Steven J.R. Black­well, a dis­creet and up and com­ing young drug king­pin before a 2008 kid­nap­ping of two of his younger broth­ers brought him to pub­lic atten­tion, was sen­tenced today to 20 years in prison, fol­lowed by five year’s of super­vised release, for his part in a 6-year con­spir­acy to dis­trib­ute heroin.

“Local, state and fed­eral law enforce­ment agen­cies are work­ing together to tar­get drug deal­ers whose crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions foment vio­lence,” said U.S. Attor­ney Rod J. Rosen­stein in a state­ment e-mailed to reporters.  “Fed­eral drug and tax charges will keep Steven Black­well in prison for two decades and make the streets of Bal­ti­more more safe.”

Black­well, 27, flew qui­etly under the public’s radar for about five years or so as he amassed mil­lions of dol­lars and a fear­some street rep­u­ta­tion. (His father, Steven Sr., is also a drug dealer and was sen­tenced to fed­eral prison in 2006.) J.R. had not been arrested since he was a juve­nile when, in the spring of 2008, fed­eral law enforce­ment author­i­ties issued an “amber alert” fol­low­ing the armed kid­nap­ping of two of Blackwell’s brothers.

J.R. took mat­ters into his own hands and, work­ing through a lawyer, qui­etly paid a $500,000 ransom.

Report­edly, the kid­nap­pers were part of his down line, and they thought Black­well had been over­charg­ing for the heroin he was bring­ing down from New York suppliers.

Soon after the young Black­wells were safe, bod­ies started drop­ping. There was a shoot­ing at the used appli­ance store run by the alleged kid­nap­pers’ fam­ily, killing the patri­arch. There was the infa­mous back­yard cook­out shoot­ing in which 12 peo­ple, includ­ing J.R. him­self, and a preg­nant woman, took bul­lets.  Last fall the Sun’s Justin Fen­ton toted up 27 vic­tims of the feud.

Police could never link Black­well directly to any of the shoot­ings, but they didn’t have to. Turns out not pay­ing one’s fed­eral taxes is offense enough to get some seri­ous time.

“The IRS plays a unique role in fed­eral law enforcement’s counter-drug effort in that we tar­get the profit and finan­cial gains of nar­cotics traf­fick­ers which com­prise a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the untaxed under­ground econ­omy,” said Act­ing IRS Spe­cial Agent in Charge Eric Hyl­ton. (For more on that sort of thing, check City Paper’s “Shadow Econ­omy”  archives).

Along with the usual crazy real estate buys and used car shenani­gans, Black­well and his girl­friend, Joy Edi­son, tried to mask their drug prof­its by buy­ing up win­ning lot­tery tick­ets and con­vert­ing cash into gam­bling chips in Las Vegas, accord­ing to court records. Black­well owned a $760,000 home in Elkton.

All gone, accord­ing to U.S. Dis­trict Judge J. Fred­er­ick Motz’s sen­tence.  He “ordered Black­well to for­feit any money, prop­erty, or assets trace­able to the ille­gal activ­ity, includ­ing at least eight pieces of prop­erty held in the name of JJM and J Edi­son, LLC, Steven Black­well, and Joy Edi­son, located in Elk­ton and Bal­ti­more,” accord­ing to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Tags: heroin, shadow economy, steven j.r. blackwell jr.