Convictions hit 20 in Phelps case as cocaine supplier pleads guilty
LOCKPORT — A second-level supplier to former Niagara Falls cocaine kingpin David A. Phelps pleaded guilty Friday in Niagara County Court, bringing the total number of convictions in the case to 20.
Willie R. Scott, 28, of Willow Avenue, Niagara Falls, admitted to third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance and was scheduled for sentencing Sept. 30 by Judge Matthew J. Murphy III.
Murphy said that since State Supreme Court Justice Richard
C. Kloch Sr. promised to sentence Phelps to no more than six years in prison, he felt he couldn’t enforce the legal 12- year maximum against Scott. Murphy promised to sentence Scott to no more than six years.
Phelps, 36, cut his plea deal March 20 and agreed to testify against his co-conspirators in the case, which the Organized Crime Task Force of the state attorney general’s office built primarily on wiretaps conducted last summer.
Assistant Attorney General Kevin Kane told Murphy that when Phelps ran out of cocaine last August, investigators heard him calling “frantically” all over the state, looking for more.
One source Phelps found, according to Kane, was Jermaine McDougald, 26, of Niagara Falls, one of two defendants in the case who has yet to enter a guilty plea. Kane said that Scott was McDougald’s supplier and that McDougald sold half of what he got from Scott to Phelps, who then was able to service his customers.
While Phelps’ statements to investigators since his plea deal forced many of his associates to cut the best deals they could, in one case he helped one of them by denying that he bought cocaine from him.
That was Arthur L. Sitzer, 38, of Rochester, who had been charged with selling cocaine to Phelps. After Phelps insisted to prosecutors he never bought from Sitzer, Kane was forced to ask Murphy to dismiss that charge. Friday, Sitzer pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, attempted fourth-degree conspiracy, essentially for talking about drugs with Phelps. Murphy scheduled sentencing for Oct. 24; Sitzer faces no more than a year in jail.
One of Phelps’ customers, Carl A. Zimmerman Jr., 29, of Ontario Avenue, Niagara Falls, was sentenced Friday to five years probation and 20 weekends in the county work program.
