Court Document Paints Violent Picture of Gang Behind Many Crimes in Polk County

When she was 22 years old, prosecutors say Lakeland’s Cerenia Lee Mixon was a rising star in the Florida branch of a national gang.

Her tasks included serving as the gang’s Polk County chapter secretary, passing messages between incarcerated members and attempting to set up the retaliatory murder of a former member who had robbed the Florida head of the gang known as Sex, Money Murder.

Detectives know this because a Sept. 29, 2021, a phone call she had with fellow gang member Xavier Ulysse of Lake Wales was recorded.  The transcript of the call sounds like gibberish to the untrained ear because the two were talking in code, but detectives say they were laying out a plan to murder a former gang member. It reads in part:

MIXON: Yeah, I want ‘em bad.
ULYSSE: grunting
MIXON: I want ‘em real bad. So I am saying though, what?
ULYSSE: I’m’ll be in, uhh, in the Tow tomorrow. Yeah, and I should be able to, uh, you know, you smell me?
MIXON: Definitely. Um, yeah, definitely. Bang my line then.
ULYSSE: grunting Yeah.
MIXON: ‘cause I’ll go handle that Petesap. Yea heard me?
ULYSSE: What do you say?
MIXON: I’m trying to handle that Petesap. I’m finna call Brozay and lace his J’s up.

Polk County Sheriff’s Office Detective Robert Mateo translated the call in a 257-page court document filed last year by the office of the statewide prosecutor.

Mateo, who is also president of the Florida Gang Investigators Association and the National Alliance of Gang Investigators Associations, said Ulysse was telling Mixon that he was going to be in Bartow (the Tow) the following day, where the intended target was. Mixon said she was going to handle getting permission (Petesap) for the murder by calling a higher-up gang member (Brozay) and informing him (lace up his J’s) of the target’s whereabouts.

“Your affiants believe Xavier Ulysse had located (the victim) with the intent to kill him and was asking permission from Cerenia Mixon,” Mateo and his colleagues wrote in the affidavit. “If this were a mere attempt at engaging in a physical fight, permission would not need to be sought for that behavior … Based on the training and experience in the field of criminal gangs, Det. Mateo believes that a member would need to obtain permission from higher ranking members to follow through with a retaliatory murder. This action will undoubtedly bring attention to the criminal gang and would require advanced authorization.”

The target is still alive and is now in federal custody, but seven months after that conversation, Mixon was arrested by a Polk County Gang Task Force, headed up by Sheriff Grady Judd, and charged with:

• One count of racketeering, a first-degree felony, which is punishable by life in prison;
• One count of conspiracy to engage in a pattern of racketeering activity, a first degree felony which is punishable by life in prison;
• Two counts of directing the activity of a criminal gang, a first degree felony which is punishable by a term of years not exceeding life.

Judd said Mixon was the Polk County secretary of Sex Money Murder for a time, but he wasn’t sure of her status when she was arrested in April 2022.

“They got on to her about partying too much, drinking too much, and running her mouth too much,” Judd said, noting her nickname was “Baby Gunz” or “Murder Bae.”  “Really sweet kind of girl you know … she was kind of wild.  Now you gotta be wild to be too wild for Sex Money Murder … They just didn’t trust her.”

Ulysse was charged with one count of conspiring to commit murder.

The ‘Sex Money Murder’ gang in Polk

Ulysse and Mixon were two of 41 people either taken into custody or had a warrant issued for their arrest in April 2022 following a year-long investigation by every law enforcement agency in Polk County, the State Attorney’s Office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney’s office out of Tampa.

While many local gangs are loosely organized and operate at the neighborhood level, the Sex Money Murder gang was expansive, with ties across several cities, states and correctional institutions.

Those arrested in the coordinated sting operation were charged under the Florida RICO Act, or Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, which was designed to prosecute individuals engaging in organized crime. It closely mirrors the federal act of the same name and covers coordinated illegal activities such as murder, money laundering, embezzlement, extortion, weapons offenses, burglary, theft, bribery and other crimes.

In Florida, RICO is charged as a first-degree felony and it can result in 30 years in prison and significant monetary fines. In Florida, gang-related offenses can receive enhanced penalties. People convicted of RICO gang crimes can be sentenced up to life in prison.

The 41 gang members were charged with a total of 121 felonies and 40 misdemeanors. The suspects’ previous criminal histories included 1,147 felonies charges and 205 felony convictions.

Of those arrested in various undercover operations between 2019 and 2022, 14 were from Lakeland. At least six of those were not in the gang, but merely swept up on drug or other charges during the operations.

Gang experts say it’s hard to pin down a number of how many gangs exist in Polk County or Lakeland because it’s difficult to differentiate the activity between young people doing stupid things, like bored teens burglarizing people’s cars, and actual organized crime.

Lakeland Police Department officials had initially declined to join the Polk County Gang Task Force when it was created in 2021. But following the Jan. 30 shooting of 11 people on Iowa Avenue in a drug war, Chief Sam Taylor aligned forces with local, state and federal agencies.

The affidavit

To read the affidavit on the Sex Money Murder gang is to delve into a foreign world for most people, one with its own language, its own rules, and its own symbols and signs — sounding more like a Spike Lee screenplay than real life.

The report shows that gang members pay dues, hold national conferences, and host formal-dress parties. They use money from drug-sales money and membership dues to pay the legal fees of members who are arrested and face trials. They even do background checks on potential members using clerks of courts websites. There are initiations involving brutal beatings, drug dealing, and violent retribution for anyone who steps out of line. Members commit armed home invasions and there is at least one murder tied to a local SMM gang member.

The years-long, multi-agency investigation involved local and state detectives, who used recorded jail and prison phone and video calls, along with jail emails and snail mail, phone apps, law enforcement surveillance, security camera videos and old-fashioned law enforcement street work.

Detectives began seeing a sharp rise in gang activity in 2017. The task force was formed and investigations began in 2021 when, based on information obtained from on-going criminal investigations, detectives uncovered an extensive criminal network associated with the gang.  

Out of the 41 identified, 12 were charged with racketeering for their role in directing members in organized criminal activity, such as illegal drug sales, robberies, home invasions introduction of contraband into prisons, conspiracy to commit murder, and coordinated attacks on other gang members.

In some cases, the gang members were in prison or the county jail and still conducting and coordinating gang business.

“We are not going to put up with these gangs brazenly coordinating and committing crimes in our communities,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said at the time of the last arrests. “They are an organized criminal enterprise, ruthlessly focused on violence, theft, fraud, and profiting from the human misery and violence of the illegal drug trade.”

Despite the affidavit’s book-like length, Mateo and fellow PCSO Detectives Jose Gonzalez, Brandon Patterson, and Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent Jason Whatley, said they “have not included every aspect, fact or detail” — only enough to make the arrests.

What they did include in the affidavit was an astounding picture of violent, dangerous people who live among us.

Decoding gang symbols

According to the LPD webpage, there are multiple ways to determine if someone is in a gang, including clothing colors, symbols, hand signs, and numbers, allegiance to a sports team not in the area, graffiti, tattoos and gang-influenced music.

Some symbols and numbers hold special significance within the gang culture. A few common symbols are stars (five- and six-pointed), crowns, pitchforks (pointing up or down), three dots in a triangle, and numbers.

Sports team jerseys may be purchased in a nontraditional color to correspond with the gang’s colors or may be altered with graffiti or extra symbols or writing, such as the Bloods wearing the Kansas City Royals jerseys (KC = Kill Crips).

The affidavit said many of those symbols and more are on SSM members’ Facebook accounts, where they flash their gang signs — usually one or both hands forming guns — and dress in red clothing with red or green bandanas.

They make rap or drill videos about their lifestyle choices and post them to YouTube, praising the Sex Money Murder founder, Peter “Pistol Pete” Rollock, who is currently serving life in prison. Rollock started the gang in 1993 in the Soundview Gardens housing project in the Bronx as a subset of the United Blood Nation gang. 

Some SMM members have tattoos of his name or with “252,” which is believed to have been Rollock’s apartment number in Soundview Gardens. Other tattoos, T-shirt images or slang, which often appear on their social media pages, include:

• “64,” the amount of minutes SECONDS an initiate is beaten to prove they can withstand the pain.
• “$MM” for Sex Money Murder.
• “24K,” a subset of Sex Money Murder in Florida.
• Five-point stars, which symbolize “love, loyalty, obedience, life and respect.”
• “MOB,” for Member of Bloods.
• Chevrons denoting high rank in the organization.
• “UBN” for United Blood Nation.
• “Redrum,” which is murder spelled backwards and incorporates the gang color.
• “187,” the California penal code for murder.
• “Wraith,” a model of a Rolls Royce. They also use the RR logo to represent “Real Right” – someone in good standing with the gang.
• “BRF,” for Black Rose Family, another name for the gang.
• “Nine-Trey” or 9-trey,” another sub-gang.
• “BBA” for Billy Bad Ass or Billy Badass Bloods, another sub-gang.
• “B” for Bloods.
• The Portland Trailblazers’ logo. They use the term Blazers as a nickname.
• Stick figures engaged in sex, holding money and murdering someone.
• “Gunz and butter,” a code for money.
• “14 8 2,” which correlates to the letters NHB or Neighbor Hood Bloods,
• “Trap house,” a residence where drugs are sold.
• “Pete,” “Rollie” or “Rollaxk” — references to Rollock, the gang’s godfather figure.
• “OMB,” only my brothers.
• “Dub,” someone kicked out of the gang.
• “Crash dummy,” someone sent on a mission where the likelihood of being caught is high and the person is viewed as expendable.
• “Ghetto bonflict,” a beating for violating the rules.
• “Breeding,” “breathing” or “just breeding,” for recruiting members.
• “Up the road” or “behind the wall,” meaning in prison.

Women in the SSM gang like Mixon are referred to as Moets, like the champagne, and some dye their hair red, while men are Moes.

The affidavit shows that in addition to coordinating a potential murder, she also called for the beating of another gang member, recorded during an August 2021 jail phone call.

“This is who I need you all to chew,” she said.  The affidavit shows she wanted a man beaten for trying to have her attacked.

During that call, she admitted to funneling Polk County membership dues to the state treasurer. She also wears SMM colors, uses its handsigns and hangs out with known gang leaders.

Murder

There is at least one murder tied to a Polk County SMM gang member – and the main suspect is a friend of Mixon’s.

Javorice Dexter Tramel, was arrested in 2021 for the Sept. 14, 2021, murder of Tyrell Bell, a gay man Tramel had been communicating with on Snapchat. An affidavit shows that Bell had sent Tramel videos of gay men engaged in sex and a male and female having sex. The two men agreed to meet, with the victim picking Tramel up at his home on Seminole Avenue in Lake Wales.

Tramel’s cellphone was found in Bell’s car, which detectives say Tramel stole after he shot Bell twice in the head and left his body in an orange grove. Bell’s basketball shorts were found around his knees.

According to the Gang Task Force affidavit, Tramel went by the name “Maniak Rollaxk,” which is also the name of his Facebook page and a reference to the founder of the national gang.  There are several pictures of him posing his hands in gang signs and dressed in red. While in prison in Lake Correctional Institution, Tramel admitted to Sergeant Coordinator Henry Fender that he was a member of “Billy Badass Bloods,” which is a nickname for 9-Trey Gangster Bloods, closely related to the Sex Money Murder gang. He had been out of prison one month when Bell’s murder happened.

Tramel was also found by the courts in 2018 to be a juvenile delinquent in Polk County — an official label given to youth who violate any law or ordinance, either a misdemeanor or a felony, “which would be punishable by incarceration if the violation were committed by an adult.”

Text message communications between Mixon and Tramel recovered from his cellphone suggests that he had a rank within the gang because he was responsible for collecting membership dues from other members near Lake Wales. His phone served as another link in the complicated web of gang activity in Polk County and throughout the state.

Tramel was arrested a week after Bell’s murder — the day after Tramel’s 21^st birthday — in 2021. He remains in the Polk County Jail, awaiting trial.

PCSO spokesman Scott Wilder said detectives think the murder was a robbery, a crime of opportunity and not a hate crime. And not related to the gang activity. But his arrest and a search of his cellphone helped investigators to crack other crimes.

Home invasion

On May 29, 2019, just after 1 p.m. Dustin and Dewana Broome were in their home with four of their children on Elk Drive off South Combee Road in Lakeland when men armed with handguns and an AK-47 grabbed their friend in the front yard, put a gun to his head, then pushed through the front door, pointing their weapons at everyone.

Dustin Broome grabbed his children and shoved them through an open window to safety.

“Run to the neighbor’s backyard!” he yelled to them.

Broome then also climbed through the window, grabbed his two pit bulls in the backyard and a shovel and went back into the house, where the gunmen were pistol whipping Dewana. Dustin Broome began swinging the shovel and the gunmen fled with $3,000 in cash, gold jewelry and a pound of marijuana. Dustin admitted to police that he sells marijuana from his home.

Neighbors saw all this happening and watched as the man carrying the AK-47 ran through their front yard. 

Dewana ran out front door and got into the friend’s car, an Audi that was still running, and began pursuing the gunmen in the normally quiet neighborhood lined with modest 1960s cinder-block homes. Dewana tried to run one over with the car, but instead hit a trashcan, which knocked the man down. He then shot at her, firing multiple rounds into the car. She was uninjured.

A 21-year-old woman, who was a teenager when it happened, told LkldNow: “I grabbed the baby, I grabbed my dog, and I ran in and then all of a sudden I started hearing gunshots.” She had been sitting on her front porch with her toddler cousin. “Nothing else has happened like that since. That was, like, the first and last time that I’ve ever seen something like that in my life in this neighborhood. And my grandma’s had this house for 55 years or so. We’ve been here a long, long time.”

She also saw the gunman drop a valuable piece of evidence for gang force detectives — his cellphone. The black and gray iPhone contained names, photos, text messages, all linking him and his fellow gang members to that crime and others.

The phone belonged to Artavious Smith, who was arrested during an unrelated traffic stop more than an hour after the home invasion.

Within days, investigators also arrested Rodney Street, Quandavize Street, Quartavis Crawley and Deondre Powell, charging them with the home invasion. Powell’s cellphone was also recovered.

They found on Rodney Street’s Facebook page a photo of most of them leaning on a light blue Toyota Camry that was used during the home invasion. The photo was taken when Rodney Street got home from prison — the day before the home invasion.

In addition, several are tied to home invasions elsewhere in the county.

Paying dues and ‘family reunions’

Thanks to the cellphones recovered in the home invasion case and several others, including two cellphones found in a prison cell, detectives were able to weave together the hierarchy of the gang, including a Mount Dora woman who was collecting dues via a cellphone app.

The multiple transfers of money from dozens of people to Tonisha Fisher shows males paid $131, while women paid $64. Fisher lit up investigators’ radars when she tried multiple times to send various inmates papers laced with synthetic marijuana.  All the letters came from the same Mount Dora P.O. Box and her real name, along with some aliases.

Using the cellphone app accounts, investigators were able to trace phone numbers back to their owners, obtaining the real names and nicknames of members. Search warrants were then obtained to download information, including text messages, from various phones.

What they found were invitations to statewide and even national gang gatherings, written in the code of the gang:

“Attention All Trendsetters & Moets We Have A Mandatory P.O.G. Saturday, November 14^th … Do Not Bring Any Flags & If You Do Leave Them in Your Mazzi’s We DO Not Need 848 Riding By Viewing Any Flags or To Give Them Any Reason TO Bother US…”

Hernando Thompson of Orlando is the elusive Florida leader of Sex Money Murder.  He sent that text invitation to 19 different telephone numbers on the morning of Nov. 14^t, 2020, inviting everyone to a state meeting in Gainesville’s Copeland Park at noon that day. Flags refers to gang colors, Mazzis are cars and 848 is code for the police. He’s telling members not wear their gang colors so they don’t draw any suspicion from law enforcement.

A national meeting was held in October 2020 in New Jersey and another in March 2021 in South Carolina.

In October 2021, a national convention was scheduled for Kissimmee, with leaders coordinating a rented meeting hall, AirBnBs and hotel rooms.

One of those coordinating the party was Lakeland’s Cerenia Mixon. During a conversation with another gang member, she said she joined the gang when she was 15 or 16 years old. They also discussed a female gang member who was dating someone from a rival gang. They didn’t think she would attend the meeting because she knew she would be physically beaten for violating the gang’s rules about not associating with rival gang members.

Mixon said if she didn’t comply with gang rules, “then she’s dead.”

Mixon also discussed providing prostitutes for the party.

“I got a Cuban, I got them all, what you want, I got them all bro … I’m gonna bring the hoes over there and they finna come stay the night at my (place), Imma bring them over there to turn up during the day then, you know, when it night night time, they got to come with me.”

Investigators were also tipped off about the party by Charleston, S.C., police. Polk County detectives then searched various gang members’ social media accounts, and saw people discussing the party, scheduled for the weekend of Oct. 21, 2021. Posts included pictures of a nine-bedroom Air B&B with a swimming pool on Calistoga Avenue in Kissimmee’s Sonoma Resort neighborhood. The party in the suburban neighborhood, tightly packed with single-family homes, involved secret handshakes, dancing, cocaine on the kitchen counter, men packaging cocaine and marijuana on the dining room table, and men openly carrying handguns and rifles in the home.

Two days later, law enforcement were tipped off to the location of the main gathering: The Barney E. Veal Center located on the grounds of the Osceola Council on Aging.

“The location for events such as these are often provided at the last possible minute to attendees to avoid law enforcement intervention or monitoring of the event,” the affidavit states. “Through physical surveillance and observation of Cerenia Mixon and Hernando Thompson being present, it was apparent this was the location of the national meeting of Sex Money Murder.”

Detectives later obtained security camera video of the party, which organizers labeled as the “3^rd Annual Family Gathering” for paperwork purposes. The video shows SMM merchandise being sold, gang signs being flashed, and about 100 attendees posing for a group photo.

Tonisha Fisher out of Mount Dora, the SMM state treasurer, rented the venue for $3,200 for eight hours.

Cellphone records also showed that Hernando Thompson listed himself as the “Commissioner” of Sex Money Murder, the state leader.  Thompson, who lived or lives in Orlando, remains one of Florida’s most wanted men. His case continues in absentia on the state racketeering charges for running a criminal enterprise.

Where are they now?

Conspiracy to murder a former SMM gang member

Cerenia Lee Mixon, 23 – Nicknames: “Baby Gunz” and “Murder Bae.” The RICO case against Mixon is pending.  Her next hearing is on Oct. 31. She remained in the Polk County Jail from April 8, 2022 until May 21, 2023, when someone posted her $20,000 bond. Moncrief Bail Bondsman out of Orlando handled the bail, but declined to say who paid. While in jail, she earned a hairdressing certification. She was never charged with conspiracy to commit murder. She has filed notice with the court, waiving her right to appear at any future court hearings.

Xavier Ulysse, 28 – His charge of conspiracy to commit murder was reduced to conspiracy to commit aggravated battery on a person using a deadly weapon. He pled guilty and was sentenced on Aug. 23 to two years in prison and three years’ probation. On Sept. 13, he was sentenced to another two years for a different case involving aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting an officer with violence, fleeing to elude a police officer and knowingly driving while his license suspended or revoked. He is awaiting transfer to the Florida State Prison system. Organized racketeering charges are pending from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

May 2019 home invasion

Rodney Street, 27 – Nickname “Buck” – In April 2022, the state attorney’s office dropped all charges because of insufficient evidence. In April 2020, he was charged with committing a sex act in the presence of a female corrections/detention employee for “intentionally and willfully masturbating.” He represented himself in court. In April 2022, the state decided not to prosecute that case. In March 2022, he was charged in the RICO gang case and is currently in the Polk County Jail awaiting trial.

Quandavize Street, 26 – Also known as “Stump” — In December 2019, he was charged with introducing contraband into the Polk County Jail for having a homemade weapon, a third-degree felony. He pleaded no contest, was found guilty and sentenced to time already served in the jail.  In October 2022, all charges in the home invasion case were dropped by the state attorney’s office for insufficient evidence. On July 5, he was charged with domestic violence and is awaiting trial. He bonded out of jail on July 8.

Deondre Powell, 26 – Nickname “Toolie.” In June 2022, the state attorney’s office dropped all charges, saying the victims refused to cooperate. In February 2022, he was charged with conspiracy to traffic in synthetic marijuana, conspiracy to introduce contraband into the Polk County Jail and unlawful use of a two-way communication device. Using jailhouse recorded telephones, he asked others to spray the inside pages of a Qu’ran with synthetic cannabis and ship him the book from the bookstore so he could sell the pages to other inmates. In December, he was found guilty and sentenced to 152 days in jail — the time he had served awaiting trial. He was recently sentenced to 50 years in prison on state charges of racketeering.

Artavious Smith, 23 – Three years after the 2019 home invasion, he pled guilty to shooting into an occupied vehicle and a delinquent in possession of a firearm.  The state decided not to prosecute him on the charges of attempted murder, burglary of a dwelling with assault while armed with a firearm, or robbery with a firearm. In July 2022, he was sentenced to 36 months in prison. Because he had already served three years awaiting trial for three years, he was placed on community controlled probation for two years.  In February 2023, he was arrested for violation of probation for domestic violence, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, shooting into a building, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He remains in the Polk County Jail, awaiting trial.

Quartavis Crawley, 30 – In August 2019, all charges were dropped by the state attorney’s office. In Nov. 2022, he was arrested on three outstanding warrants, including armed burglary out of Hillsborough County. He remains in the Hillsborough County Jail.

Prosecution challenges

A recurring theme in recent gang-related cases has been lack of cooperation from witnesses. After the initial announcement of the Sex Money Murder arrests, charges were dropped against many key players for that reason.

Similarly, in the Iowa Avenue drive-by shooting on Jan. 30 last year, prosecutors were unable to charge the suspects with attempted murder because none of the 11 men who were shot would testify. Instead, they were charged with federal weapons offenses, which carry much lighter penalties.

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