United States Attorney Bill Nettles said Thursday that four Conway men pleaded not guilty after an indictment was unsealed concerning charges of cocaine and crack cocaine conspiracy.
Marcus Dalton Hemingway, (Face) age 36, Marco Delton Hemingway, (Co-Teezy or Co) age 36, Albert Tyrone Mayes, (JT) age 40, and Robert Hemingway, Jr., (Booda) age 34, were indicted earlier this year by a federal grand jury in a sealed indictment, Nettles said.
The incident, which was unsealed on Thursday, charged a cocaine and crack cocaine conspiracy, a violation of Title 21, United States Code, Section 846.
The four men appeared in federal court in Florence on Thursday afternoon for arraignment.
During the hearing, the government requested that all four defendants be detained. All four defendants entered not guilty pleas, waived their right to a detention hearing, and remain in federal custody, according to Nettles.
Nettles said the penalty for conspiracy to possess cocaine and crack cocaine is a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years, a fine of $1,000,000, a term of supervised release of at least three years in addition to any term of imprisonment, plus a special assessment of $100.
This indictment, unsealed Thursday, follows a year-long undercover investigation by local, state, and federal law enforcement. The undercover operation yielded multiple drug purchases by undercover officers from dealers in the Conway community.
The indictment is part of the “C-S.T.A.N.D.” program launched in Conway in late 2013. The program, an acronym for “Conway—Starting Toward a New Direction” is an application of the Drug Market Intervention program, coordinated by the United States Attorney’s Office and most recently utilized in the Charleston Farms community in North Charleston beginning in 2011.
The initiative is a unified, proactive approach that bands together local, state, and federal law enforcement with community partners in an effort to eradicate open drug dealing in a multiple block area of Conway.
In addition to the federal and state arrests effected today, several letters, in lieu of arrest warrants, were delivered today by law enforcement to lower level targets notifying them of a “call-in meeting” to be held next Wednesday at the Conway Recreation Center located at 1515 Mill Pond Road, Conway. This meeting is open to the public.
Members of the law enforcement team involved in this initiative include the Conway Police Department, the 15th Circuit Drug Enforcement Unit, the Horry County Police Department, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED), the Florence Police Department, the 15th Circuit Solicitors Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
This case is assigned to Assistant United States Attorney Lance Crick of the Greenville office and Assistant United States Attorney Chris Taylor of the Florence office.