Man Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison for Conspiring to Distribute Large Amounts of Heroin and Cocaine
CAMDEN, N.J. – A Burlington County, New Jersey, man was sentenced Tuesday to 120 months in prison for conspiring to distribute heroin and cocaine in Camden, Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig announced.
Dwight Williams, 20, of Mount Holly, New Jersey, previously pled guilty before U.S. District Judge Renee Marie Bumb in Camden federal court to a superseding information charging him with conspiracy to distribute 100 grams or more of a mixture or substance containing heroin, as well as a mixture and substance containing cocaine. During his sentencing hearing, Williams agreed the amount of heroin jointly attributable to him, as a member of the conspiracy, was three to 10 kilograms.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
A total of 19 defendants were arrested in late 2018 on drug-trafficking charges based on the FBI’s investigation of a drug-trafficking organization that ran the open-air narcotics trade on the 400-500 block of Pine Street in Camden for several months in 2018. The investigation used various investigative tactics including video surveillance, confidential informants, consensual recordings, controlled drug purchases, and several court-authorized wiretaps to uncover the inner workings of the drug-trafficking organization.
The organization included street-level sellers who worked various shifts on the “drug set,” selling drugs to customers and collecting drug proceeds. The street-level sellers were supervised by different layers of managers who, in turn, supplied the drug set with pre-packaged heroin, some of which was mixed with fentanyl, as well as cocaine and crack cocaine. The FBI and other law enforcement officers recovered multiple firearms from different locations connected to the drug organization at the time of the 2018 arrests.
Sixteen of these defendants already pled guilty to drug conspiracy charges before Judge Bumb in the United States District Court. Three defendants are awaiting trial, and the charges and allegations against those three defendants are merely accusations, and they are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Bumb sentenced Williams to five years of supervised release.
This effort is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach. Additional information about the OCDETF Program can be found at https://www.justice.gov/OCDETF.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sara Aliabadi and Patrick C. Askin of the U. S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division in Camden.