LOS ANGELES – A leader of the Bounty Hunter Bloods (BHB) road gang pleaded responsible nowadays to federal drug and firearms costs for major a production and distribution of crack cocaine conspiracy in and all-around the gang’s “territory” of the Nickerson Gardens community housing projects in the Watts community of Los Angeles.
Damion Baker, 45, a.k.a. “Fatts,” of Compton, pleaded responsible to one depend of conspiracy to manufacture, distribute, and possess with intent to distribute cocaine, and one depend of staying a felon in possession of a firearm.
Baker is the guide defendant in an April 2021 indictment concentrating on users and associates of the BHB road gang for drug- and firearm-similar crimes.
According to his plea agreement, from August 2019 to May 2020, Baker structured and led a drug trafficking conspiracy in which he and his accomplices agreed to distribute cocaine. Particularly, Baker arranged to attain powder cocaine from at least two drug suppliers. He then directed his co-conspirators to prepare dinner, and would himself cook dinner, the powder cocaine and manufacture it into crack cocaine to market to prospects, which includes again to his powder cocaine suppliers to provide in crack sort.
Baker directed his accomplices in the packaging, sale, and shipping and delivery of crack cocaine to clients, which incorporated co-conspirators and other BHB gang members. Baker also directed the receipt and storage of drug proceeds through BHB-claimed territory in South Los Angeles.
As section of these pursuits, Baker organized for an accomplice’s residence in the Nickerson Gardens housing tasks in Watts to be utilized as a stash house in which Baker and his co-conspirators constantly bought crack cocaine around a time period of numerous months. Baker recruited and hired co-conspirators to operate at the Watts stash residence and directed them in advertising narcotics to prospects there and in close by areas, restocking the stash house’s drug provide, and transporting drug proceeds to Baker and other accomplices at several destinations.
Baker admitted in his plea settlement to possessing a firearm in May perhaps 2020. He was not permitted to do so for the reason that he earlier experienced been convicted of felonies in Los Angeles Top-quality Court, including a cocaine possession demand in 1998 and a domestic violence-similar charge in 2001. He admitted in his plea arrangement that he possessed the firearm for the objective of safeguarding his crack cocaine distribution small business.
Baker also agreed to forfeit the firearm and $44,600 in income regulation enforcement seized at his residence in Compton and at one more residence in San Pedro.
United States District Judge Fernando L. Aenlle-Rocha scheduled a July 14 sentencing listening to, at which time Baker will encounter a necessary bare minimum sentence of five decades in federal jail and a statutory optimum of 40 many years in federal jail for the drug trafficking conspiracy demand, and up 10 a long time in federal jail for the firearms offense.
The other 11 defendants in this indictment either have pleaded responsible or signed plea agreements in this case and await sentencing. An additional BHB gang member, and Baker’s next in command in the drug trafficking conspiracy, Tony Carr, 52, a.k.a. “T-Bone,” of Watts, pleaded responsible in July 2022 to one depend of cocaine trafficking conspiracy and one particular count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Decide Aenlle-Rocha sentenced Carr to 188 months in federal prison.
In April 2021, legislation enforcement executed a takedown in which 22 BHB users and associates had been billed in a whole of 9 federal grand jury indictments. Of individuals 22 defendants, prosecutors have secured 19 convictions.
The FBI’s Los Angeles Metropolitan Job Power on Violent Gangs, which consists of the FBI, the Los Angeles Law enforcement Office, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Section, and the California Section of Corrections and Rehabilitation, investigated this matter.
Assistant United States Legal professional Amy E. Pomerantz of the Violent and Arranged Criminal offense Area is prosecuting this situation.