Eddie Ashley was looking for a hookup. So like countless others on a Saturday night in New York City, he went to The Ritz, a gay bar in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.
He drank too much, he said. And he did end up going home with someone — one of his victims.
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WATCH HEREEighteen months later, Ashley, 30, was sentenced to nine years in state prison for robbing the man he left the bar with in May 2022, along with various other crimes he pleaded guilty to committing in recent years.
Authorities said Ashley and the victim went to the victim’s apartment several blocks north of the bar, and Ashley stole the man’s phone and wallet.
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But this was not, prosecutors said, a one-off robbery among so many others across the city on any given night. The encounter was part of a broader crime ring in which authorities said at least 16 victims, many of them gay men, were targeted from September 2021 to August 2022 at bars and nightclubs, then often drugged and robbed of thousands of dollars while they were incapacitated. In several cases, surviving victims and their family members believe the assailants used facial recognition technology to unlock their mark’s phones. Two of the men were killed. Ashley denies knowledge of the wider crime ring and was not charged with murder.
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