A Prince George’s County man was convicted in the murder-for-hire slaying of a woman who laundered money for his cocaine empire.
Thirty-eight-year old Maurice Phillips, of Upper Marlboro, was also convicted of seven other counts, including of heading up the Phillips Cocaine Organization, a drug network that moved more than $31 million in cocaine from Texas to the eastern seaboard.
Jurors will begin hearing arguments Monday on whether Phillips should be sentenced to death.
Prosecutors described Phillips was a shrewd businessman who claimed an accounting degree from the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore.
The Phillips Cocaine Organization was a large-scale operation, using tractor-trailers to haul huge quantities of cocaine across the country to distribute throughout the mid-Atlantic region from 1998 through 2007. To launder the proceeds, Phillips hired Chineta Glanville, a professional money launderer and expert forger, prosecutors said.
But in 2002, Phillips learned that Glanville was cooperating with federal investigators about his organization and he turned to his cousin Bryant Phillips in Tennessee. He paid his cousin $18,000 to kill the 50-year-old Glanville.
Bryant Phillips dressed up as a FedEx delivery man, carried a FedEx envelope and knocked on Glanville’s door. Her godson Dane King answered the door. Prosecutors said he shot and killed King and then Glanville.
Maurice Phillips’ former girlfriend, Chanell Cunningham, testified that when she asked Phillips about Glanville’s death, he said that he did it to protect his drug empire and prevent Cunningham from going to jail.
“I did it for you,” Cunningham quoted Phillips as saying.
His two co-defendants at trial, Sherman Kemp and David Garcia, were each convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Kemp ran Phillips’ Baltimore operation and Garcia helped bring the cocaine from Texas.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
