A Maryland federal grand jury has indicted two Bowie men on charges that they ran a heroin trafficking ring for most of the last decade.
Eric Hellams and Gregory Lewis were arrested in April on charges that they have distributed more than two pounds of heroin, the highest category of heroin trafficking charges. According to the indictment filed in Greenbelt’s federal court as well as recently unsealed court documents, the two men have bought seven Maryland properties since 2003, using profits from their heroin dealing business.
Recommended Stories
Drug Enforcement Administration agents in New York City first caught wind of the duo’s deals in June 2008, when Lewis reportedly gave a confidential DEA source $200,000 to be laundered in Queens, N.Y., court documents said. Agents linked Lewis to the rented car he was driving and began to track him, and later Hellams, in Maryland.
Through a second confidential source, investigators learned that Hellams routinely bought pounds of heroin-cutting materials from a Prince George’s County store that specializes in drug paraphernalia, a DEA agent wrote in a sworn statement. The quantity of cutting materials Hellams purchased “would support the preparation of kilogram quantities of heroin for distribution,” the agent wrote. A third source told authorities he had been buying heroin from Hellams and Lewis since 2003, documents said. Meanwhile, in August 2008 and again in January 2009, Lewis was twice stopped by police. In both cases, police found hidden compartments in his cars, the statement said. Maryland State Police found a compartment built into the floorboard under the back seat of Lewis’ Ford Expedition. In January 2009, New Jersey State Police found a compartment hidden behind the radio of Lewis’ Ford Taurus. As a result, he was convicted in New Jersey in March 2009 for possessing drug paraphernalia. According to court documents, the two set up a front, Dreemr’s Trucking, to appear as a legitimate employer for each, but then failed to use it. For example, on tax documents Hellams reportedly claimed $3,926 in earnings from the trucking company in the first quarter of 2007. But in July 2007, he bought a $121,000 Mercedes-Benz CL550 coupe using a loan for $118,000. On the loan documents, he listed annual income of $225,000 from Dreemr’s. [email protected]
