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| Nicka |
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| Putney |
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| D'Amico |
Matt Nicka, of Nicka Conspiracy fame, was
nabbed on Monday with his weird-looking girlfriend Gretchen Peterson whilst waiting for a ferry in Vancouver
near his new home/meth lab in
Coquitlam, British Columbia. Nicka was considered the leader/recruiter of the scheme, which involved trucks, trains, planes and a lot of local stash houses, and was found to have laundered some of his pot-sealing proceeds by
buying sound equipment for Sonar, the "
armpit of a venue" he silently co-owned with local restauranteur/money launderer
Dan McIntosh from 2007- 2012.*
The import business started in about 2001 and involved moving about
$150-200 million bucks' worth of pot from Canada and Northern California to Baltimore and then elsewhere. Nicka and Peterson's arrest
leaves only two of 20 alleged conspirators at large, David D'Amico and Jeffrey Putney. Putney had actually been arrested back in 2009 after a bust on Hickory Avenue in Hampen, said Van Smith, but MD just took his Toyota 4Runner and declined to prosecute, because in Baltimore that's how we do.
And could the latest
NSA/DEA/SOD revelations collapse the government's case? Dan McIntosh's sentencing is currently on hold
waiting on a ruling because, reported Smith, Deborah Johnson, the U.S. attorney prosecuting the case against McIntosh and pilot Keegan Leahy, 'stated that the government knows 'for a fact that there’s been telephone communications' between defense attorneys and a Philadelphia lawyer
named Michael Farrell. The statements suggest the
government listened in on lawyers’ conversations about the case, and
that’s a no-no that, if proven, may breach attorney-client privilege and
poison the integrity of government’s entire case." Better hurry up and get to recreating that investigative trail,
federales. Sentencing for
McIntosh is scheduled for September 18.
Other defendants involved in this vast soap opera:
Jacob Jeremiah Harryman (real estate developer), Andrew Jin Park, Brandon Marrow,
Anthony "Mr. Purple" Marcantoni (large-scale distributor, owner of martial arts studio), Michael Phillips, Ryan Foreman (
Rolex watch delivery),
Jeremy Landsman (Nicka and McIntosh's landlord),
Andrew "Bird" Sharpeta, Sean "Chong" Costello, Daniel Fountain and Ian Travis Minshall (mid-level dealers), Adam Constantinides,
Joseph "Goose" Spain (truck driver sentenced to one day),
Michael Borakove and Kevin Brandes.
Antonio "Tank Top" Davis was convicted of
being the ringleader of a fake robbery* proposed by undercover
DEA agents. Sounds like the dictionary definition of "
entrapment," though federal agents claim it wasn't because Davis had been involved in robberies before. And speaking of the DEA, Austin "Yellow" Roberts III got
19 years in the federal pen for taking Kate Moss to the shore. He was
one of 71 defendants indicted in Wicomico Co. in January.
Related TIL: in California
making a car trap is illegal.
Robert Jarrett Jr. used to love her, but he had to kill her
. He knew he'd miss her, so he had to keep her. He buried her right in his backyard.
Thirty years* seems insufficient.
Also in HoCo, a
woman's breasts grabbed on a walking trail and cellphone thief Travon Millar
hit his victim and a witness with his car.
The
defense has rested in the Karla Porter trial. She admitted to police to hiring a hit man to kill her husband William, but took the stand to claim she was abused by him-- a
claim that witnesses handily refuted.*
JM Giordano's Summer of the Gun series continues
with hauntingly beautiful photos of the August all-male anti-gun-violence march.
Wat? Former MD Republican Party director of opposition research and assistant chief of staff for Bob Ehrlich, Robert Ballinger II, was
arrested for impersonating a Secret Service agent to withdraw money from somebody's bank account.
