Tuesday, December 16, 2014
YOUNGSTOWN
Just as his detention hearing was to begin Monday afternoon, a Campbell man charged with supplying heroin to eight other people for distribution in the Youngstown area waived the hearing and consented to be detained without bond.
U.S. Magistrate George J. Limbert then ordered that Jean Carlos Martinez, 31, remain in the custody of U.S. marshals.
Martinez is charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute heroin, two counts of using a telephone to facilitate drug trafficking and one count of heroin distribution.
Martinez is one of 16 people charged in a 119-count federal indictment in a purported ring that brought the drug here from New York City between January 2012 and Nov. 30 this year. The indictment was unsealed last week.
A Mahoning County grand jury secretly indicted 37 other people on related state charges.
Martinez’s lawyer, Sam Amendolara, declined after court to explain why his client waived the hearing.
David Toepfer, a Youngstown-based assistant U.S. attorney, said after court that Martinez is facing a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison if he’s convicted of all the charges against him.
A Spanish-language interpreter translated the brief court proceedings for Martinez.
County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains said those who were federally indicted were responsible for selling the drug, but those indicted on state charges were primarily users of the drug.
The Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force was the lead investigative agency.
Also participating in the investigation were the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service, the county sheriff’s office, Youngstown police and the county prosecutor’s office.
The ring was based on Youngstown’s East Side, and its customers were from around the Mahoning Valley and western Pennsylvania areas, police said.
The indictment cites details of phone calls between purported ring members arranging drug buys and sales and heroin purchases by undercover police and confidential sources between Sept. 30, 2013, and Oct. 30 this year.