GREENVILLE– The United States Attorney’s Office announced that on April 12, 2017 in Federal court, Senior United States District Judge Malcolm J. Howard sentenced TROY AHKEEM WILSON, 38, of Wilmington to 144 months imprisonment, followed by 5 years of supervised release.
WILSON was named in a two-count Superseding Indictment filed on September 21, 2016, and pled guilty to Possess with the Intent to Distribute a Quantity of Heroin and Possess with the Intent to Distribute 40 Grams of More of Fentanyl on January 12, 2017.
The basis of his charges stemmed from two incidents in February and April of 2016. On February 3, 2016, officers from the Duplin County Sheriff’s Office conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle driven by WILSON. WILSON and a passenger in the vehicle gave consent for the vehicle to be searched. During the search of the vehicle, officers observed an off-white powdery substance on WILSON’s hands and coat and seized an open plastic bag containing .81 gram of heroin on the ground where WILSON had been sitting. WILSON and the passenger were arrested and transported to jail.
Upon being searched at the jail, a small plastic package containing 16.73 grams of heroin was located in the passenger’s bra. She told law enforcement officers that she and WILSON drove to New York where WILSON met a man in order to purchase heroin. On the trip back from New York to Wilmington, WILSON possessed three glove “fingers” of heroin and gave her one. Law enforcement officers later searched the police vehicle used to transport WILSON to jail and located another small plastic package containing 13.18 grams of heroin.
On April 29, 2016, officers from the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle driven by WILSON. Upon approach, the officer smelled marijuana coming from the vehicle. A search of the vehicle resulted in the seizure of three small bags of marijuana, five bags of heroin banded together, and a large bag containing several individual bags of fentanyl, and other drug paraphernalia. The amount of drugs seized from the vehicle was 95.70 grams of fentanyl and 3.48 grams of a fentanyl and heroin mixture. WILSON was arrested and transported to jail.
Fentanyl is an extremely dangerous drug to law enforcement officers and, if improperly handled, it has deadly consequences. According to the DEA, it is 40 to 50 times stronger than street-level heroin. A very small amount ingested or absorbed through the skin can kill. For more information about this dangerous drug, you can go to this link https://ndews.umd.edu/sites/ndews.umd.edu/files/DEA%20Fentanyl.pdf.
Based on the investigation, WILSON is accountable for approximately 99.18 grams of fentanyl, 30.94 grams of heroin, 14 grams of marijuana, and 0.4 gram of crack cocaine.
This case was investigated by the FBI’s Coastal Carolinas Criminal Enterprise Task Force consisting of the FBI’s Wilmington Resident Agency, the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office, the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office, and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. Additional assistance was provided by the Duplin County Sheriff’s Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Howard prosecuted the case on behalf of the government.