BUCKINGHAM, Va. – Two Department of Corrections officers were filmed purchasing narcotics which federal agents said were going to be smuggled into the Buckingham Correctional Center, according to court documents.
That bust was part of a racketeering gang case with 20 arrests made in Virginia and New York.
A total of 20 members and associates of the Mad Stone Bloods (MSB) street and prison gang were charged in an indictment and other court documents unsealed today following the arrest of the majority of the defendants.
The local operation began on Sept. 1, after inmate Jermaine Epps contacted a confidential source with the Federal Bureau of Investigation from jail and asked the source to add a third caller, who was identified as correction officer Shonda Jones.
Jones was told to meet the FBI source and arrange to have the drugs smuggled into Buckingham Correctional Center (BKCC) in Dilwyn, Va.
The source agreed, after several meetings, to introduce Jones to a Hopewell man named Ronnie Monroe Nicholas Jr., to purchase the drugs, according to court documents. The documents go on to say that Jones brought along another correctional officer, named Jaymese Jones, to meet Nicholas, on Sept. 16.
The two guards, the source, Nicholas,and several other people then drove from Hopewell to a Bexley mobile home park in Prince George County.
It was there that the FBI said Nicholas was filmed by the source as he sold four grams of cocaine, two grams of crack cocaine and four grams of weed to Jones.
The source had an electronic surveillance device. The two officers were under physical and aerial surveillance after they dropped off the source and traveled down Interstate 95.
Later that day Virginia State Police’s Counter-terrorism and Criminal Interdiction Team stopped Jones on the interstate. Drugs were recovered from Shonda Jones.
A week later, law enforcement used a federal search warrant to enter the home of Nicholas, in the 600 block of Cabin Creek Drive in Hopewell.
During the raid, law enforcement seized two firearms, cocaine, marijuana, heroin, a digital scale with suspected drug residue, money bundled like drug money, and multiple cell phones.
Nicholas was arrested and charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances.
The indictment indicates that a total of four Department of Corrections (DOC) officers were arrested.
A fourth former DOC employee who worked as inmate counselor has been charged in a related case for smuggling contraband items to an incarcerated MSB gang leader with whom she was engaged in a sexual relationship.
According to the indictment, the MSB gang operates in Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Maryland, and engages in activities involving murder, narcotics trafficking, wire fraud and mail fraud both in and outside of prisons.
The gang’s national leaders are based in New York and MSB leaders in Virginia report to those New York leaders. The indictment also alleges that the defendants committed shootings, armed robberies, narcotics trafficking, interstate firearms trafficking and fraud.
