WOODSTOCK, Ga. (AP) – Prosecutors in Georgia have charged 14 people with recruiting poor children from Atlanta to sell candy and food door-to-door in the Atlanta suburbs, alleging that it was all a scheme to funnel money to a notorious U.S. street gang.
The group set up a fake charity – Georgia Peach Youth Club of America Inc. – to fund the gang’s criminal enterprises, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said.
The indictment names 14 people on charges including human trafficking, racketeering, criminal street gang activity, charity fraud, and money laundering, Carr said.
Money raised through the charity funded operations of the Nine Trey Bloods, a subset of the Los Angeles-based United Blood Nation, he said in a statement Tuesday. The Nine Trey Bloods initially formed in New York City’s Riker’s Island jail in the early 1970s, according to the FBI.
The indictment, returned by a grand jury in Cherokee County, a suburban area northwest of Atlanta where prosecutors say the children were taken to knock on doors, makes no mention of how much money the children allegedly raised through the candy sales.