A Fresh Meadows man will spend the next seven years behind bars for selling heroin in a South Jamaica public housing complex.
Lamont Moran, 30, pleaded guilty this past April to running a heroin distribution operation near the Baisley Park Houses from 2015 until his arrest in September 2016. He was sentenced to 84 months in jail.
According to court filings, Moran was affiliated with the violent street gang “Get it in Stacks” (“GI$”), a subset of the nationwide Bloods gang operating near the Baisley Park Houses. Moran supervised street-level dealers, including at least one GI$ member and several elderly heroin addicts, who distributed heroin and fentanyl. The drugs were labeled with brand names such as “Batman,” “Call of Duty” and “Sleepys.”
Moran also sold heroin and fentanyl directly to users. From March to August of 2016, Moran made more than 15 drug sales to a confidential FBI source. On many of these occasions, the defendant sold the source fentanyl instead of heroin — without ever revealing this fact to the source.
Moran was arrested in September 2016. He acknowledged in post-arrest statements that he personally did not use heroin: “I don’t use this [expletive]. I don’t touch this [expletive]. … I don’t view it as drugs, I view it as money.” Police searched Moran’s phone and found more evidence of gang affiliation, plus photographs of Moran with wads of cash and multiple firearms.
Four other defendants have been charged with heroin distribution crimes in this case, and each has pleaded guilty. Michael Singletary, 43, was sentenced to a year and a day of imprisonment for a single incident of heroin distribution on Aug. 8. David Young, 66, one of Moran’s street-level dealers, was sentenced to 36 months’ imprisonment on Oct. 3. William Parker, 53, a career offender and another one of the defendant’s street-level dealers — was sentenced to 96 months’ imprisonment on Oct. 27. Dennis Pristell, 57, a street-level dealer who worked for Moran, is awaiting sentencing.
“The defendant Lamont Moran promoted and profited from the opioid epidemic in our District,” said Acting United States Attorney Bridget M. Rohde. “Today he was held accountable. Together with our law enforcement partners, this office will continue to investigate and prosecute those like the defendant who seek to line their own pockets by selling these dangerous drugs and harming our community.”
