Drug Dealing 'Kingpin' Sentenced to Life in Jail
The head of a multi-state cocaine trafficking operation has been sentenced to life in jail.
KYW's Hadas Kuznits reports 39-year-old Maurice Phillips had been convicted of distributing thousands of kilograms of cocaine along the eastern seaboard, then putting a hit out against a professional money launderer he had hired when he discovered she was working with the federal government. That hit resulted in her murder as well as the murder of her adult godson.
Assistant US attorney LC Wright says at the sentencing Phillips received four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole:
"He received one for the witness tampering which caused the death of a witness. He received one for the two murders that he conspired to commit and one for the actual murders themselves that were committed. He also received a lifetime sentence without parole for conducting what's known as a continuing criminal enterprise which is the so-called kingpin statute."
Wright says Phillips, who was eligible for the death penalty, made a lengthy statement at his sentencing in which he insisted he was innocent.
