S. Shore drug probe casts a wide net
3-year investigation nets over 15 suspects from Boston to R.I.
Detective Michael Stewart was on an undercover stakeout outside a warehouse when a car accident brought him face to face with the man he was looking for, - nearly blowing his cover.
Stewart, a Scituate police lieutenant, was trying to identify a man authorities believed was a major dealer of cocaine and marijuana on the South Shore.
The stakeout, which took place in Swansea, was part of an investigation that led to the arrests of more than 15 people police believe were involved in a drug distribution ring that operated from Providence to Boston.
The investigation got its start in the South Shore beach towns of Marshfield and Scituate and grew into a task force involving State Police and federal agencies.
With the last few suspects rounded up this winter, police are now able to talk about it and tell a story of secret surveillance, wiretaps and large amounts of drugs and cash.
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AMELIA KUNHARDT/The Patriot Ledger From left, Marshfield Detective Jeff Brennan, Scituate Detective Bob Rappold, Marshfield Detective Steve Marcolini, and Scituate Lt. W. Michael Stewart were part of a secret federal task force that brought down a cocaine syndicate in 2003. |
Those arrested were indicted in federal court. Most of them are being held without bail, and will probably go on trial this spring or summer.
About $1 million in assets was confiscated from the men charged, Marshfield Detective Steve Marcolini, another member of the task force, said.
At least nine kilograms - about 20 pounds - of cocaine was confiscated. By comparison, in all of 2002 federal authorities seized about 66 pounds of cocaine in Massachusetts, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Acting on wiretaps
Stewart ended up in the Swansea stakeout car one afternoon last summer after months of listening to tapped telephone conversations between suspected drug dealers.
From those conversations, investigators believed that a man named ‘‘Saba’’ might be near the top of a drug pyramid.
“All we had was a nickname,” Stewart recalled in a recent interview.
Investigators had heard Saba’s heavily accented voice on the phone, but they didn’t know his full name and they didn’t know his face.
By checking phone records, they knew Saba’s associates reached him by calling a warehouse in Swansea. So Stewart and a State Police trooper staked it out.
“We were sitting opposite where (Saba) works,” Stewart said. “And while we were sitting there, there was a head-on collision. The State Trooper and I ran over to assist. There was a woman and her child in a car. As we were helping, we looked up and all the people from the warehouse were out at the side of the road.”
Stewart said he and his colleague posed as civilians as they helped rescue the woman and her child.
“I didn’t want them thinking I was a cop.”
Stewart overheard a small boy calling one of the onlookers Saba. He knew he had found his man.
“I was over there talking to him, and we had a lengthy conversation,” Stewart recalled.
Eventually investigators learned the man’s full name was Sabarian Taba, and that he was a resident of Cumberland, R.I.
Weeks later, when Stewart and several FBI agents arrested him in an Attleboro parking lot, allegedly catching him and an associate with cocaine, Saba seemed to recognize him.
“I saw him staring at me, and I asked him if he remembered me. He said, ‘Yeah ... Mike.’ He didn’t find anything funny about it.’’
Marshfield beginnings
Detective Marcolini of Marshfield said the investigation started late in 2000 when police began to suspect Stephen Nicholson Jr., now 25, was dealing drugs in Marshfield.
In March 2001 police raided Nicholson’s Ocean Street home and another house in town. They arrested seven people and found more than $20,000 worth of cocaine, marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms.
Around the same time, Scituate police had their eyes on Charles Hegarty, 52, a convicted drug dealer with a history of selling in town, Stewart said. In December 2002, working with Weymouth police and federal authorities, Scituate police arrested Hegarty again. He was convicted of cocaine trafficking and sentenced to five years.
Police suspected that Hegarty and Nicholson were small-time. They wanted to go after their suppliers.
Scituate police believed Hegarty’s supplier was a Hingham man, James Sardina Jr., 67.
Marshfield police believed they knew who they needed to go after as well - Nicholson’s father.
“We were looking to the top of the pyramid, and we knew that was Stephen Nicholson Sr.,” Marcolini said.
He described Nicholson, 62, of Fall River, as a man with deep roots in Marshfield.
Marshfield and Scituate police shared information and came to believe that Nicholson Sr. was one of Sardina’s main drug suppliers, police said.
Police knew whom they wanted to go after, but they didn’t have the time or the money they needed to build a case.
As The Patriot Ledger reported in 2002 in its “Drug Wars” series, local police departments lack the resources to be effective against increasingly sophisticated and well-financed drug dealers.
Marshfield detectives Marcolini and Jeff Brennan and Scituate detectives Stewart and Bob Rappold approached the FBI and shared what they knew.
The detectives joined a new federal task force that included State Police and agents from the Massachusetts State Parole Board, the FBI and U.S. Customs. The task force began building its case last April.
“We all came together through the use of informants and surveillance and a variety of other techniques to apply for and be granted a warrant for a federal wiretap,” Marcolini said.
Cell phones tapped
They tapped the cell phones of Nicholson Sr. and Sardina and placed them under surveillance. As they uncovered the identities of Nicholson’s and Sardina’s associates, investigators began tapping other telephones and spying on other people.
At the height of their investigation during the spring and summer of 2003, Brennan, Marcolini, Stewart and Rappold were spending 60 to 90 hours a week listening to the phone conversations of more than a dozen people and spying on them as they allegedly sold and bought drugs in Hingham, Hull, Marshfield, Scituate, Quincy, Weymouth and Boston, as well as Fall River, Attleboro and other southern New England cities and towns.
Marcolini spent much of his time in the “wire room,” a Boston office where investigators listened to wiretaps. He and other agents would hear coded conversations between suspects as they allegedly arranged to meet and exchange drugs and cash.
“It’s a lot of work and it depended on the phone calls,” said Marshfield Detective Brennan. “If they said they were going to meet a person at a certain time, you’ve got to be there to verify that they did meet.”
“There would be a number of surveillance units,” Stewart said. “We’d get calls from the wire room and go to their meetings. We’d get the meetings on video and identify the people. You’d spend all day just trying to maintain surveillance of a dealer, to be one step ahead of him as he’s going to meetings to make buys.”
As the investigation progressed, the task force identified Nicholson’s alleged suppliers of drugs.
Investigators believed that one supplier was a partnership between Frederick Martineau, 76, of North Providence, R.I., and Edward “Tiger” Ennis, 65, of Rehoboth.
Martineau was a former death row inmate convicted of kidnapping and murder in 1959 in New Hampshire. His death sentence was commuted in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state’s death penalty unconstitutional. He was eventually paroled.
Ennis had a long criminal record, including convictions for counterfeiting, conspiracy to distribute heroin and assault with intent to kill.
Another man who was supplying Nicholson, according to detectives, was John Melo, 34, of Fall River.
Investigators also identified alleged dealers to whom Sardina and Nicholson sold drugs, such as Michael J. Malouf of Marshfield. Malouf was buying several ounces of cocaine a week from Nicholson for distribution in and around Marshfield, according to an FBI affidavit.
Investigators identified men allegedly further up the chain of command. Martineau and Ennis’ supplier was Sabarian Taba, the Cumberland, R.I., man, police said.
Believed to be in his 60s, Taba was described by associates as “the Colombian.” Stewart said investigators believed Taba was getting his supply of drugs from Colombians in New York City.
Melo’s alleged alleged supplier was Gregory Warren, 36, of Cranston, R.I., according to court documents.
Work pays off
Toward the end of the summer, investigators felt they had enough evidence. They began rounding up the suspects.
Melo and Warren were arrested July 22 in the driveway of a Westport home as they were allegedly doing a drug deal. Investigators caught them with about 11 pounds of cocaine and $50,000 in cash, police said.
Martineau and Taba were arrested July 25 in an Attleboro parking lot. They were caught with about 9 pounds of cocaine and $25,000 in cash, police said.
“You don’t usually get the drugs and the money,” Brennan said.
Ennis eluded capture for a time, but was caught in October when he went home to check his mail, Stewart said.
Nicholson Sr. was arrested July 25 at the Glass Slipper strip club in Boston. Malouf was arrested July 28. Sardina was arrested soon after.
Shamus McGillicuddy may be reached by
