Ted Delinois, an enterprising young man from New York, went into the cocaine business two years ago with just a few rocks of crack and a bus ticket to Roanoke.
He found such a lucrative market for the potent drug that he returned to Roanoke regularly – bringing more drugs each time – eventually becoming what federal prosecutors call a “founding father” of a serious crack problem in the city.
Delinois, 21, lived the drug dealer’s life to the fullest.
But in a federal courtroom where Delinois was convicted Wednesday after a three-day trial, his former lifestyle came back to haunt him.
Testimony showed how he drove flashy cars equipped with cellular telephones, traveled frequently to New York and Miami to replenish his drug supply and commanded a gang of more than 15 street dealers.
Like a young professional obsessed with his resume, Delinois recorded his accomplishments. He and his friends took photographs.
The pictures show Delinois and his alleged accomplices hamming it up for the camera – wielding semiautomatic weapons, sipping cheap wine from champagne glasses and flashing large wads of cash.
At a trial this week in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, the photographs were shown to a jury.
And Delinois, who rose from an unknown street dealer to a major cocaine supplier in less than a year, now faces 20 years to life in prison.
Wednesday afternoon, after deliberating for several hours, the jury convicted the Haitian native on eight counts of drug conspiracy and gun charges.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Mott said Delinois is one of the largest catches so far in the net of Operation Caribbean Sunset – a federal, state and local effort to rid Roanoke of crack.
Authorities estimate that each month, Delinois’ operation brought several kilograms of cocaine into Roanoke.
The case illustrated how easy it was in 1988 for an out-of-town teen-ager to set up a crack enterprise in Roanoke, capitalizing on a crack demand that grew faster than the supply.
Because Roanoke’s crack supply had not reached big-city levels, Delinois was able to charge five times what a rock sold for in New York.
“He found a land of milk and honey in Roanoke, ” Mott told the jury in his closing arguments.
Manuel Martinez, a government witness, testified Monday that he and Delinois began to make trips to Roanoke in 1988 to sell drugs. At first, they dealt in small quantities.
But as the drug operation became more sophisticated, Delinois hired about 15 people who sold drugs for a percentage of the profits.
Making a $12,000 cash down payment, Delinois bought a home on Corbin Circle Northwest that prosecutors say became the hub of his drug operation.
Photographs in a family album seized from the home during a drug raid in October show Delinois and his friends enjoying the profits of their illegal trade.
In group photos, Delinois was always pictured in the center with others clustered around him – an arrangement prosecutors said indicated his role as the leader of a gang that informally called itself “the posse.”
As his business grew, Delinois became more cautious.
Prosecutors said he insulated himself from street sales by recruiting “lieutenants” from New York to dispatch drugs to street dealers and by maintaining “safe houses” in which crack was cooked and stored.
He also armed himself with a pistol-gripped, 12-gauge riot shotgun – a weapon federal agents said he seldom went without.
Bill Cleaveland, a Roanoke lawyer who represented Delinois, argued that his client was not the drug dealer the government described.
Cleaveland complained that federal agents cast a wide net that exaggerated Delinois’ role by charging him repeatedly for the same actions.
“If some cocaine came into Ted Delinois’ hands, he was charged with possessing it, converting it into crack and selling it – all the same cocaine, ” Cleaveland said. “Which is pure overload.”
The defense attorney also questioned the people who testified against Delinois: paid government informants and fellow drug dealers who cut deals to exchange damaging testimony for lenient treatment.
Mott admitted that his witnesses were no angels.
But in a drug case, he told the jury, “you don’t get bank presidents, Liberty Baptist students or judges who know about these things.”
Although Delinois faces a long prison sentence while some of his co-conspirators do not, Mott urged the jury not to feel sorry for him.
“He’s the one who decided to get rich overnight and bring all these people down to Roanoke, ” Mott told the jurors. “And you all shouldn’t have to stand for that.”