Man gets 12-year sentence for running area cocaine ring

BANGOR – The New York City man charged with running a drug ring that sold and distributed at least $300,000 worth of cocaine in the Bangor area was sentenced Monday in Penobscot County Superior Court to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated trafficking in scheduled drugs.

Edwin Devaughn Keys, 25, faced up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000.

Keys, who qualified for a court-appointed attorney, was ordered by Superior Court Justice Andrew M. Horton to pay a $400 fine and $660 in restitution to the state for testing the drugs.

Assistant Attorney General Patrick Larson said Monday that Keys had earned $5,000 to $6,000 a week from selling drugs. He lived in Bangor from October 2005 to May 2006, then returned to New York and sent other people to Bangor on buses to deliver the cocaine.

He was arrested in New York in April and has been held at the Penobscot County Jail since then. He is one of 11 people charged in connection with the drug ring, according to the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency.

Keys was indicted earlier this year by the Penobscot County grand jury on three counts of Class A aggravated trafficking in scheduled drugs. In a plea agreement with prosecutors, he agreed to plead guilty to one count and the others were dismissed.

MDEA Cmdr. Darrell Crandall told the BDN at the time of Keys’ arrest that although the ring was not the largest ever uncovered in Bangor, it was “significant.”

Keys admitted to running the cocaine and heroin distribution ring between New York and Bangor for two years, beginning in January 2005, after he was released from the Maine State Prison in Warren after serving three years on a drug conviction in Kennebec County.

“Money was often sent via Western Union from Bangor to Mr. Keys,” Larson told the court. “Between January 2005 and January 2007, $86,000 in 98 separate wire transfers were sent by 43 different people to Mr. Keys.”

Defense attorney Marvin Glazier of Bangor disputed the amount of money Keys made from the operation.

“He may have made that in a month,” Glazier said, “but not in a week.”

Keys did not address the court during the short hearing.

Horton called the recommended sentence “appropriate.”