by Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Feb. 3, 2015

Dec. 8, 2011, was the beginning of the end of Eugene Arnell Thomas’ second career as a major drug trafficker. That’s when a young man, Christopher Alves, was murdered in Edgewood, Maryland. Thomas had nothing to do with Alves’ demise, and in fact was living in Atlanta at the time. But it still was a turning point in his life, which had already been marked by a 2000 federal coke-and-crack conviction. 

The murder investigation prompted wiretaps on phones of persons of interest who, it was discovered, were drug dealers. Through twists and turns and some major busts that resulted in federal charges against 23 people in two separate cases in 2012 and 2013, the resulting drug investigation uncovered the big connect: Thomas, in Atlanta, using couriers to bring in bricks of coke and heroin to Baltimore, and carry money back. 

Thomas was indicted in 2013, was arrested and pleaded guilty in 2014, and on Jan. 27 U.S. District judge Richard Bennett announced his sentence: eight years, followed by 10 years of supervised release. Not bad, for a federal two-timer. By comparison, another defendant in one of the related cases, Eric Winder, is serving nine years, his first time in. As prosecutor John Purcell said at Thomas’ sentencing hearing, “Winder was nothing compared to what the defendant was doing,” noting that one of Thomas’ couriers “moved kilos two or three times a week” into Baltimore. 

“I don’t want people to fail, and he clearly has failed,” Bennett said of 42-year-old Thomas from the bench, after a lengthy, sealed bench conference after which Thomas’ advisory sentencing range had gone from 168 to 210 months down to 87 to 108 months. Bennett also called Thomas’ return to federal court for a second conviction “extraordinary” and “very, very rare.” 

Despite Bennett’s suggestion that second-timers were rare in his courtroom, the path of the probe that eventually landed at the doorstep of Thomas’ fancy Georgia home is littered with return offenders. Antoine Wiggins was Thomas’ main sidekick in his 2000 conviction, and got 135 months in prison. Brian Drake was sentenced on a federal gun charge in 2010, only to return for another sentence in 2013 for distributing Thomas’ drugs. Marlow Bates, the son of the same-named famous Baltimore gangster who is said to have inspired the Marlo character on “The Wire,” pleaded guilty in 2009 for his part in a major Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) prison gang drug-trafficking conspiracy. Anthony Miles, who supplied Bates with Thomas’ heroin, in 2005 got 96 months in federal prison for gun-and-drugs crimes. That makes five previous federal offenders in the probe that ended with Thomas, out of 24 charged in all. 

To some extent, this was a family affair: Bates’ sister Keya Dean got caught up in it, for instance, as did Thomas’ brother-in-law Edward Kearney and Miles’ cousin Enzo Blanks, whose girlfriend Rebecca Belete was also indicted. Mostly, though, what’s striking about the facts that come to light in the court documents in the three cases is how they map the detailed interconnectedness of it all. 

Heroin sold by Bates’ street-level crew at Edmondson Avenue and Kingston Road in far West Baltimore’s Westgate neighborhood got there via Miles connecting with higher-ups on downtown Baltimore streets, including in front of Norma Jean’s strip club on the Block and near Lexington Market and the Redwood Apartments, where Blanks lived. Above those suppliers were Wiggins and Drake, receiving the bricks from Thomas in Atlanta and stashing them in swank places such as McHenry Row in South Baltimore and Domain Brewers Hill in Canton. 

Those at the top had nice rides. Blanks and Wiggins drove Bentley convertibles, and Miles, when he wasn’t being chauffeured by the probe’s most prolific informant, cruised around in a Mercedes-Benz Brabus. Thomas had an Aston Martin Rapide to use when he was in Baltimore. Thomas and Wiggins co-owned a 33-foot Doral powerboat kept in a slip at Baltimore Marine Center at Harborview, and frequently met on the boat together, along with Blanks. 

Bates and Miles were caught on wiretaps discussing the money that was being raked in. “I wipe my ass with ten grand,” Bates said at one point. At another, Miles “raised up a large stack of cash, holding it with both hands, and screamed that he just made $20,000 in an hour.” Yet “the money that he was making selling heroin was ‘chump change’ compared to the money” coming to Blanks, who he claimed “was making $150,000 a day ‘with his eyes closed.’” 

Though no violence was charged in the cases, Miles touches on the possibility. There was “a rumor going around that someone was going to rob [him],” the court documents state, but “if anyone did try to rob him he was ready” because “he had an M16 with a ‘fifty round clip’ inside of his house.” He “bragged that if they came to rob him he would go outside shoot them and then go back in and rest,” and talked of having an “auto-loading shotgun” that “you don’t need to pump.” 

The brashness of some of the defendants belies a failed commitment to keeping a low profile. When Wiggins, for instance, was pulled over in February 2013 in his brand-new black Honda Accord, and police were awaiting the arrival of the canine unit, he just up and drove away “at a high rate of speed and began throwing a large quantity of gel capsules” filled with heroin “out the car window.” About 15 minutes later, the police found the Honda abandoned in front of a house in Parkville, with gel capsules next to the driver’s side door, and “they followed the path through the lawn and discovered more.” Similarly, Miles was pulled over in November 2012, and when police asked him to step out of the car, he pushed the officer to the ground and fled on foot, tossing heroin out of his pockets as he ran. 

The key moment for Thomas was a raid and arrests in and near the Domain Brewers Hill apartments at 1200 S. Conkling St. in Canton. It happened on April 19, 2012, after investigators had learned Kearney, Thomas’ brother-in-law, was coming up from Atlanta to meet a customer, Edward Harris. Agents had seen Kearney at Unit 416 of the luxury apartment complex, before he was driven by Thomas’ courier, Tara Sneed, to the meeting at a nearby parking lot. Kearney gave Harris a backpack with 1.5 kilos of coke in it, and they were arrested. The same day, they raided the apartment and found Drake, who they arrested, and two kilos of heroin, one kilo of coke, and $71,000 in cash.

Six days after the Canton raid, agents executed a search warrant at Thomas’ home in Georgia. Among the items they found there were two “jack presses” in the garage. These were used to “re-compress ‘bricks’ of diluted kilos of cocaine and heroin in order to make them appear as originally packaged,” after Thomas and others would “break up packaged bricks” and “dilute them with various cutting agents.” This was also done “at stash houses maintained in Atlanta,” the court documents explain. 

Before Thomas’ current legal troubles, according to his wife and mother, who spoke at his sentencing hearing, his life took a dark turn after the death of a co-defendant in Thomas’ 2000 case, Clinton Wallace, who they described as Thomas’ brother. Wallace, according to news reports at the time, jumped off a boat at the mouth of the South River in the Chesapeake Bay in 2009 to go swimming, got caught up in the wind and currents, and drowned. Thomas’ wife, Nicole Thomas, said after that “freak boating accident,” Thomas “just changed.” His mother, Deborah Canty, said, “I really worried about him” after “my son died in 2009.”  

Thomas’ attorney, Christopher Nieto, saying there was “no excuse” for Thomas’ conduct, argued that nonetheless “there is an explanation.” When Thomas’ prior sentence ended in 2008, he explained, he was not granted six months in a halfway or any re-entry services to reassimilate, but just came home. After he moved to Georgia to escape the “poisonous environment” in Baltimore, a “litany of incidents” befell him, including his brother’s death and failed attempts at legitimate business. So, in “an ignorant attempt to try to provide” for his family, “he fell back into a business he knew would succeed.” Then the two related cases came down, with Winder and Wiggins on the top of each, and drugs and cash were seized, and he was “now on the hook for an outstanding debt” in the neighborhood of $180,000 to $200,000. The man he owed had “significant connections to a Mexican drug cartel,” and it is “still outstanding,” Nieto explained, so that was the “reason for the continued activity” after his co-conspirators were taken down in succession.

“Not everything that is done for money is done for greed,” Nieto said. But Purcell adamantly dubbed Thomas “a dealer in death” who “did it for piles and piles of money,” and predicted that “if he were released today, he’d be selling cocaine or heroin by Friday.” Thomas should be about 50 when he’s released, leaving plenty of time to do it again or learn the lesson the government’s trying to teach: that along with the short-lived glitz and street cred come “victims who are not in the courtroom,” said Bennett, so the game just isn’t worth it. “The whole thing,” Bennett added, “is a tragedy.”

by Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Jan. 7, 2015

Usually, mail sent to undeliverable addresses are returned to the senders or end up in the so-called “dead letter office” of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) in Atlanta. But in Baltimore, USPS letter carrier Antoinette McDaniels accepted $100 every time she went the extra mile to get fictitiously addressed packages to their intended recipients: alleged drug dealers.

This premium, under-the-table service facilitated the delivery last year of 30-plus packages of weed from California, Florida, and Arizona to Baltimore, according to court documents, and ended with drug charges brought in October and November against McDaniels and two of her alleged clients, Gary “Short” Coleman and Cyril “Indian” Boodoo. The alleged ringleader of the scheme, Sulieman “Bey Bey” Pasha, appears to not have been charged.

McDaniels’ delivery route, dubbed “Postal Route #18” in a federal warrant made public in court records yesterday and sworn out in December by USPS postal inspector Douglas Henegar to search phones seized from McDaniels and Coleman, includes the Harwood neighborhood in Baltimore, where the alleged deliveries took place. Less-detailed information about the investigation came to light in another December warrant sworn out by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) task-force officer Jamile Boles to search Coleman’s Asquith St. home and Honda Accord.

The probe began last April, when postal inspectors “became aware of suspicious parcel activity that was occurring on Postal Carrier Route #18,” the court documents explain, due to “a large number of parcels that were being delivered through the U.S. Mail that were consistent with narcotics trafficking.” After one of the parcels was opened pursuant to a warrant in October, and found to contain 2,750 grams of marijuana, postal inspectors and agents of the DEA and Maryland State Police set up a surveillance operation of the route, and promptly watched the scheme unfold as the opened parcel was delivered by McDaniels, after she had left in her postal-service vehicle from the Waverly post office, to Boodoo at 26th Street and Guilford Avenue on Oct. 6. After Boodoo put the parcel in his car and “left the area at a high rate of speed,” he was arrested.

The next day, agents approached McDaniels and “asked if she wished to discuss her involvement with the identified drug trafficking organization.” She did, and went to DEA’s Baltimore office to tell her story.

McDaniels explained that while she was on her deliver route last January, Pasha, who had previously lived along her route and “had received numerous large parcels weighing between 10-15 lbs at his previous residence,” the court records state, approached her and “asked if she wanted to make some extra money receiving packages for him.” More specifically, he asked her “if she would be willing to deliver parcels directly to him, though the parcels would be addressed to fictitious addresses.” She agreed, and received $100 for each package—”approximately 1-2 parcels per week . . . for approximately 11 months.” She also “provided several vacant addresses to Pasha,” which “would subsequently appear on the subject parcels she ultimately delivered to Pasha.” She explained that “Pasha communicates with McDaniels by text messaging to alert her that he has an incoming parcel,” and Pasha would meet her on her route so they could exchange money for the packages.

Come August, though, Pasha grew nervous about the arrangement because he “told [McDaniels] that he thought ‘law enforcement’ was following him,” the court documents state. So he introduced her to “Indian” and “Short,” who continued the scheme on Pasha’s behalf.

Coleman was the next to be arrested, after an arranged delivery by McDaniels of two weed packages on Nov. 7, when she gave them to him in the 300 block of East Lorraine Avenue, also in Harwood. Then, after an arrest warrant was issued for McDaniels on Nov. 9, she was arrested on Nov. 10.

In all, the court records state, the alleged conspiracy oversaw “the trafficking of several hundred pounds of marijuana in and around the Baltimore Metropolitan area.”

McDaniel’s dope-delivery scandal is the second recent criminal probe involving USPS’ Waverly branch. Last year, branch manager Richard Lewis Wright III was charged in a bribery-and-kickback scheme involving janitorial and landscaping contracts, and has since pleaded guilty. His sentencing is scheduled for March.

by Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Dec. 17, 2014

Moryne Louden’s mugshot is all over the internet because the Baltimore Police Department on Oct. 16, 2013, tweeted it with the caption that he “was arrested by #BPDSWD in the 3200 Block of W. Baltimore St. for a handgun violation.” The case against him ended up in federal court, where he was charged for being a felon in possession of a firearm—charges that are now imperiled, because today Maryland U.S. District judge James Bredar ruled that virtually all of the evidence against him “must be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree.”

The reason: BPD officers’ traffic stop that resulted in Louden’s arrest was an “unlawful seizure,” since they had no “reasonable suspicion” that crime was afoot until just after the stop occurred.

In the motions battle leading up to Bredar’s ruling, federal prosecutors presented the facts of what transpired prior to Louden’s arrest.

A plain-clothes team of officers in an unmarked police car noticed a blue Ford Windstar parked at the intersection of West Baltimore and South Hilton streets, and watched a man later identified as Louden approach the vehicle, engage in a brief conversation with the driver, and then enter it. Seconds later, another man got in, too.

So the officers, “suspecting that a hand-to-hand drug transaction was about to occur,” pulled up on the scene and “activated their lights and exited the vehicle.” As soon as they approached the Windstar, Louden got out, and the cops immediately “detected the odor of burnt marijuana emanating from within the Windstar.” They asked Louden who had the pot, and he responded: “No one. We just finished smoking. You can check me.” So they did, patting him down and finding a handgun in his waistband.

All the prosecutors could come up with in defending the traffic stop was that, thanks to the officers’ “knowledge of and experience in this particular part of Baltimore City, as well as their experience investigating drug activity,” and the fact that the “officers were personally aware of recent criminal activity that had occurred in the area” and “knew the area to be known for violent crime and drug activity,” they had “ample grounds to believe they were witnessing a potential drug transaction.”

In Bredar’s judicial estimation, that’s just not good enough. Had the Windstar been parked illegally, or its taillight been broken, or its windshield cracked, perhaps this case would still have legs, but a man approaching a car in a bad neighborhood, talking to its driver, and getting in does not justify a police response. And if the traffic stop is illegal, it doesn’t matter that Louden consented to a pat-down and had a gun.

With any luck, this story will have a happy ending. Louden’s been out on pre-trial supervised release, and according to a Baltimore Sun story by Justin George that ran in July, called “Transforming cars and lives,” he’s been getting job training as a car detailer at a nonprofit program for offenders called Vehicles for Change. When Louden got his certificate for completing the program, he was wearing a court-ordered ankle bracelet and tearfully told the audience, according to the article, “I want to thank Vehicles for Change, because we still be changing.” Perhaps, because in all likelihood Louden will now beat his federal charges, keeping his freedom will give him a better chance than prison to straighten out his life.

by Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Dec. 16, 2014

“Shut the fuck up!” Latoya Eaton yelled at her 11-year-old daughter. What the daughter had just said—”That’s not my mom’s money!”—is now in play in a $4,530 drug-money forfeiture case filed Dec. 9 in federal court in Maryland.

The case is part of the fallout from the arrests of nine men on Aug. 11, seven of them in the parking lot of Baltimore’s Mondawmin Mall. They’d gone there after a drug supplier—a man who, unbeknownst to them, had been arrested days earlier by the FBI with several kilograms of cocaine and heroin, and promptly turned informant—had called each of them to set up a series of government-controlled coke-and-dope deals. All nine have since been indicted and pleaded not guilty, with many filing motions challenging the constitutionality of the case.

The role of Eaton and her daughter was a sideshow of the big takedown. One of the nine defendants is Ronald Sampson, whom Eaton had driven to the mall. After Sampson was arrested, agents approached the Honda Accord he’d arrived in and saw Eaton “attempting to hide a large stack of U.S. currency under her leg,” the lawsuit states. The cops removed Eaton from the vehicle and found she’d been trying to hide $820, and that’s when Eaton’s daughter blurted out her fateful words. Ultimately, the search also turned up “a roll” of $1,550 “inside of Eaton’s open purse” and “a second roll” of $2,160 “in plain view, lying in the vehicle’s console under the radio.”

Eaton and her daughter were free to leave in the Accord after the money was seized, and in October Eaton filed a petition for its return, writing, “I didn’t have anything to do with the situation that took place I was just in my car and it was taken because I drive someone to mondawmin [sic] with my daughter not knowing anything of the circumstances,” according to the lawsuit.

Turns out, the lawsuit states, “over 700 calls between Ms. Eaton and Mr. Sampson” were made over jail phones after Samspon’s arrest, and they indicate the two “are involved in a personal relationship,” since Eaton refers to Sampson “as ‘baby’ in these calls.”

In one of the calls, made two days after the arrests when Sampson was at the Chesapeake Detention Facility in Baltimore, Sampson told Eaton what was stated in his charging papers—that he was going to buy a kilogram each of heroin and cocaine for $75,000 and $38,000, respectively—and added, “but I had ten-thousand five hundred (10,500) on me,” the lawsuit states.

Given that Sampson was arrested holding $6,000 and another $4,530 was taken from Eaton, totaling $10,540—almost exactly the amount Sampson said he’d brought to the deal—it’s looking like her daughter’s exclamation was spot on. No wonder Eaton wanted her to keep her trap shut.

by Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Dec. 2, 2014

All-State Career School, a trade school in Baltimore for would-be truckers, healthcare workers, and others seeking a route to gainful employment, is apparently under federal criminal investigation for possible violations of U.S. Department of Education (DOE) regulations meant to ensure the lawful disbursement of federal student aid. The school, which receives city funds to help pay students’ tuition, is also one of 27 schools that, according to DOE data released in October, is not complying with requirements that for-profit schools derive less than 90 percent of their revenue from federal student aid, out of almost 2,000 schools that fall under the regulations. 

The All-State probe first became public early this year, when two former All-State admissions representatives and a former testing administrator for the company were sentenced in Maryland federal court for a conspiracy to boost the school’s enrollment by engaging in a test-cheating scheme that enabled ineligible students to access federal student loans and grants. The cheating scandal involved changing the answers on pre-admissions tests taken by approximately 170 prospective All-State students, and about 72 of them ended up improperly receiving almost $575,000 in federal student aid, including Pell grants for non-degreed students in financial need. 

At the January sentencing hearing for former All-State admissions representative Jesse Raymond Moore, Sr., Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin Clarke told the judge that “we endeavor to investigate the school that Mr. Moore worked for, investigations continue,” according to a transcript of the hearing. Moore “is not the only one who has assisted the Government” in the All-State investigation, Clarke continued, “but the Government need[s] as many people as possible to get at an inside look on how the school was conducting itself within the Department of Education regs for Federal financial assistance for their students.” 

The Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to confirm whether the investigation remains ongoing, and the top leaders of the company that owns All-State, White Marsh-based Education Affiliates (EA)—chief executive Duncan Anderson and chief financial officer Stephen Budosh—did not respond to a detailed email asking for comment. Education Affiliates is one of the largest privately held companies in the Baltimore region, with revenue pulled in from seven schools it operates at about 50 campuses across the country, according to its website.

An attorney who currently represents EA in an unrelated civil lawsuit, Richard Hafets, said, “I seriously doubt that anyone at Education Affiliates or any of its related entities will want to comment,” when asked if he could pass City Paper’s inquiries on to his clients.  

The school is part of an industry providing for-profit education that has erupted in controversy in recent years, as Clarke noted at the sentencing hearings of the All-State defendants. Pointing to “a trend” in which schools, “especially trade schools,” do “not take the regs of the Department of Education seriously,” Clarke stated that “in those institutional cultures, a lot of things that are deemed criminal by Federal law are taking place.”

At the sentencing of another former All-State admissions representative, Barry Sugarman, U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Sullivan echoed Clarke’s sentiments. Calling Sugarman “a small cog in a large wheel,” Sullivan said that “when you engage in a conspiracy to misuse or abuse” the regulations, “all you are doing is lining the coffers of your own business” by engaging in “a conspiracy to defraud the Government” while “not caring about the people that are in your school in the first place.”

Moore, Sugarman, and a test administrator, Jacqualyn Sue Caldwell, who worked for All-State under contract with her employer, the testing-service company Wonderlic, pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to defraud a student financial aid program,” according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) press release about their case. “Students without high school diplomas who applied to for financial aid to attend” All-State “were required to pass” the Ability to Benefit (ATB) test to “demonstrate their aptitude to complete the educational program and work in the field,” Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein said in the release, but “by cheating, the defendants defeated the purpose of the tests and defrauded the government.”

The three defendants received light sentences. Moore was put on probation for four years and assessed a $2,000 fine, while Sugarman got two years probation and a $5,000 fine and Caldwell was imprisoned for one day of time already served, and three years of supervised release. Attorneys for Moore, Sugarman, and Caldwell did not respond to City Paper’s request for comment. 

Court documents show that the investigation included the use of “confidential sources” (CSs) and “undercover agents” who “applied for admission to All-State and intentionally failed the ATB test,” but the defendants would assure that the failing students would pass the ATB on their second attempt. Sugarman, for instance, “became aware through another Admission Representative” that Caldwell “could ensure that students who failed the ATB the first time would pass it the second time,” the court records state, because “she could manipulate the results to give them a passing score.”

In one instance, Sugarman informed a prospective student who, unbeknownst to him, was a CS, that he had “passed the second ATB test (even though the CS intentionally gave wrong answers to purposely [sic] fail the test),” the court records state. Referring to Caldwell, Sugarman told the CS that “she won’t do it the first time” because “she says, they gotta at least make an effort. She says I’ll work with them a second time.” The CS responded to the passing-grade news by saying, “Look, ask no questions, tell no lies.” 

Another episode included in the court files suggests that changing test answers wasn’t the only way that the admissions and financial-aid apparatus at All-State prompted fraudulent outcomes. Court records state that Sugarman, while advising undercover agents posing as applicants who had not filed tax returns in previous years, would tell them “to understate their income” on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) so that they could “qualify for the maximum amount of Pell grants and student loans.” 

One undercover agent in the All-State investigation was taken to the school’s financial-aid department by Sugarman, who “told the financial aid representative that he earned between $25,000 to $28,000 the previous year, but he was a ‘non-filer,’” the court records state. “The representative suggested that they put down $1,500 as earned income for that year” in the FAFSA, and “as a result of the undercover agent’s under-reported income, the DOE awarded him a Pell grant for $3,330, $4,000 in federal unsubsidized loans, and $2,333 in subsidized loans.”

“Trust me,” Sugarman told the undercover agent as he explained why and how he should under-report his income in the FAFSA. “I do this enough. You’re not doing anything wrong,” adding that “they’re not the fucking IRS up there.” 

 In November, the City of Baltimore’s Board of Estimates (BOE) approved $25,000 for the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development (MOED) to help pay All-State tuition for job-seeking clients. Mary Sloat, MOED’s assistant director for workforce operations, did not have data about the full extent of the city’s payments to All-State, but BOE records show $15,000 approved in November 2011, $18,000 in June 2012, and $20,000 in January 2013.

The All-State scandal shares traits with another federal prosecution, just announced in Florida against the owner and three admissions representatives of the now-shuttered Fast Train for-profit school. The four allegedly defrauded the government by “recruiting students who were not eligible for federal student aid and falsifying student aid applications in order to obtain federal Pell grants and Direct Loans,” according to the FBI press release about the indictment. The scale of the alleged Fast Train scheme was larger than what was proven so far at All-State, though, with about 1,300 fraudulent applications bringing about $6.5 million in federal student aid into Fast Train’s coffers.

The for-profit education industry draws about $30 billion per year in federal student-aid funding, and its poor public image has come as a result of critical government investigations in recent years, prompted by allegations that the schools aggressively market their programs, enticing enrollees into high levels of debt without adequately preparing them for the job market after graduation. 

The ongoing controversies have prompted federal reforms aimed at improving student outcomes. One, called the “90/10 rule,” requires almost 2,000 regulated for-profit schools to have at least 10 percent of their revenues from sources other than federal student aid. All-State and another EA school, Fortis College in Florida, were among 27 schools nationwide that are currently noncompliant, a status that puts their eligibility to participate in federal student-aid programs at risk. 

On Oct. 31, DOE announced a new set of “gainful employment” rules, after its previous reform effort was derailed by a federal judge’s ruling that it was too arbitrary. This time, schools will lose their eligibility to participate in federal student-aid programs if they cannot demonstrate that their typical graduates’ estimated annual loan payments are 20 percent or less of discretionary income or 8 percent of total income. 

The for-profit schools’ main trade group, the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, of which EA’s schools are members, immediately filed suit to stop the new gainful-employment rules, which are set to go into effect next summer.

U.S. Secretary of the Department of Education Arne Duncan, in a statement, deemed that new regulations are “a necessary step to ensure that colleges accepting federal funds protect students, cut costs, and improve outcomes. We will continue to take action as needed.”

by Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Sept. 23, 2014

Maryland criminal-defense attorney Kenneth Ravenell has been called the “MVP” of the Baltimore defense bar, a man whose arguments once convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a ruling that a murder defendant’s statements were inadmissible at trial. But a current federal case against one of his clients, accused drug-trafficker Richard Christopher Byrd, suggests Ravenell may have gone beyond helping Byrd fight the charges: He may have had some role in helping coordinate Byrd’s efforts to conduct counter-surveillance of law enforcers’ lengthy probe into his alleged nationwide drug-trafficking and money-laundering conspiracy.

The 16-page superseding indictment against Byrd and four others, filed in Maryland U.S. District Court in July, does not name Ravenell, and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But the indictment describes “a representative” paid by Byrd who “gathered information about law enforcement activities and inquiries” from co-conspirators, and then relayed the information to Byrd so “he could monitor” the investigation. It then states “the representative of Richard Byrd contacted law enforcement officials and sought details of the seizure of $85,000 in currency from the luggage of Najah Stewart” at Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) on September 1, 2009, when Stewart checked luggage onto a flight to Ontario, California, but didn’t board the plane. In the separate resulting forfeiture case, in which the government sought to keep the cash, one of the court’s rulings recites that same set of events on September 1, 2009 involving the $85,000 seizure and names Ravenell as an attorney for Stewart who called DEA agents to discuss the seizure.

On Sept. 11, according to the docket in Byrd’s case, an attorney-inquiry hearing was scheduled to be held before U.S. District judge Richard Bennett, who is presiding over the case, regarding Ravenell’s representation of Byrd. Such hearings can be called for any number of reasons, such as addressing potential conflicts in an attorney’s representation of a defendant or resolving a defendant’s complaints about an attorney’s efforts on his or her behalf. The docket, though, does not indicate whether the scheduled hearing took place, nor does it convey what may have resulted, if anything.

City Paper sent a detailed email to Ravenell, and followed up with phone calls, asking if the indictment’s language suggests the government believes he is the representative paid by Byrd to gather intelligence about the investigation, but he did not respond by press time. The Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment about any aspect of the case or the investigation, which has already resulted in convictions of members of Byrd’s family and alleged organization.

In court filings, Ravenell has portrayed Byrd as a towering behind-the-scenes figure in entertainment circles, a successful impresario whose brand-awareness campaigns on behalf of major companies, such as the makers of Courvoisier and Hennessy cognacs, for the past 15 years have involved holding huge events in major U.S. cities with celebrities—from hip-hop superstars Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and Jay Z to sports greats Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Michael Vick, and LeBron James—hosting or making appearances. This has been “profitable for Mr. Byrd,” Ravenell wrote, making the 41-year-old Byrd rich enough to send his kids to Garrison Forest School in Baltimore County and Valley Forge Military Academy outside Philadelphia. 

The U.S. government, though, describes Byrd as a major, nationwide narcotics trafficker. After Ravenell represented him in an early 1990s armed drug-dealing case in Baltimore that resulted in a five-year prison sentence, Byrd, the government contends, emerged as the leader of a sophisticated outfit that has distributed at least 200 kilograms of cocaine and up to 20 tons of marijuana—a sprawling drug enterprise that is the true source of Byrd’s wealth. The prosecutor, assistant U.S. attorney James Warwick, has stated in court filings that Byrd “was born in Jamaica” and “entered the United States as a teenager,” adding that he “has substantial ties to Jamaica” and “is believed to have moved financial assets to that country through third parties.” 

These competing versions of the truth about Byrd are vying to prevail in the case. Also indicted are Byrd’s brother, Rasan Byrd; attorney James S. Bowie II and Kimberly Reid of Houston, who are accused of helping launder money; and Richard Drummond of Maryland, who allegedly helped manage and transport large sums of cash. An earlier co-defendant, Maurice Jones, has pleaded guilty and on Sept. 16 Bennett sentenced him to seven years in prison.

Other than the defendants’ liberty, at stake are some high-profile assets, since the indictment claims the government, in its effort to collect $20 million in ill-gotten gains it ascribes to the conspiracy, is entitled to real estate in Baltimore and Fort Lauderdale, vehicles, seized cash, and two large celebrity-drawing nightclubs: The Griffin, in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, and the Gold Room, in Atlanta’s uptown Buckhead district. 

Two other companies targeted for forfeiture also are a testament to Byrd’s entertainment ties: Fever Beverage, a Pennsylvania-based company that makes libido-enhancing drinks headed by Delmond Newton of the streaming-video subscription service UrbanClout and creator of the “Strip Club Queens” reality show; and D.C.-based LOC Marketing, which has worked with Byrd’s celebrity events and is headed by Lamont “Monte” Wanzer, rapper Biz Markie’s manager.

An attorney representing The Griffin, Joan Toro, had “no comment” in response to City Paper’s inquiries, and attempts to obtain comments from Newton and Wanzer were fruitless as of press time. Jonathan Clay, a former owner of the Gold Room who City Paper reached by phone, said, “that’s bizarre,” adding that Byrd’s name “doesn’t ring a bell.”

The probe began in 2009 under the auspices of Arizona law enforcers, about two months after the cash in Stewart’s luggage was seized at BWI, and in 2011 the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Arizona Financial Crimes Taskforce, and Homeland Security Investigations of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement joined the effort. 

Since then, several members of Byrd’s family and alleged organization have already been convicted in Maryland federal court, including: his mother, Yvonne Castle Taylor, in connection with her attempt to surreptitiously carry more than $100,000 in cash onto a flight to Jamaica, a bulk-cash courier role she admitted to having played before; his half-brothers Harold Alexander Byrd and Josef Ibreham Byrd, for drug trafficking; his Jamaican lieutenant in charge of Baltimore operations, Jerome Adolfo Castle; and Thurston Lindsey, also for drug trafficking. Ravenell initially represented Castle, when he was indicted for illegal re-entry of a deported alien, but withdrew shortly before Castle’s indictment on drug-conspiracy charges. 

In addition, the government successfully sued to keep $40,222.25 seized from the Owings Mills residence of Byrd’s sister, Andrea Shelly Ann King-Chang, who’s alleged to have had bank accounts used to funnel money to Byrd in Arizona. Byrd was present in King-Chang’s residence when the money was seized during a raid. 

Other than the glitzy assets and large sums of cash targeted for forfeiture, the case is colored with intrigue, including the allegation that Byrd hired a private investigator who “conducted surveillance outside the residence” of an Arizona law enforcer who was working the case in 2012. During the course of the investigation, Rasan Byrd and Lindsey allegedly confronted law enforcers working the case. 

Until Richard Byrd’s arrest earlier this year as a result of the Maryland indictment, he’d been on pre-trial release on Arizona charges since February 2011. Since then, and before, his brand-awareness campaigns have been prolific, according to Ravenell’s filings, which describe events where thousands of people pay to attend, generating tremendous cash flows. Two such events in 2012, for instance, generated $448,500 in currency that was securely carted away by Dunbar Armored. His business is conducted through two companies, Deandre Byrd Entertainment and LOC Marketing, Ravenell explained, though he also operates under the banners of 10 Fingers Entertainment and Von-a-Don, the name of a Baltimore clothing store where Byrd used to work before he “organized, coordinated, and promoted social events from 2003 to 2007 at Vision, the most popular nightclub in Houston.” 

by Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Aug. 29, 2014

The FBI had a busy day in Baltimore on Aug. 11, thanks to an informant’s flurry of phone calls setting up drug deals that resulted in federal charges against nine men. The informant, dubbed “CW1” in court documents, had been arrested with “several kilograms of both heroin and cocaine,” and proceeded to set up sales of the drugs to his customers so the FBI could arrest them.

Seven were arrested over a four-hour period that afternoon, when they arrived in succession at the Mondawmin Mall parking lot, allegedly prepared to purchase kilograms of cocaine and heroin from CW1, who had supplied them in the past. Two, from Washington, D.C., were arrested that night at the Haddon Hill Apartments in Northwest Baltimore, where one allegedly worked as a maintenance man; agents seized $216,140 in cash from a maintenance-closet cabinet there. In one case, a defendant allegedly expected a setup at the mall parking lot, thanks to an earlier call from his probation agent, who asked him if he’d been arrested by the FBI, and so he came to the deal without any money.

All nine were indicted Aug. 22 by a federal grand jury, which charged them in a cocaine-and-heroin conspiracy. Many appear to have prior federal convictions. The court documents portray a hectic schedule of wheeling and dealing as the informant and the men prepared for major drug transactions that lured the alleged dealers into the hands of waiting law enforcers.

First arrested were Dominic William “Nick” Parker of Gwynn Oak and Jermaine “Main” Cannady of Eutaw Place in Baltimore, after their 1:05 p.m. arrival at the mall’s parking lot. Earlier, at 9:27 a.m., CW1 called Cannady, who was convicted of assault in the 2000s after throwing scalding-hot baby oil on a fellow inmate who he also beat with a broom handle while he was serving time for a 1999 drug-conspiracy conviction, and told him to “call Nick” and “wake his ass up” because “I don’t want fat boy and any other them motherfuckers, just Yo” to come to the drug deal. Later, just after noon, Parker got on the phone with CW1 and said he had some errands to do first, but CW1 told him to come do the deal first—which he and Cannady did, and were promptly arrested.

Next up, after their 1:41 p.m. arrival at the mall parking lot in a white pickup truck, were Tavon Alexander Louis “Tay” Hopkins and Cornell Dion “Nelly” Brown Jr., both of Northeast Baltimore. Described as “multi-kilogram dealers” who CW1 “supplied with cocaine,” the court documents indicate that CW1 initially tried to get them to come do the deal with Cannady and Parker, with whom Brown was previously convicted on armed bank-robbery charges. A half-hour before their arrival, Brown told CW1 that “I’ma come get four” kilograms, and then, later, “I’ma come back [and] get ten.” After their arrests, agents found $157,000 in cash in the truck, enough to purchase four kilograms. Hopkins told agents he “knew it was a set up” because “CW1’s vehicle was far from other vehicles, like the police set it up,” and that “he told Brown that he needed to drive away.”

At 3:01 p.m., Donte Eugene Taylor of McElderry Park arrived at the mall parking lot, having enthusiastically received CW1’s news, delivered over the phone at 9:41 a.m., that kilos of cocaine and heroin were available. “You ready to see me?” CW1 had asked, to which Taylor responded, “Yeah!” The deal was for one kilogram of each drug, and CW1 told Taylor he didn’t need to bring all the money, just enough “so I have something.” At 1:49 p.m., Taylor told CW1 that “I’m just waiting on my little homie to get me” some money. When Taylor was arrested, he had $2,504.

Guy Bordes Agnant Jr. was the next arrestee to arrive at the mall parking lot, at 4:05 p.m. The Laurel resident has a prior conviction for involuntary manslaughter in a highly publicized case in D.C. after a car crash, in which he was driving a vehicle at 90 mph, resulted in a man’s death. Agnant was skeptical of CW1’s proposed deal, since in his prior purchases from CW1—which court documents say involved a total of about 25 kilos of coke—had occurred in Columbia, Maryland. Nonetheless, Agnant was intrigued, texting CW1 a question—”How far can you go?”—to which CW1 replied, “As far as you want to go,” meaning as much coke as he wanted. The agreed-upon amount ended up being 15 kilos, with Agnant bringing half the money up-front. But when Agnant arrived, he was empty-handed, and CW1 explained that “Agnant was very nervous as he had been set up before” and “was nervous about the change in their normal dealings.”

After his arrest, Agnant told officers “that he knew something was up today because his probation officer called him and asked if he had been arrested by the FBI.” FBI special agent Eric Nye contacted the probation officer, “who confirmed she had called Agnant” and asked “if he had been arrested by the FBI.” Agnant also told officers he didn’t understand why he was being arrested, since “I didn’t have any money on me, I just came to look at it.”

About 25 minutes later, Ronald Timothy “Little Ronald” Sampson of Windsor Mills arrived at the mall parking lot and was arrested. Earlier in the day, he’d told CW1 he wanted to buy a kilogram each of heroin and coke, saying, “I need to see you bad.” CW1 responded by saying, “I got you, I got you . . . on both,” adding that it would cost $75,000 for the heroin and for the cocaine, “I’ma say about 38, since it’s a drought.” At 3:40 p.m., Sampson told CW1 that “I gotta put the word out as we speak”—meaning he would be alerting his customers that he’s about to be flush with drugs—and added that “I got some cash for when I see you.” He was arrested with $10,500.

The last two busted due to CW1’s efforts were D.C. residents Antoine Demarr “Vito” Washington and Vincent Ronald “Cuzo” Cooper, who both appear to have prior federal drug convictions. CW1 “has sold over 40 kilograms of cocaine” to them in the past, the court documents state. In the Aug. 11 deal, Cooper allegedly agreed to buy seven kilos of coke, but only had enough money to buy six kilos. At 8:45 p.m., the two men arrived at  the Haddon Hill Apartments, where Cooper allegedly “was a maintenance man” who had “access to vacant apartments there to safely exchange the cash for the cocaine.” Washington was detained first, then Cooper was found “coming up from the vicinity of a basement storage door,” and, after agents detained him, they found a key to the maintenance closet, where they found “a large cabinet on the floor” in which was found “a brown paper bag containing” $216,140. Another $7,000 was recovered from Washington’s car.

Thus, thanks to CW1’s well-placed phone calls, law enforcers arrested nine alleged kilo-level drug dealers, some with serious criminal pasts, and seized about a half-million dollars in cash­. That’s an impressive haul for a day’s work.

by Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Aug. 28, 2014

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Bennett on Aug. 26 ruled that the federal government has no right to keep $106,467 in cash that a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge previously ruled had been seized illegally from a drug suspect by Baltimore police. Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesperson Marcia Murphy, in an emailed response to a request for comment, said, “we expect to file a motion for reconsideration.”

The Baltimore City criminal case against the drug suspect, 37-year-old Adolfo-Gitchenos Aduso Lucas of Northeast Baltimore, fell apart last year when his criminal-defense lawyer, Lawrence Rosenberg, persuaded Circuit Court judge Barry Williams that a traffic stop of Lucas and subsequent search of Lucas’ home violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits illegal searches and seizures. As a result, the evidence against Lucas—not only the cash, but also 105 grams of crack cocaine, cutting agents, drug paraphernalia and packaging materials, and a loaded handgun—was suppressed. With no admissible evidence to prove Lucas’ guilt, prosecutors had to abandon the charges against him.

Rosenberg explains in an interview that Baltimore police “stopped the car without probable cause,” and “after they made the arrest, they somehow got a search warrant for Lucas’ house, but there were things in the warrant that were not true. In my opinion, there were credibility issues, and that’s why we won, and the case was dropped.”

After the criminal case against Lucas came to a halt—as did, according to online court records, state-level forfeiture cases seeking to keep three of Lucas’ vehicles—state prosecutors “took no steps to forfeit the seized currency,” Bennett’s ruling explains, but instead “forwarded the currency to the Drug Enforcement Administration.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Stefan Cassella filed a forfeiture case against the cash last August, asserting the U.S. government’s right to keep it as criminally derived assets—a move that, in essence, sought to bring the suppressed evidence against Lucas back to life in civil rather than criminal court.  

Cassella’s initial forfeiture filing made no mention of Williams’ ruling that the cash had been seized illegally. But Lucas’ civil attorney, Brian Murphy, raised the issue in a motion for summary judgment filed in February, arguing that the federal government has no right to relitigate the issue. Cassella countered that since the federal government was not a party to the prior proceedings before Williams, it should be allowed to pursue forfeiture of the cash as criminally derived assets.

Bennett sided with Murphy, ruling that “the United States is in privity with the State of Maryland on this issue,” meaning it is asserting “precisely the same legal right in respect to the subject matter involved.” Therefore, he ruled, “no genuine dispute remains that the evidence in this case was unlawfully seized,” so “the illegally seized currency must be excluded from this forfeiture proceeding” and “this Court will grant summary judgment as a matter of law in favor of [Lucas] as to ownership of the currency.”

“We tried to settle the case,” Rosenberg says, “but Cassella would have none of it.” Murphy adds that Cassella “is a good lawyer,” but “you’ve got to pick your cases wisely,” and says “the government can always file an appeal, but I hope they don’t. I think they would be picking the wrong case to appeal.”

Lucas, meanwhile, said in court documents that the money was obtained legally. The $4,500 “found in my vehicle upon my arrest was the proceeds of the sale of a 2000 Volkswagen Jetta” that he had “sold to a co-worker,” who “had paid me . . . shortly before I was arrested.” The money “found in the safe in my house,” meanwhile, “was essentially working capital for and profits from my side occupations—the buying and selling of cars and the buying and selling of properties that I renovate.” Lucas, who explained that he works as “a quality control inspector at Elite Spice in Jessup,” where he has worked “for many years,” stated that “the original source of much of the working capital for these side occupations was the proceeds of the sale of a house that I and a partner bought, renovated, and resold in 2007 for a profit of approximately $126,000.”

Once Lucas gets his cash back, courtesy of Bennett’s ruling, his working capital will be replenished—partially anyhow, given the expense of fighting the government in court. Despite the financial hit, though, he can rest on the laurels of having beaten prosecutors in two courts—and perhaps having sent a message to Baltimore police to keep their cases clean and credible.

by Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Aug. 12, 2014

Baltimore media erupted with coverage of a police-involved shooting in West Baltimore on April 22, 2013 that left one man dead and two injured. The two men who survived the cops’ barrage of bullets—23-year-olds Guy Jackson and Rickey Dixon—are charged in an attempted-murder conspiracy involving firearms and a stolen vehicle, and are scheduled to go to trial in September. But Jackson has already won a victory of sorts: He had sued the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) and several officers over the incident and subsequent events, and a federal judge recently ruled against BPD, saying some of Jackson’s claims can move forward.  

While senior U.S. District judge William Nickerson dismissed counts arising from the police shooting Jackson, he allowed claims involving a homicide detective’s allegedly unconstitutional seizure of Jackson from Maryland Shock Trauma, where he was recovering from multiple bullet wounds. The detective, Julian Min, allegedly told Shock Trauma doctors that he was taking Jackson to the Baltimore City Jail’s medical facility—despite their advice not to do so—but instead took the patient to police headquarters to interrogate him, and then put him out on the streets. Jackson, with a bullet hole in his face and a feeding tube protruding from stomach, was wearing a hospital gown, and family members eventually returned him to medical care. 

Although Jackson’s “claim is perhaps an unusual factual scenario,” Nickerson wrote in his ruling, “there is no question that Plaintiff was seized,” and Jackson “adequately pleaded that the seizure was unreasonable under the circumstances, particularly considering the alleged deception used by Detective Min and the medical concerns of Plaintiff’s doctors at Shock Trauma.”

On Aug. 6, Nickerson ordered that Jackson’s claims against Min be litigated first and separately from those against the BPD, which Jackson seeks to hold liable as Min’s supervisor. The surviving counts seek $1 million from Min and the BPD.

Michael Marshall and Chaz Romero Ball, who represent Min, and Dorrell Brooks, who represents the BPD, did not respond to City Paper’s effort to reach them for comment, but Jackson’s civil attorney, Joshua Insley, spoke openly about the matter.

“What they did,” Insley says, “is patently illegal. Under false pretenses they deprived Jackson of medical care and interrogated him because they wanted information about a third party, under color of legal authority. I use the word ‘torture’ to describe what was done because, we think, this meets the United Nations’ and the federal government’s definition of torture.”  

The circumstances leading up to Jackson’s treatment at Shock Trauma are described in the lawsuit and reiterated in Nickerson’s ruling. Jackson claims that he was on Winchester Street in West Baltimore when he was approached by two men, Larry Hooker and Rickey Dixon, who “brandished handguns” and ordered him to get into a car with them and “drive the vehicle” to North Dukeland Street and Edmondson Avenue, according to the ruling. Once there, Hooker and Dixon ordered Jackson to stay in the car “while they exited and confronted two unknown individuals outside,” and “shots were fired.” Then, as Hooker and Dixon started to get back in the car, BPD officers Lester Manuyag and Alejandro Pena arrived and “began discharging their weapons” into the car, striking Jackson “in the arms, body, and head.” The police shooting also resulted in injuries to Dixon and the death of Hooker, according to media accounts of the incident.

Insley says Jackson “is not a gangster, he’s just a regular kid from the ghetto” who was “walking through an alley, when he’s accosted by two men who he knows by reputation—they are gangsters—in a stolen car, and they pull out guns and order him to drive.” After the shooting and before Min’s hospital visit, law enforcers “realized that Mr. Jackson was pressed into service,” Insley asserts, and so they wanted to talk to him. But Jacksons’ “mouth is wired shut,” Insley continues, so the interrogation involved Jackson having to write down his responses to questions, and the police “humiliated him, they were laughing at him.” Prosecutors, Insley says, told him they are “not going to use those statements” obtained from the interrogation, and “they didn’t want to nail Guy Jackson,” but instead “are trying to get him to be a witness” against Dixon.

Jackson’s criminal attorney, Granville Templeton, says his client “is still incarcerated and charged with a crime that I think the state’s attorney knows he did not commit. They know he didn’t shoot anybody. And there are no victims—there are ‘John Doe’ victims in this case, who have not come forth.” He adds that Jackson, when he was shot by the officers, “thought he was going to die, and now he’s charged. It’s just a terrible situation. I want the charges dropped, and if not, we’re going to get a not-guilty [verdict] before a jury.”

Min has not been disciplined as a result of his alleged handling of Jackson, says Insley, and online court records show that Min continues to be involved in the prosecution of numerous ongoing criminal cases, including murder charges. This prompts Insley to emphasize the BPD’s culpability in Min’s alleged misconduct: “They know what he does and they condone what he does,” he says, “because actions speak louder than words. This is at least the second time Min’s gone rogue on them, and they allow it.” The first time—a young man was detained for seven months on false attempted-murder charges, partly based on Min’s word—resulted in a lawsuit that the city settled for $150,000 about a month before Min’s alleged dealings with Jackson, according to an article in the Baltimore Brew about the city approving funds for paying out the settlement.

Nickerson set a schedule for litigating the case against Min, with pretrial motions due by Jan. 20, without setting a trial date.