Drug Conspiracy

An Elkton woman indicted last year alongside a reputed drug kingpin on charges they ran a vast heroin ring was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison Monday, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office announced. Tahirah Carter, 35, was charged with drug conspiracy in August for her role as a courier for Steven Blackwell Jr., a key player, authorities say, in a violent drug feud that has led to at least four homicides and several shootouts on Baltimore streets. She pleaded guilty last fall, according to online court records, though much about her case has been kept secret.

The Baltimore Police Department removed its commander in charge of internal investigations late Monday, a move police sources describe as fallout from last week's indictment of a city police officer on drug charges. Maj. Nathan Warfield, picked in 2009 by Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III to root out corruption within the department, was reassigned a week after Bealefeld said the arrest of Officer Daniel G. Redd proved his agency would not tolerate misconduct. Earlier Monday, The Baltimore Sun had asked the department to comment on pictures posted on Facebook showing Warfield socializing with Redd and a man named Sam Brown, who was also charged this month in a separate heroin distribution conspiracy.

Dan McIntosh, one of the owners of Sonar, has been named in a federal indictment alongside some 14 individuals for participating in a cross-country drug distribution ring, City Paper reported today citing court documents filed in Florida in December. Over the phone, McIntosh responded to the charges by saying he intends on pleading "not guilty," and that Sonar, which closed temporarily in May, is not in any danger of shutting down again. The drug ring lasted for eight years and involved distributing California-grown marijuana in Maryland, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.

A 25-year old Elkton woman pleaded guilty Thursday in Baltimore's U.S. District Court to conspiring to launder more than $400,000 in heroin proceeds, trading the drug funds for clean cash at Las Vegas casinos and other people's winning state lottery tickets. Joy Edison, who was originally indicted in August on drug charges alongside Steven Blackwell and Tahirah Carter, has also agreed to forfeit at least a half-dozen Baltimore properties she bought using drug money. Sentencing is set for Aug. 12. Carter pleaded guilty last fall to conspiring to deal heroin, according to online court records and is scheduled for sentencing next month.

Northeast Baltimore's Four-by-Four neighborhood is tiny, named for its four north-south streets and four east-west streets. But authorities say it has long been a hub of violence and drug activity that had been taken over by a "clandestine operation. " On Thursday, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives led at least 150 law enforcement officers on raids at eight locations, and 10 people were indicted on federal charges accusing them of being part of a drug organization operating out of the neighborhood from at least June 2009 through August.

A federal grand jury has indicted 26-year-old Steven Blackwell — long suspected by Baltimore police of being a major drug kingpin on the city's east side — on a charge of running a heroin ring that stretched from New York to the Dominican Republic. Blackwell, a resident of Elkton, was indicted with Tahirah Carter, 34, of Cockeysville and Joy Edison, 24, of Elkton. All three face a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of the drug conspiracy, which prosecutors allege began in late 2003.

Twenty-two people, including one of the boys featured in an acclaimed documentary about city children attending school in Africa, were indicted this week by a federal grand jury on charges related to a drug distribution conspiracy in the Gilmor Homes public housing complex in West Baltimore. Among those indicted was Romesh Mustafa Vance, 20, who along with his brother was one of four high-risk students whose journey to attend the Baraka School in Kenya on scholarship was captured in the acclaimed documentary "The Boys of Baraka."

A federal jury on Friday convicted two Baltimore men, one of them a Bloods gang member, on racketeering and drug conspiracy charges after two hours of deliberation. Terrence "Squeaky" Richardson, 30, was found guilty of conspiring to sell crack, cocaine, heroin and marijuana as a leader of the Pasadena Denver Lanes set of the Bloods. He was also convicted of racketeering and accused of ordering several murders as part of PDL operations. Gregory Saulsbury, 46, was found guilty of conspiring to deal crack cocaine, even though he's not a gang member.

One of nine people charged in what authorities contend is a huge drug conspiracy turned against two of his former bosses Monday, testifying as a government witness on the opening day of their narcotics conspiracy and weapons possession trial. At least a half-dozen people have reached plea agreements with the Maryland U.S. attorney's office, including Antoine Boston, who was alleged to have been a drug shop manager for Johnnie "JR" Butler and Calvin "Turkey" Wright. Boston testified Monday to certain heroin dealings with the defendants, whose attorneys worked to discredit him. Prosecutors contend Butler and Wright ran a violent and well-connected heroin operation on Baltimore's east side, able to sneak drugs into prison, get a heads-up about warrants from courthouse staff and skirt the gun-application process.

Three teens charged in robbery of cabdriver Three people were charged in connection with an armed robbery Thursday of a cabdriver at Arundel Mills mall, Anne Arundel County police said. Police said that about 9 p.m., an Associated Cab Co. driver was in his cab when two men with handguns demanded his money, which he gave them. The men met up with a third person and they all ran toward a hotel, according to police. Officers went to the back of the hotel, where they arrested three teens from Severn - Lorenzo Lamar Jones, 18, of the 7800 block of Huguenot Court; Deshawn Manigault, 18, of the 1800 block of Oriole Court; and a 15-year-old boy - and charged them with armed robbery and related counts.