CLINTON
As the leader of a statewide drug ring, Antonio McKoy was connected enough to get bricks of cocaine from international cartels, careful enough to bury bags of cash around rural Sampson County and arrogant enough to brag about being “hood rich” even while on trial, federal prosecutors said Friday.
From his home in tiny Garland, population 619, he ran a drug network so extensive that he boasted of receiving 15 kilograms of cocaine every other week — drugs his co-conspirators distributed across Eastern North Carolina and into both Raleigh and Charlotte.
While being prosecuted in U.S. District Court, he wrote a letter to the mother of one of the witnesses in the case against him. “I don’t care how much time they give me,” McKoy wrote, “they can’t hold me forever. So when I get back I am still gone be the man.”
On Friday, U.S. attorneys from the Raleigh office announced that McKoy, 34, had been sentenced to life in federal prison without parole. To date, more than 30 members of his organization are serving sentences that total more than a century.
“We have a rural, sparsely populated county,” said Sampson County Sheriff Jimmy Thornton, speaking at a news conference in Clinton. “No one can imagine the operation that Mr. McKoy had and drug activity and how it was branching out, not just in our county but everywhere else.”
By the end of the investigation, agents had seized 1,000 kilograms of cocaine, 1,000 kilograms of crack cocaine and large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine. The value of confiscated drugs rose to $10 million, the highest in a North Carolina federal court, said Robin Pendergraft, criminal chief at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Raleigh.
In 2015, the Sampson County Sheriff’s Office got information about McKoy’s operation, nicknamed the Sugar Hill Gang for the lane where he lived in Garland, Pendergraft said.
Later that year, agents acting on a search warrant found kilo-sized bags full of coffee grounds and air fresheners that tested positive for cocaine and resulted in state charges. After more surveillance and drug buys, sheriff’s deputies were able to obtain a wiretap in 2016 and monitor thousands of calls. Thornton said Sampson is the only local authority in the state granted wiretapping powers.
Investigators learned drugs were coming into McKoy’s Sampson County headquarters from Atlanta and Charlotte via sources known to be cartel-connected, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Brad Knott.
“When you get to that level of supply the pool of suppliers who can meet that demand is smaller,” Knott said.
Most involved in the conspiracy pleaded guilty, Pendergraft said. Of the three who went to trial, McKoy received a life sentence; Jabarr Ryeheine Rudolph, 39, received 20 years; Tony Chevallier, 40, received 30 years.
In the letter used as evidence, McKoy wrote, “Don’t believe ppls when they say they took everything I had because they didn’t. ... I still got my money I ain’t worried about nothing when I get back because I am hood rich.”
Knott said the investigation continues and the total sum of McKoy’s money has not been recovered. He was known to launder it through a trucking company and to package thousands inside vacuum-sealed bags. He would disappear on a four-wheeler carrying the money and come back without it.
“We believed that it is stashed somewhere,” Knott said. “It is buried and hidden.”
This story was originally published June 28, 2019 3:04 PM.