Designate Evidence Afterwards/ Secret Obfuscation Department

Nicka

 Putney

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.

Scene Freaked by The Man; Bum Trips Ensue

Two men found each shot in their respective arms in a car right next to Homeland, at Bellona and E. Northern Parkway. But relax, Homelanders, police say they were shot elsewhere and drove there. Wonder how they were discovered?

Police tweeted regarding a "Questionable death" in the 900 block of Saint Dunstan's Road. "Homicide detectives are investigating." (But relax, Homelanders, that's on the bad side of St. Dunstan's Road).

McIntosh as snapped
by Frank Hamilton
at CP's 2005 BOB party, via CP

In a nod to the quaint reporting techniques of a bygone era, CP's Van Smith is physically in the Greenbelt courthouse for the trial of Daniel Gerard Joaquin McIn­tosh Sr., 36. McIntosh, co-owner of the now-closed Sonar and Talking Head bars and McCabe's in Hampden is accused of being involved in a conspiracy with 15 others to sell a literal ton of pot in a prodigious operation that involved planes, trucks and local stash houses. If convicted he faces life in prison based on his four prior felony convictions. (The jury won't know about his priors or the potential sentence. Still, what would you do on that jury? Selling pot after four convictions is criminally stupid, no doubt, and he seems like kind of a wiener, but $38k a year from taxpayers to support this guy for the rest of his life just for the selling of the pot? Smart move, taking that to a federal jury. I can't think of six denizens I know who wouldn't nullify the pants off that case.) The CP's referring to it the 'Nicka Conspiracy,' as one Matt Nicka was supposedly the guy in charge, the other accused conspirators are Kee­gan Leahy (pleaded guilty), Anthony Marcantoni, David D’Amico, Gretchen Peterson, Jeffrey Putney, Daniel Fountain, Andrew Sharpeta, Jeremey Landsman, Sean Costello, Ian Travis Minshall, Michael Phillips, Adam Constantinides, and Joseph Spain.

If you ❤ charts you'll be all aflutter at the latest missive from the Bernstein bureau, showing how his circuit court conviction rate is housing Jessamy's-- a charteriffic rejoinder to critics who have groused about the office's gloomy murder clearance numbers.

A guilty plea in federal court from 34-year-old Evan Foreman, who robbed check-cashing joints, a liquor store and the PNC bank inside the Owings Mills Giant (where one of his brothers worked).

Harriet Taylor, 56, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in a mortgage-title scheme that netted her $1.5 million. Mortgage lenders sent her the money for properties, Taylor kept the money, and somehow managed to get away with that for an entire year.

QTD: "You can't equate your sin with my skin!" In this month's Mother Jones, some behind-the-scenes on the fight for marriage in MD, including the beaucoup d'$$ funneled to a PGC "bishop" by the National Organization for Marriage. But the bigots aren't the only ones getting out-of-state money, last night Annie Linskey brushed shoulders with swells in Soho,* including Dubya's daughter Barbara (aka "the hot one").

Pay yer taxes people, because The Man does not ef around and will throw yer azz in jail -- like Lauryn Hill, or this guy Makushamari Gozo from Zimbabwe, arrested for fraudulently collecting more than $180k in refunds that he claimed he was owed for buying 39 million gallons of "alternative fuel."

The Man also closed down the Loads of Fun art space in station north after somebody squealed to the housing authority that artists were subverting the dominant paradigm by using it as a flophouse.

And some sad media blabber: after a decade, the Urbanite* es muerto. It will cease publication at the end of the month.