A Brooklyn jury convicted Jason Soto of murder in the 2015 killing of Shakim Rivera.

Monday's verdicts are the jury's findings on murder in aid of racketeering, causing Rivera's death with a firearm, and a cocaine count from late 2024. The mandatory life term is what the office said he faces at sentencing. Judge Reyes has not imposed it.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York said Monday, Oct. 26, 2026, that a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Jason Soto, also known as Twin, of all three counts in a superseding indictment. The office said he is 37 and from Brooklyn, and that he was a leader of the Cypress Gangsta Crips, a subgroup of the Eight Trey Crips based in the Cypress Hills Houses in East New York. The counts are murder in aid of racketeering, causing the death of gang leader Shakim Rivera through the use of a firearm on Feb. 22, 2015, and possession with intent to distribute cocaine in late 2024. The office said the verdict followed a two-week trial before U.S. District Judge Ramón E. Reyes. It said that when Soto is sentenced, he faces a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. The docket is 24-CR-511 (S-1) (RER).

The office said the proof at trial was that on Feb. 19, 2015, gang member Demetrius Graham, also known as Duke, was shot and killed while asleep in his girlfriend's bed in Brooklyn. It said Rivera ordered that killing without the gang's authorization because he thought Graham was disloyal, and that the murder split the gang. It said Soto believed Rivera was responsible and plotted to kill him in retaliation. On the evening of Feb. 22, 2015, the office said, 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 Cypress Gangsta Crips associate shot and killed him. It said that between 2016 and 2017, while Soto was incarcerated, he wrote a manuscript describing his motive for killing Rivera, his membership in the Crips, and the necessity of retaliation for a "grievous act committed against [a] comrade." The other person the office said was with Soto is not named. Graham's girlfriend is not named.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr. said the verdict sends a message to residents of the Cypress Hills Houses "who were terrorized by Soto and his Crips gang." NYPD Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch said that as the leader of a violent gang, Soto "orchestrated the execution of one of his members in cold blood." The office said the case grew out of an investigation by the FBI, the NYPD and the U.S. attorney's office that has lasted a decade, and that the investigation has resulted in charges against more than 20 defendants. Charges in that wider investigation are not this verdict. The office named Assistant U.S. Attorneys Emily J. Dean, Andy Palacio and Raffaela S. Belizaire as the prosecutors, with help from the office's criminal investigations unit.

Monday's guilty verdicts are the jury's findings on the three counts. The mandatory life term is what the office said he faces when Judge Reyes sentences him. It has not been imposed. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.