Hampton Roads sees share of big-money drug rings

NORFOLK

Gary Beard liked to drive a Maserati. He wore tens of thousands of dollars of gold and diamond jewelry. He once plunked down $17,000 cash for a bracelet.

But for three of the past five years, Beard reported no income on his tax returns and just under $50,000 for the other two years combined.

Authorities say those are sure signs of a lucrative career in narcotics trafficking. The Beard organization, according to court records and federal agents, was worth $20 million wholesale. The street value of the drugs the ring sold could be quadruple that.

Agents also say the case is a sign of the times: Drug rings with wholesale or retail values of $20 million and up - such as the one Beard is suspected of leading - have become common in Hampton Roads.

In the past 10 years, authorities have taken down at least nine drug rings in Hampton Roads worth $20 million or more. A 10th was worth almost $10 million.

Agents and prosecutors interviewed could recall only one or two drug rings that size from the 1990s. Reasons for the trend vary, but officials with the Drug Enforcement Administration said Hampton Roads is not unique. These large drug rings have popped up in just about every urban area in the Mid-Atlantic.

"I think it's an increase in law enforcement presence, and it's also I think attributed to federal, state and local law enforcement all working together," said James Gregorius, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA for Virginia.

That's how the Beard case came about.

For eight years, police in different jurisdictions would have run-ins with Beard or one of his alleged associates.

In 2004, the Maryland State Police stopped a Cadillac Escalade driven by Beard's friend Elton Williams. Beard was a passenger. Police charged Williams with possession of a small amount of marijuana, and seized $36,000 in cash, according to the FBI.

Seven more times since then, Beard, Williams, Beard's sister Kimberly Shaw and a fourth suspected associate, Troy Vance Paige, were either questioned by police about drugs and cash or charged with minor offenses. In 2006, the South Carolina State Police seized more than $250,000 cash in a hydraulically operated hidden compartment in a vehicle Williams was driving.

Police in Chesapeake were repeatedly visiting Shaw's home on Rodgers Street, where they say she ran a nip joint and offered illegal gambling and prostitutes, according to police and courts records. More recently she's been living on Edward Street in Norfolk's Norview area.

It wasn't until the region's Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force began putting the pieces together that the four suspects could be arrested on serious federal drug conspiracy and money laundering charges. Each was arrested over the past few weeks.

Task force members from the FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the Norfolk, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach police departments began pooling notes.

Through surveillance, undercover buys, search warrants and informants, the authorities built a timeline indicating drug sales beginning in 2002 and escalating through the years. The FBI said Beard and Williams had a source in the Atlanta area, where the two eventually moved.

When officials did the math, they determined the ring distributed about 1,500 pounds of cocaine worth $18.2 million, 400 pounds of marijuana worth $500,000, and 75,000 Ecstasy pills worth $1.5 million, all totaling $20.2 million wholesale, the FBI said. Agents said the street value of all those drugs could be triple or quadruple that.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sherrie Capotosto said in court last week that one source told agents that Beard kept gallon-size plastic bags of Ecstasy pills in his refrigerator. The bags probably held 5,000 pills each, she said.

When agents arrested Beard on Aug. 31, they said he tried to jump out a second-story window, an allegation he denied.

Beard's attorney, Brian K. Miller of Chesapeake, indicated in court that the government may have overblown the case. Beard has never been found with large amounts of drugs and the case is based largely on statements of other criminals cooperating with the government.

Capotosto said the evidence is "overwhelming."

The FBI said in a court affidavit that three or four times a month Beard would have female co-conspirators deliver 10 to 20 kilos of cocaine from Atlanta to Hampton Roads. The drugs were hidden in secret compartments of cars and trucks. As recently as mid-August, authorities tracked Beard and Williams as they delivered a kilo of cocaine to Shaw's Norfolk home, the affidavit says.

Beard was denied bond last week and is awaiting grand jury action. Williams has a bond hearing Monday. Shaw is also being detained but Paige was released on bond.

Authorities say many of these large-scale operations are linked, or at the very least they feed off each other.

Three men - Earl R. Fuller Jr., Samuel Lloyd and David A. Wheeler - were convicted in federal court Sept. 14 of running a large-scale drug operation involving thousands of pounds of marijuana. Those three were linked to nine other defendants in other cases.

The Anthony Gonzalez drug ring a few years ago had many tentacles, authorities said, including former Olympic track star Tim Montgomery, who was caught dealing heroin from a club owned by Gonzalez.

That's part of the goal for law enforcement: One ring leads to another until hopefully they get to the source. Unfortunately, the sources are typically across the southern border.

Laura Everhart, an assistant U.S. Attorney who has prosecuted drug cases for 22 years, said that in the 1990s she would see the occasional big-money drug case, but this string of $20 million-and-up cases is unprecedented.

"Maybe it's inflation," she joked. "Everything costs more."

One of the changes she has noticed is the source of the drugs. Years ago suppliers would be based largely in New York or Miami. Now it seems these bigger organizations are going straight to the source: Mexican suppliers in the Southwest.

"That has changed over the years," she said, "and still Miami and that area can still be a source for some things, but the cocaine and marijuana are coming through Texas and Arizona and Southern California."

U.S. interdiction efforts continue to increase each year. At the same time, drug organizations' methods have become more sophisticated. In 2009 alone, authorities discovered 26 tunnels stretching across the Southwest border, including one with electricity and concrete floors. Authorities also have begun to see submarines filled with drugs.

In the past fiscal year, the federal government spent just under $1.4 billion on federal law enforcement anti-drug efforts. That doesn't include $450 million the Department of Defense is spending on educational, economic and counter-narcotics efforts in Mexico and Central America.

"Everything goes in cycles," said the DEA's Gregorius, adding that he hopes this latest trend is the end of one.

Tim McGlone, (757) 446-2343, tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com