Atlanta Resident Sentenced in Major Crack Cocaine Trafficking Organization Operating in the Morristown Area

GREENEVILLE, TN—Shawn Waller, 31, of Atlanta, Ga., was sentenced on Tuesday, October 25, 2011, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, at Greeneville, by the Honorable R. Leon Jordan, U.S. District Judge, to serve 240 months in prison for his role in the overall drug trafficking organization led primarily by co-defendant Andrew Montgomery. Montgomery was previously sentenced to 275 months in prison by Judge Jordan. Waller was the final defendant of the 32 charged in this case to be sentenced.

Montgomery operated a sophisticated drug trafficking and money laundering organization responsible for multiple kilogram amounts of cocaine and crack cocaine being supplied from the Atlanta, Ga., area and distributed in and around Morristown, Tenn. Montgomery stipulated that he obtained approximately 150 kilograms of cocaine from various Mexican sources of supply, which was ultimately distributed to many others in the organization, where it was cooked into crack cocaine and sold in the Atlanta area, or transported to the Morristown area to be cooked and distributed there. Waller assisted Montgomery and co-defendant Jason Ware in dealing cocaine base in Atlanta and Morristown. The overall conspiracy also involved firearms and money laundering.

The indictment and subsequent convictions were the result of a multi-state, multi-agency investigation involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Johnson City, Tenn., FBI’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force, OCDETF Strike Force in Atlanta, Ga., Morristown Police Department, Hamblen County Sheriff’s Office, and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Assistance was also rendered by the Atlanta, Georgia Police Department, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and U.S. Attorneys Offices in the Northern Districts of Georgia and Florida. Assistant U.S. Attorney Wayne Taylor represented the United States throughout the case.

“I am extremely proud of the cooperative efforts of the investigators from the numerous law enforcement agencies, led by the FBI, for their hard work that resulted in these convictions of members of one of the largest drug conspiracies in east Tennessee,” stated U.S. Attorney William C. Killian.

This case was part of the Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) programs. OCDETF is the primary weapon of the United States against the highest level drug trafficking organizations operating within the United States, importing drugs into the United States, or laundering the proceeds of drug trafficking. The HIDTA program enhances and coordinates drug control efforts among local, State, and Federal law enforcement agencies. The program provides agencies with coordination, equipment, technology, and additional resources to combat drug trafficking and its harmful consequences in critical regions of the United States.