Cleveland man sentenced to 25 years for drug distribution
Curtis Anderson, 53, of Cleveland, was sentenced recently to 300 months (25 years) in prison and five years of supervised release by U.S. District Judge John R. Adams after a jury previously convicted him of participating in a conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine.
According to court documents and testimony, in June 2021, Anderson’s co-conspirator, Earl King, boarded a flight from Cleveland, Ohio to Brownsville, Texas. Law enforcement searched King’s checked bag and found that it contained approximately $154,000 in cash hidden inside of a hollowed-out desktop computer.
Several days later, law enforcement seized a UPS parcel containing approximately 11 kilograms of cocaine that had been shipped from a UPS store in Brownsville to an address in Cleveland. The cocaine in the UPS parcel was hidden inside a similar type of hollowed-out desktop computer tower.
Law enforcement subsequently searched King’s apartment in Cleveland as part of the investigation and seized several cell phones from the apartment. Those cell phones had numerous saved text messages showing that King, Anderson, Donnell Gochett and others were all participating in a conspiracy to smuggle kilograms of cocaine across the US-Mexico border near Brownsville, and then ship the cocaine kilograms back to Cleveland in UPS parcels.
Based on a review of cell phone evidence, flight records and UPS shipment records, Anderson’s role in the conspiracy included providing cash for King to travel to the border to purchase cocaine kilograms from a person, who was a Mexican national; providing King with an address in Cleveland where the cocaine parcels could be shipped; tracking the delivery status of the UPS parcels; selling the cocaine after it was shipped back to Cleveland; and traveling to the US-Mexico border to meet with others.
Earl King and Donnell Gochett both previously pleaded guilty. King was sentenced to 180 months in prison, and Gochett was sentenced to 100 months in prison.
The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, with assistance from the DEA and the Cleveland Division of Police. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys James Lewis and Yasmine Makridis.
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