Beltsville Condo Owner Sentenced to More Than Two Years in Federal Prison for Managing a Drug-Involved Premises

 Drug Trafficking Funded and Fueled Sex Trafficking Within the Premises and Elsewhere; Collected Rent and Purchased Drugs from the Tenants, Visiting the Drug-Involved Premises at Least Weekly

Greenbelt, Maryland – U.S. District Judge George J. Hazel today sentenced Wayne Deo Ramsaran, age 46, of Jessup, Maryland, to time served of 29 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for managing a drug-involved premises.  Ramsaran must also forfeit all rights and interests to the condominium.

The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Robert K. Hur; Special Agent in Charge Timothy Jones of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Baltimore Field Division; and Interim Chief Hector Velez of the Prince George’s County Police Department.

According to Ramsaran’s plea agreement, from October 2016 through at least February 2018, Ramsaran owned a condominium in the 11000 block of Cherry Hill Road in Beltsville, Maryland.  Ramsaran did not reside at the residence but rented rooms and charged daily and/or monthly rent to other individuals, including Kenneth Wayne Hart, whom Ramsaran knew manufactured and sold narcotics at the location.  The narcotics trafficking funded and fueled Hart’s sex trafficking operations within the drug-involved premises and at other locations in Maryland and elsewhere.

Ramsaran admitted that during this time, he visited the drug-involved premises several times a week, and sometimes daily, to obtain rent from tenants either in cash or quantities of narcotics—usually crack cocaine.  Ramsaran also visited the drug-involved premises to use narcotics—at first heroin and then later crack cocaine—with other residents.  When he went inside the drug-involved premises, Ramsaran admitted that he knew that the tenants used, sold, and manufactured narcotics, including powder and crack cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and prescription pills, in his condominium.  Narcotics customers visited the premises every day, at all hours of the day.

Search warrants executed by law enforcement on April 21, 2017 and February 28, 2018, revealed and confirmed the ongoing manufacturing, storing, distribution, and use of controlled substances at the drug-involved premises, with law enforcement recovering quantities of heroin, crack cocaine, Xanax, amphetamine, and drug paraphernalia, including two water bongs, digital scales, cellular telephones, crack pipes and stems, and hypodermic needles.

It was foreseeable to Ramsaran that the tenants of the drug-involved premises distributed at least 525 grams of cocaine and 700 grams of heroin to their customers.

On October 7, 2020, Kenneth Wayne Hart, a/k/a Redds, Wayne Hawkins, Hawk, Big Daddy, Billy Reds, and Bill Red Hart, age 59, of Beltsville, Maryland, was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison on federal charges of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute narcotics; a sex trafficking conspiracy; two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion; and witness tampering.  Hart was convicted of those charges on March 12, 2020, after a seven-day jury trial.                    

United States Attorney Robert K. Hur praised the ATF and Prince George’s County Police Department for their work in the investigation.  Mr. Hur thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jennifer R. Sykes and Daniel C. Gardner, who prosecuted the case.