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Man gets more than nine years in drug trafficking case
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
In November 2016, wiretaps revealed Cedis Martin was paranoid about federal agents chasing and catching him as he was dealing heroin, cocaine and fentanyl.
In one recorded conversation he told another person he was in an SUV – his SUV – and he was petrified when it was pulled over and police found an AK-47 inside and a magazine in another part of the car.
Martin, 31, of Warren, who was sentenced Monday in U.S. Northern District Court to 91/2 years in federal prison, said on the wiretap he was speechless when police let everyone go and arrested no one.
He speculated on the wiretap the reason he was let go was because being caught in a car with an assault rifle was not “big enough” for the feds. He said he was sure federal investigators told police to pull the car over and he was only let go because there was not a large quantity of drugs inside.
Martin was indicted in May along with six other people, for selling drugs in the Youngstown and Farrell, Pa., areas between February 2015 and April 2017.
In April 2017, police arrested Martin for taking part in the armed robbery of a Niles jewelry store. He is serving a four-year prison term for that crime. His federal sentence will be run concurrently with that case.
Federal authorities said Martin was supplied with drugs from Detroit, and he doled them out to others in the ring from a cellphone store he was working at in Youngstown managed by one of his co-defendants.
Investigators were able to get search warrants to tap phones of those in the ring, and the wiretaps show Martin talking with several people about how to obtain drugs, including how much he would pay.
A 32-page indictment also describes some of the code words used by those in the ring, and several used a “trap phone,” or a prepaid cellphone they would use for their drug transactions.
In the November 2016 traffic stop, Martin does not say which department pulled him over, but he said the officers told him and the others in his Dodge Durango that because the rifle and magazine were separated and not within easy reach of one person, they were not charged with a firearms offense.
Martin said he was afraid because one of the passengers he was with had three prior firearm convictions, and he said he had plenty of bail money.
Martin was also upset his Durango was “ripped up” by police during a search. Even though the SUV was his, Martin had a woman with a valid driver’s license driving the car, which is common for people engaging in criminal activity who do not have a driver’s license, authorities said.