life sentences,” the attorney said. “It was undisputed that they casually admitted to the lives they took. They were not worthy of belief.”

Hamlet faces mandatory life in prison when he is sentenced in October.

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(U.S. Attorney's office)

More on the Grape Street Crips

Jury reaches verdict in trial of notorious Newark Crips kingpin

Crips drug gang used social media to scare rivals, plotted to kill FBI agent

Feds charge longtime gang kingpin

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Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Facebook: @TedSherman.reporter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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