LOS ANGELES
A leader of the Bounty Hunter Bloods street gang pleaded guilty Friday to federal drug and firearms charges for the manufacturing and distribution of crack cocaine conspiracy, officials stated.
The criminal activity occurred in and around the gang’s “territory” of the Nickerson Gardens public housing projects in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, according to authorities.
Damion Baker, 45, a.k.a. “Fatts,” of Compton, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to manufacture, distribute, and possess with intent to distribute cocaine, and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Baker is the lead defendant in an April 2021 indictment targeting members and associates of the BHB street gang for drug- and firearm-related crimes.
According to his plea agreement, from August 2019 to May 2020, Baker organized and led a drug trafficking conspiracy in which he and his accomplices agreed to distribute cocaine.
Specifically, Baker arranged to obtain powder cocaine from at least two drug suppliers.
Baker then directed his co-conspirators to cook, and would himself cook, the powder cocaine and manufacture it into crack cocaine to sell to customers, including back to his powder cocaine suppliers to sell in crack form.
Baker directed his accomplices in the packaging, sale, and delivery of crack cocaine to customers, which included co-conspirators and other BHB gang members.
Baker also directed the receipt and storage of drug proceeds throughout BHB-claimed territory in South Los Angeles.
As part of these activities, Baker arranged for an accomplice’s residence in the Nickerson Gardens housing projects in Watts to be used as a stash house where Baker and his co-conspirators continuously sold crack cocaine over many months.
Baker recruited and hired co-conspirators to work at the Watts stash house and directed them in selling narcotics to customers there and in nearby areas, restocking the stash house’s drug supply, and transporting drug proceeds to Baker and other accomplices at various locations.
Baker admitted in his plea agreement to possessing a firearm in May 2020. He was not permitted to do so because he previously had been convicted of felonies in Los Angeles Superior Court, including a cocaine possession charge in 1998 and a domestic violence-related charge in 2001.
Baker admitted in his plea agreement that he possessed the firearm to protect his crack cocaine distribution business.
Baker also agreed to forfeit the firearm and $44,600 in cash law enforcement seized at his residence in Compton and another in San Pedro.
U.S. District Judge Fernando L. Aenlle-Rocha scheduled a July 14 sentencing hearing.
Baker is facing up to more than 50 years in prison for the crimes he committed.
The other 11 defendants in this indictment either have pleaded guilty or signed plea agreements and await sentencing.
Another Bloods gang member, and Baker’s second in command in the drug trafficking conspiracy, Tony Carr, 52, a.k.a. “T-Bone,” of Watts, pleaded guilty in July 2022.
He admitted to one count of cocaine trafficking conspiracy and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Judge Aenlle-Rocha sentenced Carr to 15 years and eight months in federal prison.
In April 2021, law enforcement conducted a takedown in which 22 BHB members and associates were charged in nine federal grand jury indictments. Of those 22 defendants, prosecutors have secured 19 convictions.
The FBI’s Los Angeles Metropolitan Task Force on Violent Gangs, which consists of the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, investigated this matter.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy E. Pomerantz of the Violent and Organized Crime Section is prosecuting this case.