Click here to subscribe today or Login.
SCRANTON — A Scranton man who federal prosecutors said is affiliated with a violent criminal enterprise in New York City was sentenced in federal court on a drug trafficking offense.
Senior U.S. District Court Judge Edwin Kosik sentenced Vincent Fearon, 33, also known as “Po Stone,” to 57 months in prison and three years of supervised release on a charge of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine.
Fearon was indicted in October 2012 after an investigation by state police in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Wilkes-Barre police, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service.
The indictment alleged Fearon distributed in excess of 280 grams of crack cocaine and cocaine from January 2007 to October 2012.
The investigation commenced after Paul Rivera, 48, of Brooklyn, New York, was stopped by state police along Interstate 81 in Susquehanna County in January 2012.
State police alleged a quantity of cocaine was found in the truck of Rivera’s vehicle.
Investigators later learned Rivera and Michael Garrett, 40, also of Brooklyn, were leaders of a gang called “Together Forever,” which produced rap music under the name “TF Mafia,” according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Eastern New York.
Federal prosecutors for the U.S. Middle District of Pennsylvania alleged Fearon was affiliated with TF Mafia.
Rivera and Garrett were convicted by a federal jury in New York City in June on charges of racketeering, murder, sex trafficking, narcotics trafficking, money laundering and witness tampering.
According to federal prosecutors in New York, Rivera and Garrett were leaders of Together Forever and TF Mafia at which affiliated members were involved in the trafficking of minors for prostitution and illegal drugs in New York and Pennsylvania. Rivera and Garrett were involved in the deadly shooting of a rival gang member, Robert Barber, outside a Brooklyn barbershop on Aug. 22, 2011, federal prosecutors in New York stated.