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The alleged conspiracy included heroin concealed inside the soles of sandals in mail parcels addressed to Muskegon County homes, according to court documents.
Allen Jordan Baisi, 34, of Mount Prospect, Ill., was indicted in October on one count of conspiracy to distribute at least 100 grams of heroin and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
A grand jury in the U.S. District Court's Western District of Michigan handed down the indictment in Grand Rapids, where Baisi's case was transferred after his arrest in Illinois.
Baisi was born in Tanzania and remains a citizen of that east African republic, according to court documents. He was arrested in a traffic stop Sept. 22 after he allegedly booked a seat on a flight from Chicago to Tanzania.
The case is scheduled for a final pretrial conference Dec. 11 and a trial starting Jan. 6, 2015, in Grand Rapids.
According to the grand jury's "true bill" filed Oct. 8, Baisi is charged with conspiring with other people "both known and unknown" from around May 2013 through July 30, 2014, to distribute more than 100 grams of a mixture containing heroin.
He's also charged with conspiring with other people to launder money involved in the alleged heroin conspiracy.
The government alleges:
- Heroin was concealed within clothing items mailed to Muskegon County addresses.
- Another person, referred to as "Individual A" in the indictment, would receive the heroin and distribute it in the Muskegon area.
- Individual A would collect payment from heroin customers and cause cash to be mailed to Baisi in Illinois.
- Baisi in 2013 and 2014 accepted the cash and then mailed it on to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in payment for the heroin. "The conspiracy opted to stagger the mailings, separating the passage of currency through multiple locations, in order to conceal the action from law enforcement," the indictment alleged.
Members of that organization live in various parts of the world, including Tanzania, India, northern Illinois and western Michigan, the agent asserted. They allegedly "conspired together to obtain large quantities of heroin from various sources internationally."
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Baisi, working with others, allegedly directed and electronically tracked shipments of parcels containing bulk quantities of heroin via the U.S. Postal Service to a co-conspirator in Muskegon. That person would then sell the heroin and ship, or direct others to ship, cash to Baisi in mailed parcels, the agent wrote. Baisi then kept some proceeds for himself and sent the rest to conspirators in Tanzania, according to the agent.
The conspiracy included heroin shipments from Tanzania to Muskegon and from India to Palatine, Ill., the agent wrote.
An earlier, Sept. 22 arrest-warrant affidavit by the same agent provided more details about the allegations:
The alleged conspiracy began to unravel in December 2013 when U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized two separate Express Mail parcels addressed to residences in the Muskegon area. Each parcel contained nearly 150 grams of a mixture containing heroin "secreted inside the soles of sandals," the government said.
In an investigation lasting several months, Homeland Security agents tentatively traced the packages, and a third package containing heroin seized in July 2014 at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, to northern Illinois addresses believed to be linked to Baisi. Baisi was still on supervised release from a 2009 federal heroin conviction.
Agents interviewed Baisi Aug. 5 at his Illinois home. In that interview, Baisi allegedly made admissions about taking part in a U.S.-Tanzanian heroin smuggling and money-laundering conspiracy.
After Baisi cooperated for several weeks with the investigation, including handing over one cell phone Aug. 25, the agent received information Sept. 19 that Baisi might try to leave the country on Sept. 22. Customs officers confirmed that Baisi was scheduled to fly out of O'Hare International Airport that day on Emirates Airlines to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania -- a violation of the terms of his supervised release, according to the agent.
Based on that information, the agent obtained a federal arrest warrant, and Baisi was arrested Sept. 22 at a traffic stop in Mount Prospect.
On Oct. 30, Western Michigan's U.S. Magistrate Judge Phillip J. Green signed a detention order keeping Baisi locked up without bail pending his trial.
The judge cited probable cause that Baisi committed a crime with a maximum prison term of at least 10 years, as well as serious risk that Baisi would fail to appear and that he would endanger the safety of another person or the community if freed before trial.
Baisi's appointed attorney, Sharon Turek of Grand Rapids, declined to comment on his case.
The assistant U.S. attorney handling the case did not return a call seeking comment Monday, Nov. 24.
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