None of the defendants arrested and charged with participating in a drug conspiracy that distributed large amounts of cocaine and fentanyl in the city of Peekskill are amateurs in the illegal drug business.
The Peekskill defendants – Jason Tinsley (AKA “Floss), 42, Jerome Reed (AKA “Pops”), 35, Gary Burkett, 62, and Meisha Cato, 37 – are well known to law enforcement officials.
But they haven’t achieved the celebrity status in both the illegal drug trade and the rapper community that Rakim “Bo” Mayo of Brooklyn holds.
In a chilling, disturbing and boastful video he posted on Instagram before his most recent arrest, Mayo sings the praises of God, who he claims has granted him great wealth. He’s wearing lots of gold jewelry and holds a stack of thousands of dollars as he chants about his good fortune. A fortune gained from selling illegal drugs, and not his rap recordings, according to federal law enforcement officials.
That video certainly caught the attention of the feds, who now seek to put Mayo behind bars for the rest of his life.
The Mayo family business – selling deadly drugs
From roughly April 2024 until their arrests this week, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan charges that the defendants, including Mayo, participated in a conspiracy to supply and distribute large amounts of primarily cocaine, crack cocaine, and fentanyl in Peekskill, along with methamphetamine and other narcotics. They operated out of multiple residential buildings, including Peekskill’s Bohlman Towers and Dunbar Heights public housing complexes, actively selling drugs everyday themselves and through street sellers and couriers, the federal authorities allege.
For Mayo, who served 12 years in federal prison for prior drug convictions, Peekskill is the newest territory he’s plied his deadly trade.
Rakim “Bo” Mayo learned the drug business as a second-generation member of the notorious Mayo family clan, led by Ronald Mayo, that controlled a large chunk of the Brooklyn trade for 16 years, according to a published report.
The crack clan’s patriarch Ronald Mayo led five of his siblings and three of their children in a multi-million dollar drug sale operation that peddled crack and coke through a large part of Brooklyn for more than 15 years, according to a report in the Daily News.
Ronald Mayo sold crack cocaine he bought from a major Columbian supplier for nearly four decades until the federal “Operation Hold the Mayo” brought down his empire. Bo Mayo was a member of that family crew taken down in the bust.
Bo Mayo’s most recent arrest here in Peekskill marks the third time that local, state and federal authorities have taken him off the streets. Back in 2008, he was arrested in Pennsylvania in another sweep, this one dubbed “Operation Blood Clot” because Mayo and his associates were getting their deadly crack and cocaine from members of the Bloods street gang in New York City.
Prosecutors charged that heroin and cocaine were brought from New York to Blair County, Pennsylvania on a weekly basis, sometimes as frequently as every other day. On-site distributors for the organization allegedly recruited local individuals to act as runners and many local drug addicts allegedly allowed the New York distributors to use their homes as “stash houses,” in exchange for heroin or cocaine.
Does Mayo’s drug dealing life end in Peekskill?
Mayo tried to combine a career as a rap artist with his ongoing primary business of selling drugs, according to the charges he now faces which could put him behind bars for life this time.
He’s selling several recordings on Apple Music, including a 2021 album entitled “The Beginning” and his most recent single “Real One,” released on Sept. 2, two months before he was rounded up with the five others in the Peekskill takedown.
His Instagram account shows 55,300 followers and lots of photos of Bo and his stacks of cash and gold jewelry.
Asked in a YouTube video 11 months ago if he would ever be going back to jail. Mayo said “Never. The world is open now to make money [in] different ways. I stay away from cops and I stay away from things like that. I was facing life and I took 20 years [in prison] at age 18. I’m an example of a person that kept going to jail.
