Former Inmate Sentenced For Prison Bribery And Contraband Scheme

The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, announced that ANTHONY ELLISON, a former inmate of the Metropolitan Correctional Center (“MCC”), a federal jail, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter to 29 months in prison on each of the two counts on which he was previously convicted—and which will run concurrently to one another and consecutively to the federal sentence ELLISON was already serving on a separate case—for participating in wide-ranging bribery and prison contraband conspiracies with MCC employees, inmates, and others.  

“Many good New Yorkers believe our prisons are places for incarceration and, at least for some, rehabilitation,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton.  “The hope for rehabilitation is illusory in an environment where inmates and staff are trafficking in drugs and other contraband.  Today’s sentence demonstrates that this Office and our law enforcement partners are committed to rooting out corruption in our prisons.”

According to the Indictment, public court filings and proceedings, and the evidence presented at trial:

ELLISON, a/k/a/ “Harv,” the defendant, was an inmate at the MCC.  ELLISON participated with other inmates and MCC guards in an extensive bribery and contraband distribution scheme within the jail between approximately 2018 and 2021. During the course of the conspiracy, between approximately 2019 and 2020, at least ten MCC inmates, including ELLISON, paid nearly $80,000 in bribes to Perry Joyner, a corrupt MCC correctional officer.  The inmates paid the bribes through friends and relatives outside the jail, who used money transfer applications, such as CashApp, to transfer money to associates of Joyner, who then provided the bribes to Joyner himself.  In exchange for those bribes, Joyner smuggled large amounts of contraband into the MCC.  That contraband included drugs (such as oxycodone, alprazolam, Suboxone, marijuana, and synthetic cannabinoids, commonly known as “K2”), dozens of cellphones, and cartons of cigarettes.  ELLISON and other MCC inmates then sold much of that contraband to other inmates at a profit as part of a widespread illicit market within the MCC.  For example, ELLISON charged other inmates as much as $100 for a single cigarette and as much as $5,000 for a used iPhone.   

In approximately early 2020, Joyner left the MCC, and the jail initiated a series of lockdowns, first to search for contraband and then in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  As a result of those lockdowns and Joyner’s departure, the contraband market in the MCC dried up until ELLISON found a new source of contraband. In particular, between approximately 2020 and 2021, ELLISON conspired and had a sexual relationship with another corrupt MCC employee, Sharon Griffith-McKnight, who provided contraband to ELLISON, most of which he then re-sold to other inmates.

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In addition to today’s prison sentence, ELLISON, 37, of Brooklyn, New York, was sentenced to three years of supervised release and $200 in special assessments—$100 for each count of conviction. 

Mr. Clayton praised the outstanding investigative work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General; the Special Agents of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York; and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

This case is being handled by the Office’s Public Corruption Unit.  Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jessica Greenwood, Jonathan E. Rebold, and Daniel H. Wolf are in charge of the prosecution.