Admitted Goonie gang member testifies against former associates in federal racketeering case
CHICAGO — Chicago gang member Alvin Vaughn was arrested in 2017 on relatively minor federal charges of being a felon in possession of weapons at a suburban gun range, but it was immediately clear that something bigger was brewing.
The criminal complaint against him stated investigators were conducting an ongoing investigation into a violent street gang named Goonie Boss, of which Vaughn was a known member. Investigators asked Vaughn specifically about reputed leader Romeo “O-Dog” Blackman and other associates. And they seemed to already know a lot about the violence the gang had been inflicting on the Englewood neighborhood.
“They had me on (being a) felon at a gun range,” Vaughn testified in a federal courtroom Wednesday. “But then they got to asking about me and Romeo and everybody else, and that’s why I got to talking.”
Vaughn is now one of several key cooperators in the sprawling racketeering case against Blackman and two of his alleged associates in the Goonie gang, a violent faction of the Gangster Disciples that federal prosecutors say terrorized a small area of the South Side beginning in
