TAMPA —
The alleged drug “kingpin” who was ordered out of his Lanier County home via bullhorn among a tight perimeter of law-enforcement officers in March 2011 was sentenced to 15 years in prison Friday afternoon.
The sentence levied against Isaac Lee Camon, 37, was the result of a plea agreement that was filed into the court docket of the Middle District of Florida on Nov. 20, 2011, according to Cindy Bedell, career law clerk of Florida’s Middle District .
The head of the Camon Drug Trafficking Organization (CDTO) — which law-enforcement officials said had cocaine-trafficking operations in Georgia, Florida and Texas — agreed to plead guilty and testify against others involved in the drug-trafficking ring in exchange for the prospect of a milder sentence, according to a report from the Lanier County News.
On Friday, Camon received 10 years for a drug-trafficking charge and five years for a firearms charge, stated Bedell. She said that the sentences must be served consecutively and said that Camon also received five years of supervised release.
Camon’s sentencing is one of the last in a long string of convictions all stemming from drug arrests made in Georgia and Florida from 2009 to 2011. Camon was linked to other defendants through payments paid to attorneys.
A 2011 Times article states that Orlando attorney Michael O. Donaldson was disqualified from representing James Jackson Mack of Valdosta in a case in Florida due to Donaldson’s alleged payment by Camon to defend Mack in an upcoming trial. U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Wilson disqualified the attorney after Mack initially claimed that he did not have the means to hire an attorney, but Donaldson was given money on his behalf by Camon to represent him, according to testimony in the Tampa hearing.
Mack was arrested in 2009 along with Reggae star Buju Banton and his driver, Ian Thomas, when Mack and Thomas attempted to purchase cocaine from an undercover officer in Sarasota, Fla. Both Mack and Thomas pleaded guilty and were sentenced in 2011, with Thomas receiving four years and Mack receiving 10 years, which he is serving in the Jesup, Ga., federal prison. Banton was also sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison in Tampa.
Camon’s arrest on March 29, 2011, was a result of months of investigation and the combined efforts of Federal Bureau of Investigation agents from Valdosta, Thomasville and Columbus. They were assisted by the FBI’s Gang Task Force, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Drug Task Force, the Lanier County Sheriff’s Office, the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office and the Valdosta Police Department.
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