Sign up for our newsletters    

Sign up for our newsletters   

Baltimore City Paper home page.

The News Hole

“Talking Dan” McIntosh Not Allowed at Deathfest

May 25, 2012
By

JOSH SISK

Today, Sonar nightclub co-owner Dan McIntosh’s efforts to be on hand to help
run this weekend’s Deathfest, held at and around the Baltimore venue, ended in failure.

The $30 million, cross-
country pot-conspiracy case, in which McIntosh is a defendant, is on the docket of
Maryland U.S. District judge Roger Titus of the court’s Greenbelt division, who sided
with the prosecution’s main argument in a motions battle that played out since May 17:
that conduct in the alleged conspiracy includes McIntosh’s dealings involving Sonar, so
he should not be allowed to go there.

(The highlight of the prosecutor’s brief: It is “well known that many attendees at music
festivals such as this frequently use marijuana and other illegal drugs.”)

The defense had argued that McIntosh has been compliant with the terms of his
supervised release pending trial, which started more than a year ago, and that McIntosh
and his family desperately need the income the Deathfest provides him.

Meanwhile, the case now has a 16th defendant: Ryan Forman of Philadelphia, who on
May 16 pleaded not guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute 1,000 kilograms or
more of marijuana and two money-laundering counts.

Baltimore developer Jeremy Landsman of JBL Real Estate, who is McIntosh’s landlord
at Sonar and McCabe’s Restaurant, which McIntosh also co-owns, is a defendant in the
case. The conspiracy allegations, which span a decade, emerged in federal court in Dec.
2010, in part due an investigation into another Baltimore developer, Jacob Harryman.