Man Who Terrorized BK Family In Search Of Drugs Convicted: Feds

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — A Brooklyn man who was on the run from police for years after he terrorized a family searching their apartment for heroin was convicted this week and could face life in prison, prosecutors announced.

Devone Jefferys, who goes by "Moneybags," was handed a guilty verdict from jurors on Tuesday after a six-day trial for the 2015 incident, where he and co-conspirators posed as NYPD officers to break into a drug dealer's apartment.

Jefferys had been hiding from authorities and living in his former girlfriends car until he was arrested in July. He will face a minimum of five years and up to life in prison for the robbery and weapons charges, prosecutors said.

“For years, the defendant was on the run and in hiding, trying to avoid paying the consequences for the violence and terror he inflicted. But with today’s verdict, justice has caught up to him,” United States Attorney Richard P. Donoghue said.

Jefferys, 27, and his co-conspirators went to the Williamsburg apartment on July 31, 2015 to steal heroin and money from the dealer, who was inside with his family, prosecutors said.

When they got inside, the group took out their guns and ordered the family to lie on the floor as they bound them with duct tape.

Jefferys ransacked the apartment looking for drugs and cash while he and the co-conspirators pointed guns at the family, including at a pregnant woman's stomach.

When he found out that one of the victims had thrown a bag of heroin out the window, Jefferys took one of the women from the apartment into a back alley to search for it, prosecutors said.

He assaulted the woman when they couldn't find the heroin, forcing her to perform oral sex on him at gunpoint and raping her before running away, according to earlier court documents.

Jefferys was not charged with the sexual assault in the federal trial given that there is no federal rape charge, a representative with the U.S. Attorney's Office said. The representative did not know whether Jefferys would face a separate state case for the assault.

The federal case was brought as part of a program that brings together multiple levels of law enforcement, Project Safe Neighborhoods, prosecutors said.