SAVANNAH, GA: An admitted gang member who was a major supplier for a methamphetamine-trafficking operation in the coastal Georgia area has been sentenced to federal prison Oct. 16..
Daniel Jeffers, a/k/a “Dirty,” 31, of Savannah, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge R. Stan Baker to 110 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to Conspiracy to Possess with Intent to Distribute More Than 50 Grams of Methamphetamine, said Bobby L. Christine, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia. After completion of his sentence, Jeffers must serve three years of supervised release. There is no parole in the federal system.
The investigation, dubbed Operation Who’s Laughing Now, is an offshoot of Operation Vanilla Gorilla, an Organized Crime Drug Trafficking Task Forces investigation that targeted major trafficking of methamphetamine and other drugs into the coastal Georgia area by criminals associated with the Ghost Face Gangsters, a violent, prison-based white supremacist gang.
As described in court documents and testimony, Jeffers, an admitted member of the Ghost Face Gangsters, was a major supplier of methamphetamine to the other 17 co-defendants in Operation Who’s Laughing Now, frequently delivering kilogram amounts of meth supplied by Mexican cartels by way of Atlanta.
A 20-count indictment in May 2019 charged the defendants with a wide-ranging conspiracy to possess and distribute methamphetamine and marijuana and with gun possession violations. The defendants were arrested during the operation conducted by the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), along with other local law enforcement agencies in a 20-county area of eastern Georgia. In addition to quantities of methamphetamine and marijuana, investigators also seized 14 firearms – including two unregistered sawed-off shotguns – and a large amount of ammunition and magazines.
All 18 defendants pled guilty to subsequent federal charges and have been sentenced to federal prison terms ranging up to 135 months.
Operation Who’s Laughing Now was investigated under the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), the premier U.S. Department of Justice program to dismantle multi-jurisdictional drug trafficking organizations, and prosecuted for the United States by Assistant U.S. Attorney and OCDETF Coordinator Marcela Mateo, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Pennington.