Crime & Safety

Leader of Cocaine Distribution Enterprise Sentenced to Life in Prison

Brooklyn's James Rosemond, who had stash houses in Queens, convicted on 13 counts.

A Brooklyn man was sentenced Friday to mandatory life imprisonment for leading a criminal enterprise that distributed thousands of pounds of cocaine and included a number of stash houses in Queens, the U.S. attorney for New York’s eastern district said.

James Rosemond, 48, of Brooklyn, was sentenced for operating the Rosemond Organization, which distributed thousands of pounds of cocaine and sold the drug on the streets of Queens and Brooklyn, U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said.

The defendant was also sentenced for numerous narcotics conspiracy offenses, firearms possession, money laundering and obstruction of justice.

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Rosemond was convicted on all 13 counts following a three-week jury trial in May 2012. As part of the sentence, he forfeited $10 million as well as property worth approximately $4 million.

“Rosemond styled himself a hip hop mogul, bringing the music of the streets to a wider audience and expanding opportunities of artists,” Lynch said. “In reality, his image as a music impresario was a cover for the real Jimmy Rosemond, a thug in a suit who flooded those same streets with cocaine and shuttled drugs and money from coast to coast.”

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Rosemond’s organization shipped boxes of mustard-covered cocaine from Los Angeles to New York City and then shipped proceeds back to California, using Federal Express and UPS.

In April 2010, law enforcement agents seized 27 kilograms of cocaine from the organization and, later, raided a Queens stash house, where they found 12 kilograms, a machine gun, ammunition, kilo presses and scales.

In December of that year, agents seized more than $785,000 in cash proceeds from narcotics trafficking that was stored in a music equipment case at a Manhattan rehearsal studio.

Between 2008 and 2010, law enforcement agents seized more than $2.8 million of the organization’s drug proceeds, Lynch said.

“As the head of this organization, Rosemond was overseeing the distribution of 50 to 100 kilos of cocaine per month into our communities while utilizing his position in the music industry to evade law enforcement,” said Brian Crowell, the DEA’s special agent in charge.

Rosemond sold a kilogram of cocaine to a cooperating witness on May 11, 2011. He fled after a warrant was issued for his arrest, resulting in a manhunt that lasted nearly two months.

A total 19 members and associates of the Rosemond Organization have been convicted, Lynch said.


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