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Rap music studio in West End was front for drug ring
Saturday, February 24, 2001 By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Big Gate Productions was supposed to be a music production company in the West End, recording and promoting rap out of a sound studio at 391 Village Road in the Westgate Village housing complex in the city's Fairywood section.
Money flowed and times were good, for a while. Once, the company even rented one of the Gateway Clipper party liners for a bash.
But the cash didn't come from rap music.
Big Gate was a front for a ring selling crack and powder cocaine in huge amounts.
From 1995 to 1998, court records show, Apartment 391 was the focal point for distribution of an estimated 100 to 125 kilograms of cocaine supplied from New York City and sold on the streets of the West End, McKees Rocks, Beaver Falls and the town of Republic in Fayette County.
To date, 12 members of the conspiracy have been prosecuted in federal court, and yesterday, another ringleader went down.
Saying his conduct had a "severe impact on the community," U.S. District Judge Robert Cindrich sentenced Robert Randy Simpkins, 27, listed in state records as treasurer of Big Gate, to 14 years in prison for his role in arranging drug shipments from New York and wiring $229,000 in drug proceeds to his contacts there.
Simpkins, of Brooklyn, will soon join his colleagues behind bars, including Big Gate's president, George Williams, 40, who on Feb. 4 was sentenced to 10 years and 10 months in prison.
The only major player left is Elson Warren, 24, of New York, who was indicted with Williams and Simpkins in 1999 and remains a fugitive.
The sentencing was one of the last court actions in the dismantling of a sophisticated operation that used a network of couriers to shuttle drugs and cash from New York. One courier was caught with $16,000 at Pittsburgh International Airport, and others routinely carried as much as $20,000 in cash.
Simpkins had tried to play down his part in the conspiracy, but Cindrich said he played "an integral role" in laundering money and arranging for the transport of cocaine, which sells for $18,000 to $28,000 a kilo on the street.
Cindrich did show a measure of sympathy, however, in giving Simpkins a term in the low end of the guidelines when he could have handed him a maximum of 17 1/2 years. Part of that decision was based on a raft of letters sent by Simpkins' family, including his 9-year-old son.
"I almost cried when I read it," said the judge. "I felt sorry for the son. But I'm afraid there's not a lot we can do about that at this stage."
The case was unusual because of the sheer volume of drugs involved.
If any of the defendants had gone to trial, prosecutor Troy Rivetti said, the government would have been able to prove the ring was responsible for distributing 50 kilos of cocaine. But agents investigating the case said the real number was at least twice that.
"This is an extraordinary amount of cocaine," Rivetti said at Simpkins' plea hearing in October. "The powder cocaine was cooked into crack, usually at another location, and 391 Village Road [the apartment] was the distribution center where people came to obtain [it]. Drug use took place regularly there, and the crack distribution was going on in the very residence where Mr. Williams' children lived."
Williams, who had taken the name of his brother, Eugene, because he was wanted for attempted murder in New York, lived at the apartment with his common-law wife, Erikka Matthews, and their three young children.
Matthews, listed as secretary of Big Gate, was also part of the conspiracy, at one point arranging for the leasing of rental cars for other members of the ring to foil police who might stop them. She agreed to cooperate with the prosecution and got probation, although she was not a witness against her husband.
Part of the government's case was $400,000 in wire transfers that criminal investigators from the Internal Revenue Service tracked down. The IRS got involved because Big Gate's officers were flush with cash but weren't paying taxes.
Some of the money was used to pay for recording time at another facility, and some was pumped into Big Gate, which Williams, Simpkins and others hoped to turn into a legitimate production company.
Rap was their hobby, but the enterprise did have a viable group of musicians who performed, and the production facility in the apartment had recording equipment.
Agents raided the place in 1998.
Among other items, the agents found 112 grams of crack, 231 grams of powder cocaine, a loaded shotgun and 12 .38-caliber shells stuffed in a child's sock.
Besides Simpkins, Williams, Warren and Matthews, other members of the ring, all of whom are in prison, are:
David Foster, 27, of McKees Rocks; Andrew Michael Jones, 23, of Fayette County; Darnell Young, 30, and his brother, Sharron Young, 25, both of McKees Rocks; Eric Clark, 30, of Hazelwood; Thomas Glover, 25, of Lancaster; Monty Montgomery, 30, of Westgate Village; Claude Jenkins, 23, of McKees Rocks; and Keith Reddix, 26, of McKees Rocks.
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