Walter Ingram pleads guilty while crying foul in federal heroin case in Baltimore

By Van Smith

Published by City Paper, June 4, 2014

In 2010, when Walter Louis Ingram was 59 years old, he was charged in a Baltimore-based heroin conspiracy, three years after his release from federal prison for a 1992 cocaine-conspiracy conviction. Since the new charges were filed, the Baltimore gangster – famous in the 1980s and early 1990s for beating murder raps and other serious charges here and in New York City – has been fighting them from his jail cell.

His efforts, which have spanned more than three years and as many defense attorneys, came to an end Oct. 2, when he pleaded guilty before U.S. District judge J. Frederick Motz and received a six-year prison sentence – less than expected in CP‘s prior coverage of the case.

Given the long time it’s taken the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office to convince Ingram to admit his guilt, it’s worth noting that Ingram’s plea agreement gives him credit for “apparent prompt recognition and affirmative acceptance of personal responsibility for his criminal conduct,” the document states, and for his “timely notification of his intention to plead guilty.”

Three years is a long time for the feds to put a case to bed, and Ingram’s posture during the lengthy proceedings has been, to put it kindly, intransigent. Given this background, the agreement’s liberal use of the terms “prompt recognition” and “timely notification” seem almost sarcastic. The plea agreement also includes a waiver of appeal rights for both Ingram and the government should the sentence actually imposed be 72 months – which is precisely what Motz gave him.

Even in pleading guilty, though, Ingram sounds like a fighter. City Paper today received a jail letter from him, which states that “after careful thought and consideration, I accepted the government’s recent plea offer very reluctantly,” noting that, in his view, the case against him “had begun to reveal a [U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration] cover-up of illegal cell phone tracking and a systematic disregard for the Federal Rules of [Criminal] Procedure, Rule 41,” which dictates conduct involving searches and seizures.

Ingram writes that, based on “the very limited disclosure of discovery material in my case,” he believes that electronic-surveillance orders used in his and other federal probes in Maryland have been unlawfully obtained from state judges, rather than federal judges, based on applications by federal agents “not acting with and under the direction of a state law-enforcement officer” – a no-no, he asserts, under his reading of Maryland and federal laws.

“This erroneous practice,” Ingram continues, “has been systematically perpetuated for several years under seal” – meaning, sealed from public view under judges’ orders – and “there are many other cases involving the same illegally used procedure.” He adds that “this type of conduct undermines the integrity of the federal judicial process” because “federal agents are using illegally obtained information for federal prosecutions and covering up how the information was obtained.”

The pattern of such alleged abuse, Ingram claims, continues in the case of Richard Anthony “Richie Rich” Wilford, who was a co-defendant of Ingram’s in the 1992 conspiracy case and is also currently being prosecuted in a federal drug conspiracy – though Wilford’s case so far remains unresolved.

When Ingram gets out of prison this time, he’ll be pushing 70 – maybe a good age to retire from the streets and instead go to work for a criminal-defense firm. After all, his storied past – including his legendary association with Kenneth Antonio Jackson, the politically connected strip-club owner, longshoreman, and filmmaker who was Ingram’s co-defendant in a famous 1991 New York murder acquittal orchestrated by super-lawyer Robert Simels, who’s currently serving a 14-year prison sentence for witness intimidation – is now ancient history.

In the Wrong Hands: “Serious, disturbing problem” complicates federal heroin case

By Van Smith

Published by City Paper, Mar. 2, 2011

An inmate awaiting trial in a federal heroin case has improperly obtained copies of portions of the evidence in the case, a prosecutor’s letter contends, and the inmate has been using the documents to convince co-defendants to change their minds and not plead guilty, as they’d intended.

The breach in the case’s discovery agreement—under which the government shares evidence with defense attorneys in preparation for trial, with the caveat that the defendants themselves do not obtain copies—calls to mind a similar situation that law enforcers say ended with the 2009 murder of a federal witness in Westport, Kareem Kelly Guest (“Snitched Out,” Mobtown Beat, June 9, 2010).

The letter, written Feb. 11 to U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Sippel, regards a heroin-conspiracy case indicted last June against nine co-defendants, including legendary Baltimore gangster Walter Louis Ingram (“Old Folks’ Boogie,” Mobtown Beat, July 22, 2010). Sippel does not name the defendant who obtained the evidence, but asks Motz to postpone the scheduled April trial in the case “so that the situation . . . can be resolved.” Sippel wrote:

A serious, disturbing problem has developed that has caused a delay in the plea negotiation process. In late January, undersigned counsel learned that one of the defendants was provided portions of the discovery materials and is/was maintaining the hard copy in his jail cell. Based on our investigation, we have learned that the defendant in possession of the discovery materials has reviewed the materials with other defendants and has convinced many defendants to change their minds about pleading guilty. Many of the defense lawyers who discussed plea options with their respective clients and believed their respective clients were going to enter into a plea agreement now report that their respective clients are no longer interested in pleading guilty.

Defense attorneys in the case express differing views on the nature of the problem. “There was no actual discovery found” in the defendant’s possession, Ingram’s attorney, Benjamin Sutley, said, adding that it appears the inmate “was blowing smoke other defendants’ way.” But Edward Smith, who represents defendant Curtis Connor, said, “Whoever it is, has it,” regarding the discovery material—while hastening to add that it can’t be his client, who is on supervised release pending trial.

Marcia Murphy, spokesperson for the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office, said in a Feb. 25 e-mail that “we are investigating” the breach and that, other than what’s stated in Sippel’s letter, “We have no other comment.” She did not respond to a request for information about whether there had been suspected discovery breaches in any other recent cases.

The repercussions of the prior discovery violation that allegedly resulted in Guest’s 2009 killing are still being felt. In December, Antonio “Mack” Hall was indicted for murdering Guest (The News Hole, Dec. 3, 2010); his six-week death-penalty trial is scheduled to start in March 2012. Meanwhile, a woman accused last year of obstructing justice and lying to a federal grand jury about Guest’s murder, Raine Zircon Curtis (“Street Rules,” Mobtown Beat, July 14, 2010), remains detained pending a trial that has yet to be rescheduled after its initially scheduled start date in November 2010 came and went.

Old and In the Game: “Wire”-inspiring gangsters face new prison time

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Dec. 19, 2012

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When they went to prison in separate early 1990s drug cases in Baltimore, Savino Braxton and Walter Lee “Stinkum” Powell had been convicted as bit players in larger schemes. Such was the case, too, when their identities were used—though not their real stories—to create characters in HBO’s The Wire: Savino Bratton (pictured, from Season 5) and Anton “Stinkum” Artis, two of the five prominent enforcers in Avon Barksdale’s crew.

Today, 55-year-old Braxton and 60-year-old Powell are again in drug trouble, and their federal cases reveal how the gangster lifestyle can keep an obdurate hold on those whose only game in life has been “the game”—and they underscore the serial prison terms that lifestyle can exact on players.

But first, an acknowledgement about the use of real people’s names from Wire co-creator David Simon: “We mangled up real Baltimore surnames and real Baltimore given names and real Baltimore street names” to create Wire characters, he says in an email.

“Why?” Simon continues. “To give reality a chance to exist on its own, while at the same time creating a collective sense of the real Baltimore that we were depicting. Having all the correct surnames and street names floating about—but in the wrong order, and clearly disconnected from the correct narrative street history of Baltimore—tethered us loosely to the real, but at the same time allowed the actual survivors of that history some fair and legitimate distance.”

“We also,” Simon adds, “thought it would make people who knew the game from either side—street or stationhouse—smile a bit. An inside joke for those with ears to listen.”

Thus, “Savino Bratton,” the Wire character, has a story that does not jibe with that of real-life Savino Braxton. Simon, as a Baltimore Sun reporter covering the 1990 heroin conspiracy of Linwood Rudolph “Rudi” Williams, described Braxton as “a sizable westside dealer in his own right who sold narcotics to the Williams group.” Bratton, meanwhile, is an enforcer for Avon Barksdale’s crew who drives snitching strip-club frontman Wendell “Orlando” Blocker and undercover detective Shakima “Kima” Greggs to a shooting ambush that leaves Orlando dead and Greggs critically wounded.

The Wire’s “Stinkum,” also a key Barksdale enforcer, ends up as gangster-robbing Omar Little’s second revenge victim. His role in the narrative seems much larger than that of real-life Walter Lee Powell, who served as an errand-runner and bill-collector for his real-life bosses, Baltimore drug dealers Walter Louis Ingram and Patricia Carmichael.

Braxton’s initial undoing began in 1990, when phone-tapping cops heard him say “I got to see you” over the phone to Rudi Williams, then one of Baltimore’s biggest law-enforcement targets in the narcotics trade. They proceeded to build sufficient evidence to raid Braxton’s home, where they found a little over 27 grams of heroin and other drug-dealing evidence.

Three years after Braxton’s 2006 release from prison, he was on law-enforcers’ radar again, thanks to a cooperator’s tip, and a raid on his Frankford apartment turned up 35 grams of heroin in his car; and in his apartment, another kilogram, more than $4,000 cash, and a variety of drug-dealing appurtenances, prompting new charges (“The Wire Meets Baltimore Reality, Redux,” Mobtown Beat, Sept. 10, 2009).

Braxton is fighting the charges—though he took a break from doing so in early 2010, when he left the Volunteers of America facility on East Monument Street, where he’d been ordered to reside on a pre-trial release, to go to a medical appointment, and failed to return. For more than two years he was a fugitive, a status that ended ignobly on Aug. 17, at BWI Airport, when he tried to board a flight with a fake driver’s license and was caught.

Since then, Braxton has filed with the court a series of legal motions, handwritten in floral script, including one asking that his appointed attorney, Archangelo Tuminelli, be replaced—a request that was denied during a Dec. 12 motions hearing before U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett, who cleared the courtroom to resolve the attorney-client dispute. The case, which is scheduled for trial in February, is being prosecuted by assistant U.S. attorney John Purcell, who is seeking an enhanced penalty of a mandatory minimum prison term of 20 years based on Braxton’s prior federal conviction, though Bennett signaled during last week’s hearing that Purcell may want to back off that hard-edged stance.

Braxton told Bennet during the hearing that he’s anxious to obtain video evidence from a Kentucky Fried Chicken video camera near the location of his arrest that would show officers lied in sworn documents presented as evidence against him. Bennett reminded Braxton, though, that “you prejudiced yourself by absconding” for more than two years and that “the cameras may or may not be there” anymore.

Unlike Braxton’s case, the current one against “Stinkum” Powell is already over; Powell pleaded guilty and on Nov. 30 received a 121-month sentence. Its details, which overlap with other FBI heroin cases populated by the likes of big-name federal defendants such as Steven Blackwell, Christian Gettis, and Roy Lee Clay Jr., stretch from Baltimore to Philadelphia, New York, Miami, and Africa. Powell ran some of his illicit business out of Quantico Carwash on Reisterstown Road, according to court documents, and some of his dealings were intercepted over a phone issued by his employer, the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, a nonprofit based in Windsor Mill.

Meanwhile, one of Powell’s former bosses from back in the day—Walter Louis Ingram, now 61, whose earlier criminal career Simon wrote about extensively for The Sun—is also facing federal charges filed in 2010 (“Old Folks’ Boogie,” Mobtown Beat, July 22, 2010). He’s accused in a heroin conspiracy involving eight others, and all but Ingram and one other defendant have pleaded guilty—despite jailhouse attempts to dissuade them from doing so by using improperly obtained evidence in the case (“In the Wrong Hands,” Mobtown Beat, March 2, 2011). The lead conspirator, Kevin Hently, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, so Ingram, if convicted, can expect the same or more, given his long list of priors.

The Wire Meets Baltimore Reality, Redux

By Van Smith

Published by City Paper, Sept. 10, 2009

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Fans of The Wire know Savino Bratton as the character played by Christopher Clanton, the Baltimore actor who was stabbed last year at an Overlea party. Clanton’s character in Season One was a dreadlocked soldier in the Barksdale organization who helped set up the shooting of Detective Kima Greggs and stripclub manager Orlando Blocker. In Season Five, after doing time in prison, Savino Bratton (pictured) returns as a soldier for the Stanfield organization.

But what fans of The Wire might not know is that Savino Braxton—whose name is one letter removed from that of The Wire character—is a real-life Baltimore heroin dealer. In 1990, Savino Braxton was convicted as part of a massive heroin conspiracy headed by Linwood Rudolph Williams, and earned his release in 2008. His freedom was recently cut short, though, when on Sept. 2 he was arrested again on new federal heroin charges.

The Wire producer David Simon, asked in an e-mail whether the fictional Savino Bratton’s name is based on the real-life Savino Braxton, says only this: “The Wire is a fictional story. I have no comment otherwise.”

So what was Braxton up to on Sept. 2 that landed him with new federal charges? According to the complaint [see below], agents got a search warrant for Braxton’s apartment at 5312 Goodnow Road in Frankford. While preparing for the raid, they watched Braxton leave his residence, get in a purple Honda Accord, and drive off. They arrested him a short time later and found 35 grams of heroin in the car’s center console. The agents then returned to Braxton’s apartment to find another kilogram of heroin, a variety of drug-dealing paraphernalia (cutting agents, gel caps, a scale, etc.), and lots of cash “bundled in thousand dollar stacks.”

Old Folks’ Boogie: Veteran Baltimore gangster Walter Ingram is in trouble again

By Van Smith

Published by City Paper, July 22, 2010

Back in 1991, when he was 39 years old, Walter Louis Ingram got away with murder, and it wasn’t the first time.

Along with co-defendant Kenneth Antonio Jackson, a politically connected Baltimore strip-club owner with his own dark past in the drug game, Ingram was acquitted of murder charges by a New York jury. The case against them—they were accused of the 1984 killing of cocaine wholesaler Felix Gonzalez—was defended by legendary attorney Robert Simels, who arranged for the victim’s family to testify against the government.

The 1991 acquittal was a stunning victory for Ingram—though not uncommon in his then-20-year history of court battles. By that time, according to media accounts, Ingram had already flouted prosecutors’ attempts to convict him for three murders, two attempted murders, two drug conspiracies, two armed robberies, and two cases of assaulting police. But not long after the New York case, prosecutors finally succeeding in nailing Ingram: In December 1992, he received a 210-month sentence in federal court for his part in a major cocaine conspiracy. He was released, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, on July 10, 2007.

(Earlier this year, Simels was sentenced to 14 years in prison for witness intimidation; he still owns a downtown Baltimore condo with Jackson’s mother, Rosalie Jackson. Kenneth Jackson, meanwhile, not only still runs the Eldorado Lounge on East Lombard Street, but also is a film producer and director, putting out a series of docu-dramas that purportedly give the real facts behind stories told in HBO’s The Wire.)

Though getting up in years, Ingram apparently still has game. Yesterday, yet another federal indictment was unsealed against Ingram, along with eight other defendants, accusing them of conspiring to deal heroin since 2009. Ingram is now 59, and his co-defendants aren’t much younger. The indictment is skeletal—it merely says they are accused of dealing at least a kilogram of heroin since 2009—so it remains to be seen, as the case against them progresses, what exactly Ingram and his cohorts are accused of doing.

New York Boys: A Queens Gangster and His Attorney Visit Baltimore

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, June 4, 2003

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Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff, notorious for his ruthless endeavors in the 1980s as leader of a $10-million-a-year drug organization that fueled a crack epidemic in public-housing high rises in Jamaica, Queens, came to Baltimore federal court June 2 for sentencing on firearms charges. McGriff, an ex-con, was arrested in Miami on Dec. 28 for possessing firearms, in violation of federal law, during repeated visits to a Glen Burnie shooting range.

McGriff (pictured, from Wikipedia) is a movie producer now, with a new straight-to-DVD gangster movie out, Crime Partners, based on a Donald Goines novel and featuring Hollywood stars Snoop Dogg and Ice-T. And he was recently revealed as the behind-the-scenes money and muscle of Grammy Award-winning hip-hop record label Murder Inc.

U.S. District Court Judge Frederick Motz, who is presiding over McGriff’s Baltimore gun case, has seen his share of high-profile defendants over the decades, but a Big Apple movie-and-music mogul in a Baltimore courtroom is a very rare bird.

Watching McGriff’s back in court was Manhattan lawyer Robert Simels, a veteran of nearly a quarter-century of famed defendants–from Italian mobsters and drug lords from the ‘hood, to international bankers and Russian gasoline bootleggers. Among his clients have been a few well-known Baltimoreans with New York connections. Kenneth Antonio “Bird” Jackson, the politically connected former lieutenant of Melvin “Little Melvin” Williams‘ heroin hierarchy of the 1980s, has used Simels to fight everything from tax-evasion charges to city liquor-board infractions. Simels represented William “Little Will” Franklin–a drug trafficker who in 1987 was indicted with Phillip A. “Phil Boy” Murray, owner of O’Dell’s nightclub on North Avenue, on drug charges–when he faced new drug-dealing charges in the late ’90s. Antonio “Big Black” Howell, former head of the East Baltimore gang the Nickel Boys, also turned to Simels when the feds closed in on his outfit.

McGriff, on the other hand, is a New Yorker with Baltimore connections–and the little that is publicly known about those connections suggests that Simels is going to have his hands full defending McGriff.

McGriff–who is known to use two other names, “Ricky Coleman” and “Lee Tuten”–pleaded guilty in April to gun charges stemming from his repeated use of firearms at Select-Fire shooting range next to the Glen Burnie Mall off of Ritchie Highway between January 1999 and June 2001.

Federal convicts like McGriff, who was sentenced to a lengthy prison term after his exploits in the Queens, N.Y., high rises, aren’t legally allowed to possess firearms or ammunition, yet a certificate from Select-Fire contained in court files reflects that, in August 2000, McGriff completed a “tactical handgun training course” with a “L.E. [law enforcement] Firearms Instructor” whose signature is illegible. The New York federal prosecutor, Tracy Lee Dalton, who was deputized in Baltimore to handle the case after McGriff’s December arrest in Miami, also asserts in a May 28 sentencing memorandum that “on a number of occasions the defendant utilized machine guns” at Select-Fire.

A recent City Paper visit to Select-Fire elicited a shocked reaction from owner Wayne Nowicki. “Where did you get this?” he asked when presented with a copy of McGriff’s training certificate from his establishment. When told it was from the federal courthouse, he exclaimed, “Got my balls up my asshole,” and asked the reporter to leave his shop.

Select-Fire is one of two Baltimore-area locations where prosecutor Dayton places McGriff. The other is a residence in the Red Run Apartments complex in Owings Mills, where two men from New York were gunned down in the parking lot on Aug. 20, 2001. Inside the apartment investigators found McGriff’s fingerprints as well as the Select-Fire certificate, “numerous items related to [Crime Partners],” a stolen handgun, about $30,000 in cash, and “a large quantity” of cocaine and heroin.

The official line on the Red Run double murder, which remains unsolved, is simply that it appears to be drug-related. Four months earlier, one of the Red Run victims, Karon Russell Clarrett, had been nabbed on Interstate 95 in Robeson County, N.C., with 2.3 kilograms of cocaine.

Federal authorities in New York have linked McGriff to violence in recent years, though he hasn’t been charged with any related crimes. “In one instance, McGriff directed co-conspirators to kill a drug associate who, agents believe, McGriff suspected of cooperating with the government,” according to an Internal Revenue Service affidavit, quoted in the May 17 Sun, filed May 12 in a New York federal forfeiture suit filed against McGriff’s assets. “In another instance, McGriff was involved with the shooting of another rap artist named 50 Cent.” The performer in question, 50 Cent, has been at the vortex of hip-hop-world violence: He’s been shot on two occasions and has made a name in part on his resulting street credibility.

At McGriff’s June 2 hearing, Judge Motz handed him a 37-month sentence, to be served consecutively with whatever term he receives for another gun charge pending in New York.

“There is absolutely no excuse for you to be anywhere near a firearm,” Motz admonished McGriff, concluding that the only reason for the defendant’s gunplay at Select-Fire was “to keep your skills up, and that says it all. Felons have no reason to keep their [gun] skills up.”

Before the hearing, Simels bantered with the press.

“It shouldn’t even be in violation of federal laws [for a felon] to be at a firing range,” he insisted. When he went before Motz, however, Simels changed his tune, pleading with the judge for a lighter sentence, acknowledging, “It was wrong for [McGriff] to go.”

“This is a lot of attention for a little case,” Simels remarked to the courthouse press corps. But the widespread attention to McGriff’s misdeeds in Baltimore is due to his newly publicized stature as a player in the rap world.

Since last December, when the New York Daily News first reported that a U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn was zeroing in on McGriff and Crime Partners, McGriff’s role in Murder, Inc. has taken shape in the press in drips and drabs. The probe, begun in 2000, is prying into alleged financial ties between the drug world and the rap industry.

The federal forfeiture suit filed on May 12 in New York against McGriff’s movie company, Picture Perfect, alleges that since 1999 McGriff has been laundering drug money, including profits from his Baltimore operations, through the Crime Partners project. Murder Inc. promoted the movie while Def Jam Records produced the film’s soundtrack, according to the suit.

Other entertainment-industry players crop up in the complaint, including Raven Knite Productions of Los Angeles, which is said in the suit to be Crime Partners’ agent. The company’s roots are in producing 1990s music videos, including ones for Marion “Suge” Knight’s Death Row Records. It currently gets decent work on the Hollywood periphery. In 2001, for instance, Raven Knite snagged a production credit for Queens-based Transcontinental Records’ jump into the movie world, Long Shot, a movie that AllPop.com describes as “a teen comedy with cameos from Britney Spears, Lance from *NSync, KC [of the Sunshine Band], and Kenny Rogers.”

“In or about 2001,” the IRS forfeiture suit alleges, a package to Raven Knite was intercepted by authorities after it had caught the attention of drug-sniffing dogs. The package was from one of Crime Partners’ co-producers, Jon Ragin of New York, a man with a criminal history in the drug business who currently is facing credit-card fraud charges in connection with the Murder Inc. investigation. Inside was $5,000 in cash, wrapped in scented baby wipes–a tactic, the complaint alleges, that is frequently used by narcotics traffickers “to disguise the tell-tale scent of their narcotics proceeds.”

Attempts to reach Raven Knite for comment were unsuccessful. The company’s listed Los Angeles telephone number has been disconnected.

With the federal investigation of McGriff and Murder Inc. heading into courtrooms, Simels is handling spin control as the feds’ version of events seeps out of the court files and into press coverage. Simels has said repeatedly that while McGriff has an ugly past in the drug business, his present moneymaking endeavors in the entertainment industry are entirely legitimate.

And profitable, by all appearances. After McGriff’s Dec. 28 arrest in Miami on the Baltimore gun charges, a magistrate judge concluded that McGriff should be kept in detention because he presented a flight risk, in part because his billfold is fat. In addition to the small amounts of ecstasy and heroin found in McGriff’s wallet when he was arrested in a Miami hotel, the judge proclaimed that McGriff “has extensive financial resources.” Presumably, then, he can afford Simels’ pricey legal services–unlike some of Simels’ past clients, like Good Fellas mobster Henry Hill and New York Jets football player Ken O’Brien, both of whom Simels sued for failure to pay their bills.

New York Attorney Robert Simels, Serving a 14-Year Prison Sentence, Co-Owns Baltimore Condo with Kenny “Bird” Jackson’s Mother

By Van Smith

Published by City Paper, Feb. 22, 2010

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Robert Simels, the New York criminal-defense lawyer who for decades represented some of Baltimore’s most notorious drug-world defendants, won’t be using his Water Street condominium in downtown Baltimore anytime soon. In early January, he began serving a 14-year prison sentence for intimidating witnesses on behalf of one of his clients, Shaheed “Roger” Khan, a former Marylander convicted in New York of running a massive Guyana-based cocaine conspiracy.

Simels purchased Unit 1201 at 414 Water St. with Rosalie Jackson in 2008 for $362,300, according to land records. Rosalie Jackson is the mother and business partner of Kenny “Bird” Jackson, the politically connected ex-con who owns the Eldorado Lounge strip club on East Lombard Street.

Over the years, Kenny “Bird” Jackson made use of Simels’ prodigious skills as a criminal-defense attorney, including for a New York case in 1991, when Jackson was acquitted of the 1984 murder of cocaine wholesaler Felix Gonzalez after Gonzalez’ relatives testified against the government at trial. Today, in addition to running the Eldorado, Kenny Jackson is the producer/director of The Baltimore Chronicles: Legends of the Unwired, a series of docu-dramas that claim to tell the real-life stories behind HBO’s The Wire.

Other notable drug-world clients of Simels who appeared in Maryland courts over the years include:

Eric Clash of the politically connected Rice Organization drug conspiracy, which also involved restaurateur Anthony Leonard of Downtown Southern Blues, a tenant of Kenny Jackson’s; Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff, a legendary Queens, N.Y., gangster who faced gun charges here; and former fugitive Shawn Michael Green (“Flight Connections,” Mobtown Beat, Mar. 12, 2008), an associate of accused kingpin Maurice Phillips, who is currently facing the death penalty in a lengthy drug-conspiracy trial in Philadelphia. (See also our stories on Green’s arrest [“Return Flight,” Motown Beat, Dec. 24, 2008] and his guilty plea [“Shawn Green Pleads Guilty,” The News Hole, Dec. 11, 2009] made in Dec. 2009.)

Big Target: Feds in New York Dub Indicted Defense Attorney Simels a “Danger,” Aim to See His Fees in Baltimore

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Feb. 12, 2009

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On Thursday, Feb. 5, the Justice Department took two shots at Robert M. Simels (pictured, from http://www.simelslaw.com), the self-described “Rolls Royce” of criminal-defense attorneys.

In New York, where Simels is charged with witness intimidation in connection with his defense of former Marylander Shaheed “Roger” Khan (“Team Player,” Mobtown Beat, Sept. 24, 2008), who is accused of running a violent Guyanese cocaine conspiracy, prosecutors called Simels a “palpable danger” to public safety and convinced a judge to keep Simels’ bond, which is secured with his $2.5 million Westchester, N.Y., home, at $3.5 million.

Meanwhile, in a Baltimore case that appears unrelated to Khan, another Justice Department attorney asked a judge to order Simels to cough up detailed information to a grand jury about how he’s getting paid to represent accused drug trafficker and money launderer Shawn Michael Green (“Flight Connections,” Mobtown Beat, Mar. 12, 2008).

Just another day in the decades-long war between Justice and Simels.

In the mid-1980s, shortly after Simels had entered private practice on the heels of a career as a young federal prosecutor, Rudy Giuliani, then New York’s U.S. attorney, tried and failed to get information about Simels’ fee arrangements with clients. But today in Maryland, according to local attorneys, the law is clear that grand juries are entitled to look at attorneys’ fee arrangements, though they rarely do so.

“It’s rare but not unheard of,” says former federal prosecutor and longtime defense attorney David Irwin, when asked about how frequently the grand jury goes after attorneys’ fees. He predicts that “the government is going to win the motion and Simels is at best filing a delaying action.”

Simels is famous in New York for representing high-profile clients such as Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff (“New York Boys,” Mobtown Beat, June 4, 2003) and Henry Hill, whose gangster stories have entered popular culture. But Simels’ Baltimore clientele over the years, such as Green, tend not to be household names–though they are accused of being high up in the game and are often well-connected. Two of them–Eric Clash of the Rice Organization (“Wired,” Mobtown Beat, Mar. 2, 2005) and Kenneth Antonio “Bird” Jackson (“The High Life,” Mobtown Beat, Jan. 3, 1995), who owns the Eldorado Gentlemen’s Club–have known ties to Baltimore politics.

The motion filed against Simels in the Shawn Green case, by assistant U.S. attorney Kwame Manley, is stunning for its disclosures about a secret grand-jury investigation. Green was captured after nearly two years on the run, and at his first court appearance in December 2008, Simels was at his side. In light of what the Justice Department reveals in Manley’s motion, the grand jury is interested in whether or not Simels was getting paid to represent Green during his lengthy stretch on the lam.

What’s known about Green so far is based largely on court records in Baltimore and in connection with a sprawling federal prosecution in Philadelphia against the Phillips Cocaine Organization (PCO), in which Green is not a defendant. Real-estate lawyer Rachel Donegan, mortgage broker David Lincoln, and Green’s mother, Yolanda Crawley, pleaded guilty last year to their parts in Green’s allegedly illicit assets and activities, with interests spanning the East Coast from Florida to New Jersey.

Yet the Justice Department, according to the motion to compel Simels to open up his books, thinks Green kept up the conspiracy while on the run, after his co-conspirators were arrested. It expects to file more charges. The grand jury, the motion continues, “is continuing its investigation of Green and other individuals,” and “the Government believes that during Green’s nearly two-year period as a fugitive, he continued to launder proceeds of illegal activity through known co-conspirators in this case.”

The specific information sought by the grand jury from Simels concerns “attorney fees and retainers received for the representation of Green, the amount of funds received, the identity of the individuals who provided such funds, and the dates and manner in which such funds were provided (i.e., cash, check, wire, etc.).”

Last March, with Green still a fugitive, Simels told City Paper in a telephone interview that he was not Green’s attorney. The question was raised because court records show that Simels had been sent mail from U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein in connection with the federal forfeiture of Green’s Reservoir Hill apartment building and recording studio.

Simels did not respond to messages left at his office for this article. The Justice Department declined to comment.

The government’s strong language came in reaction to a Feb. 2 bond-modification request by Simels’ attorney, Gerard Shargel, who sought to remove the secured money bond as a condition of Simels’ release pending trial. In it, Shargel points out that the bond set on Sept. 10 “was not based on any judicial finding that Mr. Simels poses a risk of flight or a danger to the community,” and thus asserts that the prosecutors cannot show that Simels poses such risks.

The prosecutors, Steven D’Alessandro and Morris Fodeman, went ahead and called Simels dangerous anyhow, while arguing that they are not required to prove that he is. In doing so, they restated the allegations–that Simels sought to bribe and threaten witnesses, including with violence–and note that Simels is wealthy, that the evidence against him is strong, and that his behavior was conducted in his role as an attorney.

“The Court can have little confidence,” the prosecutors continued, that Simels will not further obstruct justice “now that Simels, as opposed simply to a client, would benefit” from such crimes. Thus, they concluded, “there exists a palpable danger were the defendant released without significant pre-trial conditions,” such as the high bail set when he was first arrested.

The New York round went to the government when the judge agreed last Friday to keep Simels’ bond set high. Green’s judge in Baltimore, J. Frederick Motz, set a Feb. 23 deadline for Simels to submit his opposition to Manley’s attempt to open up his books on the Shawn Green account.

Unstopped Snitching: Skinny Suge’s Prison Cell Phone Seized

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Dec. 24, 2008

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Ronnie Thomas, also known as “Skinny Suge” and “Suga da Pimp,” is a tenacious media hound. He made a name for himself with the 2005 release of his video, Stop Fucking Snitching Vol. 1, a rambling, low-budget documentary that opened a frenzied national discussion on street-level abhorrence for police cooperators.

Now Suge’s in the Supermax prison, serving time for a 2007 assault conviction and awaiting trial on federal gang-related conspiracy charges. But according to federal court documents, that didn’t stop him from shouting out to friends and fans over a contraband cell phone taken from his prison cell on Nov. 24. The documents, which include the phone numbers of incoming and outgoing calls and text messages contained in the phone, indicate that authorities learned of the phone through an informant’s tip.

Many of the text messages transcribed in the court records are Thanksgiving greetings (“Happy Turkey Day!”) or about routine matters (“Do u still got tarsha number from the salon?” and “What’s up mike got locked up this morning.”), but others are just plain cryptic–apparently, even to Suge. “SO U PLAYING GAME WITH ME BITCH,” reads one, sent to Suge in the early morning hours of Nov. 24. “What u talking bout,” Suge texts back.

The same question could be asked when reading this message, sent by Suge (pictured, in a scene from the movie) to a WERQ radio deejay: “BIG L, Real words from da ckitys realest negro, Smash &ckrip r somegood lil negros an im definitely bhind dem boyz wishin dem nothing but da best! Let dem ckats know, on my word da whole Bgang is Bhind dem! GET MONEY PIMPIN-DA BIG HOMMIE, SUGA DA PIMP E.A.”

The deejay, Big L, explains the communiqué this way: “Suge texted me a message and asked me to play a song or give him a shout-out while I was on the air,” he says during a Dec. 10 interview with City Paper. “There was a local rap group on the air with us, Smash ‘n’ Crip, and he just was listening and wanted to let them know they sound good. To hear him say something like that is a plus for them,” Big L says of the rap group–which, he adds in reference to the word “Crip” in the group’s name, “has no gang affiliation.”

Suge, Big L says, “is an old friend of mine from growing up in the neighborhood. He was a good guy, despite the things he might have done wrong. He always showed me respect, like I shown him.”

Suge’s lawyer, Michael Montemarano, says he is aware that a phone was seized from his client’s prison cell, but explains that “I can neither confirm nor deny that he had the cell phone.” Montemarano also says that, “to the extent that it would be true” that Suge had a cell phone in prison, “it would be troubling,” because “how could he have gotten the phone without the help of someone in a blue suit?”–referring to uniformed correctional officers.

“Cell phones are not allowed in prison,” says Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services spokesman Mark Vernarelli, “and they are a major problem that we have been trying to address.” Neither Vernarelli nor U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Marcia Murphy had anything further to add about the incident.

Stop Fucking Snitching’s “Goose” Gets Cooked for Slinging Heroin in Prison

By Van Smith

Published by City Paper, June 4, 2014

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Sherman “Goose” Kemp, one of the cash-loving, drug-dealing stars of 2004’s anti-rat Baltimore street-culture documentary Stop Fucking Snitching Vol. 1, already had a prodigious list of prior drug-related convictions before he was charged anew in early 2012 with conspiring to smuggle heroin into federal prison, where he was serving a 30-year sentence, and sell it at a huge mark up: two federal convictions in the 2000s and one Maryland conviction in the 1990s. Now, having copped to the new charges, Kemp’s list of priors is even longer.

After signing a guilty-plea agreement in October, Kemp (pictured, in a Stop Fucking Snitching scene) was recently sentenced – and received a pretty good deal, given that such priors often result in draconian sentences: four more years added to his existing term, shifting his release date from 2035 to 2039, when he’ll be about 60 years old. He actually got a 10-year sentence, but U.S. District judge Catherine Blake ordered six of them to be served concurrently with his existing prison term.

According to the plea’s statement of facts, “beginning in April 2011, through November 7, 2011, Sherman Michael Kemp, agreed with Lasheta Claybourne and others to smuggle heroin from Baltimore, Maryland, into FCI Beckley, West Virginia, where he was serving a federal sentence. Once the heroin was smuggled inside the prison, Kemp and other distributed the heroin at approximately $600 per gram.”

The statement has an additional sentence, with lines drawn through it, indicating that Kemp and the government do not agree that this could be proven: “Additionally, in September through November 2012, Kemp worked with others to try to smuggle heroin into the Chesapeake Detention Facility in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was being held pretrial.” The facility is run by Maryland’s prison agency and now is used to house federal pretrial detainees, but until early 2011, it had long been used as the state’s “Supermax” prison, formally known as the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center.

Kemp’s 2008 firearm-and-cocaine conviction in Maryland, for which he received a 180-month sentence, was followed with a jury conviction in a Pennsylvania case that yielded Kemp’s 30-year sentence and $31 million judgment for his part in the sprawling and murderous Phillips Cocaine Organization, in which other Baltimore players were in the picture, including Anthony Ballard and Shawn Green. Kemp’s name also appeared in court documents in the 2010 racketeering case against the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang in Maryland, with his phone tied to that of the gang’s on-the-streets heroin dealer, Kevin Glasscho.