A federal judge sentenced Bruce Silva, the leader of the Bronx gang known as Dub City, to 22 years in prison on Tuesday, closing out a racketeering case that stretched across more than a decade of violence in Mt. Hope and Morris Heights. Silva was the final of ten defendants to be sentenced in the case, which documented the gang’s shootings, drug trafficking, and fraudulent activities.
According to the Department of Justice, Silva pled guilty in February to racketeering conspiracy and firearms offenses, and U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe imposed the sentence. Prosecutors said Dub City was a subgroup of the broader MacBallers street gang, claiming territory along Walton Avenue and Jerome Avenue between East 175th Street and Burnside Avenue and using it to sell drugs and shoot competitors. On Tuesday, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced the sentencing.
According to charging documents, Silva fired one shot near 105 East 175th Street that was intended for a rival gang member but instead struck an innocent bystander, paralyzing him permanently. Between 2019 and 2022, federal investigators documented eight gang-related shootings, according to the same DOJ statement. According to court records described by CaseMine, the enterprise’s brutality was partially funded by bank fraud and the trafficking of fentanyl, heroin, oxycodone, cocaine base, and marijuana across the Bronx.
The prosecution used the federal RICO conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d), to hold individual gang members liable for the enterprise’s collective crimes of violence, extortion, and narcotics distribution from at least 2019. That legal framework enabled the government to combine years of non-fatal shootings, fraud, and drug violations into a single ten-defendant case rather than prosecuting each act separately.
Dub City was hardly a new operation when federal prosecutors took over. According to the Bronx Times, the gang was previously targeted in 2012, when the New York City Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor accused 17 members, including Silva and co-defendant Shadell McBride, following a deadly turf dispute. Despite the previous state prosecution and gun confiscation, prominent members of the gang resumed leadership roles in the years that followed.
The federal case officially began in April 2023, when the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York issued a 10-count indictment accusing Dub City members with racketeering, narcotics conspiracy, and firearms violations. Six defendants were arrested in April, and others were already in custody on prior charges, according to the DOJ.
The years-long journey to sentencing was marred by recurring issues inside the federal incarceration system. While awaiting trial on the SDNY racketeering allegations, Silva was accused separately in September 2024 for an August 2024 assault at MDC-Brooklyn that left another inmate with a handmade weapon stuck in his spine. Silva and co-defendant Hassan Elliott faced the charges in the Eastern District of New York as part of a larger federal crackdown on jailhouse violence.
Witness intimidation was also reported during pretrial procedures. According to a CaseMine file, in June 2024, Judge Gardephe sanctioned co-defendant Bruce Melvin for using a contraband cell phone inside MDC-Brooklyn to publish a co-defendant’s taped police interview on Instagram. The video, which had over 1,300 views, sparked internet hostility, branding the co-defendant a snitch, and the court later limited Melvin’s access to discovery materials.
The case also resulted in a landmark appellate decision involving digital evidence. According to FindLaw, in July 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a lower court’s suppression order and allowed prosecutors to use digital evidence retrieved from Silva’s iPhone. The decision confirmed that detective expertise could be used to link suspected gang crimes to the contents of a smartphone search, paving the path for that evidence at trial.
With Silva’s 22-year sentence, all ten defendants identified in the 2023 indictment have been sentenced, bringing a close to a case that federal prosecutors say shattered a gang responsible for years of shootings and drug trafficking in Mt. Hope and Morris Heights.
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