WILMINGTON — A 28-year-old Wilmington man, Rufus Parker, will serve six-and-a-half years in federal prison after pleading guilty to several drug charges.
On July 9, 2018, Parker pled guilty to six counts of distributing powder cocaine. He pled guilty to additional counts of charging conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute cocaine on November 30, 2018. Parker was the fifth of six co-defendants to be sentenced in this case. Four co-defendants have previously received sentences ranging from 60 to 240 months,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of North Carolina.
The arrests and subsequent sentencing come from a lengthy undercover operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and Wilmington Police Department.
“Beginning in December 2016 and continuing until the federal indictment in August of 2017, ATF used a confidential informant, undercover agents, and a wired undercover apartment to investigate gang and drug activity in the Wilmington, North Carolina area. Victor Dorm, a principal target of the investigation, was a leader of a subset of the Bloods street gang. Officers learned during the course of the investigation that Parker, a close associate of Dorm, supplied Dorm and other Bloods gang members with powder cocaine. The gang then cooked the powder cocaine into crack cocaine, which they sold in the Wilmington area,” according to the press release.
“During the course of the investigation, law enforcement was able to conduct large numbers of controlled purchases of contraband from each of the six co-defendants, as well as from five additional men who have pled guilty in separate federal cases. The confidential informant and undercover agents conducted roughly three-dozen transactions, purchasing cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, counterfeit currency, and multiple firearms,” the release concludes.
