$75,000 Worth of Methamphetamine Earns Iowa Man More Than a Decade in Federal Prison

A man who was arrested with ten pounds of methamphetamine in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was sentenced December 21, 2020, to more than twelve years in federal prison.

Malik Sekou Sahid Buchanan, age 40, from Burlington, Iowa, received the prison term after a July 6, 2020 guilty plea to possessing meth with intent to distribute.

Buchanan was arrested delivering ten pounds of methamphetamine to the Cedar Rapids area.  Buchanan had previously provided an individual with five pounds of methamphetamine.  Buchanan was charging $5,000 per pound of meth.  During the arrest, officers recovered methamphetamine from Buchanan’s car weighing approximately ten pounds.  The meth was 100% pure.

Buchanan was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Judge C.J. Williams.  Buchanan was sentenced to 150 months’ imprisonment.  He must also serve a five-year term of supervised release after the prison term.  There is no parole in the federal system.

Buchanan is being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until he can be transported to a federal prison.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Emily K. Nydle and was investigated as part of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) program of the United States Department of Justice through a cooperative effort of Cedar Rapids Police Department, the Marion Police Department, the Hiawatha Police Department, the Linn County Sheriff’s Office, the Tri-County Drug Task Force, the Waterloo Police Department, the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Department, the Cedar Falls Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. 

Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. 

The case file number is 20-cr-00011.

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