The rapper, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez and who is also known as 6ix9ine, broke an unspoken code of silence among gang members and described what he called “robberies, assaults, drugs, stuff of that nature” in testimony against two of his former associates.
And on Thursday, jurors in U.S. District Court in Manhattan found those two Nine Trey members guilty of racketeering conspiracy and other offenses, marking an important victory for prosecutors who have now secured guilty pleas from or convicted several members of the gang, which was started decades ago on Rikers Island.
The verdict was also a vindication of sorts for the platinum-selling Hernandez, whose sensational and meteoric career made him at one point one of the most popular rappers in the country.
His unlikely cameo as a government cooperator testifying against the same gang that gave him street credibility with hip-hop fans and helped boost him to stardom provided prosecutors with a compelling narrative. But it also prompted fellow rappers and others to label him a turncoat and a fraud.
Both defendants, Anthony Ellison and Aljermiah Mack, were found guilty of racketeering conspiracy. Mack was also found guilty of conspiring to distribute narcotics, and Ellison of kidnapping Hernandez. The two were acquitted on other charges.
The central testimony in the trial came from Hernandez and another former gang member turned government witness, Kristian Cruz. Cruz told jurors he once held the rank of “five-star general” in the gang and had sold millions of dollars of narcotics.
Their statements, along with recorded phone calls, text messages and social media posts, provided crucial insight into Nine Trey’s structure, operations and “violence against rival gangs and each other” in Brooklyn and Manhattan, a prosecutor, Jacob Edwin Warren, said last week during closing arguments.
“Daniel Hernandez and Kristian Cruz took you inside Nine Trey,” Warren said.
Defense lawyers countered by casting doubt on the men’s testimony, suggesting that they could be embellishing their accounts to try to curry favor with the government.
Ellison’s lawyer, Deveraux L. Cannick, told jurors during closing arguments that Hernandez faced a minimum sentence of 47 years in prison that could only be lessened if prosecutors wrote a letter saying the rapper had provided valuable assistance to the government.
“You don’t think he would do whatever he needs to do to go home?” Cannick asked. “There’s a motive to lie here.”
During the trial, prosecutors portrayed Nine Trey as a violent criminal enterprise that reaped profits through robberies and by trafficking large amounts of narcotics, including heroin and fentanyl.
One of the principal dealers, they said, was Cruz, who in his testimony named leaders and identified factions within the gang.
But the most striking moments of the trial involved Hernandez, a flamboyant figure known for rainbow-dyed hair, facial tattoos and a history of profane provocations, including social media videos taunting rival rappers.
Hernandez joined Nine Trey in 2017, but left less than a year later as the group descended into infighting. By that time Ellison, described as an old-school gangster purist, had withdrawn his protection from Hernandez and mocked him as a wannabe.
On the stand, Hernandez shed his public persona and acknowledged that he had joined the gang for credibility and protection, and as a way to boost his music career. He attributed the viral success of some of his YouTube videos to the fact that they were filled with Nine Trey members wearing red bandannas and brandishing pistols as they posed on the streets of Brooklyn.
But his initial posing with gang members soon turned into real criminal activity, as Hernandez sought to use his association with Nine Trey to intimidate rivals. He told the jury that a member of his entourage had shot at the rapper Casanova at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
He also admitted on the stand to having paid a Nine Trey member to shoot at the rapper Chief Keef in the summer of 2018 when he was staying at a hotel in Times Square.
A month later, Hernandez testified, Ellison and another man kidnapped and robbed him in Brooklyn. Hernandez described the experience in harrowing detail. Ellison, he said, forced him to say three times that he was not part of Nine Trey, while the second abductor punched him repeatedly in the head. After that, he said, the second man urged Ellison to kill him.
Hernandez told jurors that he bargained for his life, giving his captors $365,000 worth of jewelry, then sprinting through the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant when they released him, eventually throwing himself into a stranger’s car and begging for a ride to a police precinct.
Defense lawyers sought to undermine the credibility of both Hernandez and Cruz, suggesting to jurors that the men were unreliable and inconsistent witnesses whose words should not be trusted.
Cannick, Ellison’s lawyer, cross-examined Hernandez about his account of being kidnapped and robbed. Cannick referred to that episode several times as “supposed” and suggested to jurors it could have been a hoax to promote a song Hernandez had recorded with rapper Nicki Minaj.
During closing arguments, Warren told jurors that they did not have to look far to figure out what might have motivated Ellison to abduct and rob Hernandez.
“Ellison thought Hernandez was a poser,” the prosecutor said, “not a real member of Nine Trey.”
This article originally appeared in
.