OREGON MAN SENTENCED FOR RACKETEERING AND PASSPORT CRIMES

Dennis Bruce Hammons, 61, of Medford, Oregon, will serve 105 months in federal prison for Conspiracy to Travel and Transport in Aid of Racketeering Enterprises, Making False Statements to Obtain a Fraudulent Passport, and violations of supervised release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced. Hammons was sentenced on Friday by Chief U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise, Idaho. Following his prison term, Hammons will be on supervised release for an additional five years. Hammons entered his guilty pleas to the charges in June 2008.

Hammons was a co-defendant in the U.S. v. Kent Jones case. The racketeering charges stemmed from Hammons’ role as a source of marijuana for Jones and Hammons’ transportation of $420,000 in drug proceeds in April 2005. The passport violation involved his acquisition of a false passport in the name of his deceased brother so that he could travel in and out of Mexico while on supervised release. The Jones organization, which had been identified as a Regional Priority Target by the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), operated throughout the United States, importing drugs from Mexico and Southern California. The drugs were typically transported to the Portland, Oregon area before being shipped to Idaho, Washington, and other places in the mid-west and east coast, including the states of Colorado, Ohio, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Jersey, and New York. In addition to the importation and transportation of marijuana, the group was heavily involved in growing large quantities of marijuana in Oregon in the 1990s, both indoors and on public lands.

The organization is alleged to have reaped more than $20 million in drug proceeds over a 30 year period. The original indictment, handed down by a grand jury in Boise, Idaho, in June of 2006, sought forfeiture of more than $24 million in proceeds from drug trafficking, including $20 million in cash, a variety of business interests, airplanes, boats, vehicles, and real property in Priest River, Idaho; Portland, Eugene, Roseburg, Lake Osewgo, Bend, Hillsboro and Lakeside, Oregon; Vancouver, Washington; Los Angeles, Adelaide, Newbury Park, Lancaster, Canoga Park, as well as Mendocino County, California; Evergreen and Pine, Colorado; and Kihei and Kahuka, Hawaii.

The organization allegedly had its origins in a group of high school friends from Days Creek, Oregon, with other friends and family members added over the years. The group’s early activities centered around growing and selling marijuana, but they later expanded to include smuggling large quantities of drugs from Mexico and Southern California.

The OCDETF investigation was handled by the District of Idaho because it stemmed from the case of a major drug trafficker, Leland Lang of Stites, Idaho, who was successfully prosecuted in Idaho in 2002. The Jones organization supplied Lang with large quantities of drugs which were distributed in Idaho and various midwest and eastern states. Over one million dollars in currency was seized from Lang’s mountaintop residence in Stites in 2002. Lang is currently serving a 9.5 year sentence in federal prison.

Hammons is the fourteenth defendant sentenced in the case.

Agencies involved in the investigation and arrests include IRS Criminal Investigation Division, the Idaho State Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Douglas County Interagency Narcotics Team, Oregon Department of Justice, Oregon State Police, the U.S. Marshals Service, Westside Interagency Narcotics Team, the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office, Pacific Northwest Fugitive Task Force and Southwest Washington Regional SWAT Team. The OCDETF program is a federal multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional task force which supplies supplemental federal funding to federal and state agencies involved in the identification, investigation, and prosecution of major drug trafficking organizations.