How did the Drug Kingpin Evade Authorities for so Long?

“If it were up to me, and this is just me, drugs would all be legal,” Detective Garth McFadden said. “At the same time, they’re illegal now and I have to enforce laws I didn’t write.”

McFadden was one of the architects of the Detener los Drogas operation which brought down Wilmington, Delaware drug kingpin Wilker “Wilky” Robeson. The drug lord had been apprehended and processed. He avoided jail time on $250,000 cash bail.

“This is a small city in a small state. Still, Robeson managed to preside over a ten-million-dollar drug operation. He had begun to rinse his funds in legitimate businesses. A restaurant, The Fish Doctor, looked like a likely site for him to launder his money. They shut him down amicably. He got the idea to involve himself in the QuickCard Laundromat, and Ultraclean car wash, and a few smaller restaurants.”

The Baltimore FBI had discovered him walking out of one of those restaurants.

“Everyone from the Wilmington Police and Delaware State Police, we fell back and let the feds go in and nab him,” McFadden continued. “We knew he would be taken off the streets sooner or later. We had provided the FBI with enough intelligence to allow them to swoop in and make the catch.”

Robeson had been relatively clean and reserved for going on eight years. Then a manager at one of the restaurants finally broke down and said she’d received money from Robeson based on his drug sales in the Wilmington streets.

“The agents finally caught him, but did not show surprise when he posted his bail.”

“They could understand tens of thousands of dollars for an owner of a few restaurants, a laundromat, and a car wash. But a quarter of a million dollars? They couldn’t wait until trial.”

Though Robeson didn’t see jail until his trial, the jurors tried him and found him guilty of conspiracy to deal cocaine, money laundering, conspiracy to commit money laundering, racketeering and conspiracy to commit racketeering.

“The judge threw ‘football numbers’ at him,” McFadden said. Football numbers are lengthy prison sentences. “He got forty-five years behind bars doing federal prison time. He made the decision to deal drugs. He knew the risks. We have to be on the side of the law no matter how we feel about it.”

Robeson is busy working on an appeal. His lawyer, Roger Roth, is known as a “drug attorney.” That put a stain on his attempts to reduce his sentence or get the whole thing overturned completely.

“What he could have done with that brain is amazing. I’ve seen court proceedings and documents he offered as statements, and he could rival a college English professor or an MBA. The saddest part is, none of his crimes were violent. They all centered around the trade.”

With the years ahead of him, Robeson seemed to be upbeat when the Daily Delaware visited him at the Dalton Correctional Facility. He sported glasses and a burgeoning goatee.

“I’m okay. I immediately want to break out of here, but I’m okay. I’ve been interested in signing a book deal detailing the disgusting nature of the government coming down on my head like a bird of prey.”

When asked whether he thought he’d get out early, he looked pensive. He stroked his chin. “I know I will be emancipated sooner than later. My freedom will come to me once the facts become evident to the judge. I’m shaken by the fact I have to live like an animal in a cage. I have to be shackled just to sit with you. That’s an affront to justice.”