The group was charged in U.S. District Court with drug conspiracy, specifically selling oxycodone pills and powder and crack cocaine between June 2010 and March 2011 from five South Fairbanks homes.
According to an indictment last week, the defendants tried to hide their activities by describing themselves as musicians or employees of record labels 20 Blocc Entertainment and Oil Money Entertainment. The indictment calls the group a “criminal street gang.”
Named in the indictment and arrested early Wednesday morning were Martin “Yae Neech” Linenko, 25; Cornelious “Bobby” Snowden, 33; Tremain “Tex” Wilson, 25; Johnny “Blaze” Toussaint, 29; Adrian “BG” Steele, 21, and Tyrone “Tizzy” Kimble, 28, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
All six are in the custody of U.S. Marshals pending bail hearings.
20 Blocc Entertainment is co-owned by Linenko, Snowden and Wilson and has a mailing address on Haida Lane off Chena Hot Springs Road, according to state business license records. The organization also has a MySpace page that has sample songs and promotional posters for performances in 2010.
Several local, state and federal agencies participated in the investigation, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The crime of drug conspiracy has a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison and maximum fine of $5 million.
Contact staff writer Sam Friedman at 459-7545.
And people running extortion/protection actions can be both - very helpful to those who are co-operative [or naive], and quite, quite vicious to people who they preceive as threats [including those who might report their criminal activities].
Stereotypes are like statistics, quite, totally useless and invalid when applied to an individual case.
One thing is certain: there would be no need for extortion/protection actions, and no need for people who do not commit criminal actions against others' persons or property, to suffer, if there were not laws against victimless crimes like the drug 'war'.
There are far, far, better, more productive, less destructive, ways to deal with the problems of drug abuse [as opposed to simple drug use]. We need to cut LE out of the equation, and send them back to enforcing the laws on crimes against persons and properties, insuring the peace and protecting the safety of the public in toto.
Again, what is it that you actually (like, other than sit at your computer) do to help out the downtrodden that you are so fond of defending in print?
Black people in Fairbanks make black people everywhere look bad.
What to do?
The drug war is a miserable failure except for the unconstitutional and immoral industries it supports. We can no longer afford to keep felonizing citizens and housing them in for-profit prisons.
They are grown men whose actions they chose for themselves knowing what the consequences could be, but now wanna cry foul that they got caught. Nobody wants to hear the "they were good people" line, I know a lot of good people, matter of fact I even know these guys, but that doesn't make them innocent.
So get as riled up about my comment as you want as im sure your response will amuse me.
And really you all must be bored with your lives if you just wanna talk chit and correct peoples grammar.
At least those guys leave that other stupid crap alone.
http://www.10thplanet.com/
And good riddance to the cokeheads. Can't help but wonder if this isn't tied to the busts last week.
If they were military, you can bet your bottom dollar this would have been first investigated by the US military.
I agree polarmark, wonder if the fact that hip-hop wasn't music, was their first suspicion? All it is, are sounds to announce though-out the neighborhoods, they gots drugs to sell and that they rule those streets!
Such behavior wouldn't be so much a reason for concern IF the media [the DNM for example] made some attempt at actually covering the story, rather than just re-running the DA/LE news release, listing their [as yet unproven]suspicions and accusations.
That is how THEY choose to name themselves, how they have chosen to be identified, so by their own choices, shouldn't they be further identified so that people who have little knowledge of their real names, can come forward with information, or the public can be advised that these are the particular individuals that go by these names?
These individuals choose to go by them in their personal and "professional" lives as well, perhaps to make more colorful their artistic personas.
It really is speculative at best, and IMHO clearly ignorant for anyone to think that "the media" is heightening the situation.
If one does a simple google search on any of the "real names" you can see the variety of press releases by federal law enforcement orgs that show the same info.
http://www.atf.gov/press/releases/2012/02/020112-sea-six-fairbanks-men-arrested-on-indictment-for-drug-conspiracy.html
Further, given the number of 'busts' of certain drug-type retail dealers lately, I suspect that State and Fed LE is protecting a larger, main-line, distributor in exchange for info on *some* of his clients. That Main-line runner will walk away with no prison time, his profits untouched, his repute in tact. As will the investors who backed him. And the politico/LE 'machine' that enabled him probably already has another runner bringing in supplies.
"Anything that makes $$$ is good", and anything that makes big $$$ in this State has a lot of political and LE influence.
That's why the 'War' effort is a farce.
His name is Brandon Haynes. I'm happy he doesn't know me. He lied on his own brother.
Good job........
Besides once behind bars for a few year they can perfect a few new songs based on a life of misery and repression.
The saying goes, "if you live in a glass house, you shouldn't throw stones."
Drug dealing "hip hop artists"?
Cliche much?
where OH where is the positivity in THAT?
Because CLEARLY that is why they got into it, for the GOOD they can do!
Seems like a popular move, when the rap/hip hop genre is steeped in marginalizing women, stereotyping urban culture in the lowest forms, glamorizing drug use and dealing, to WHAT end? To sell a MYTH of gaining notoriety and ill gotten fame, all to be on top of what is really a garbage heap in a small town.
You sound like someone with personal relationship to the accused, so YOU must know they are NOT so "legit", that they are not choir boys sitting in pews on Sunday morning, after partying and selling drugs the nights before.
So, the "pray for *dem* boys" is insulting to pass off their impending found guilt, to a "higher power" that we're all pretty sure doesn't condone it's "boys" selling drugs.
Oh, but we can hear it now this Sunday morning...
"OH Lordy, pleeeeeease free dem boys, they didn't know they were selling illegal drugs, they thought that power was fairy magic dust!" "When they were told it was caine, they thought it was sugar caine!"
Shows? What shows? They are all small time players, that pop in and out of OTHER peoples shows, or have their stripper pole parties in local bars, or in under 21 strip clubs, all activities luring in young local women into their stripper brothels and drug dens for a night.
so yes, just IGNORE the 30 THIRTY known sales they were caught red handed in, by all 6 of them, as listed in the reports, BECAUSE they are legit!
"I'm a businessman!"
yah, we've heard THAT before.