A man who owned a business on the Peninsula was sentenced to serve time in a federal prison for what prosecutors described as a “large-scale drug trafficking organization on the Virginia Peninsula.”
Alex Jermaine Burnett, 39, was sentenced Thursday to 30 years. Prosecutors said he led an organization that distributed cocaine, heroin, MDMA, marijuana and crack in James City County and Newport News from 2013 to 2017.
Burnett owned 9Round Gym in the Peninsula Town Center.
Federal prosecutors said Burnett, during the years of selling drugs, received information from Deangelo Freeman, who was then a detective in the Special Investigations Unit of the Hampton Police Division.
Freeman started as a patrol officer in Hampton in 2010. According to court documents, he was arrested in Idaho in March 2018
“The law enforcement sensitive information alerted Burnett and his organization to the ongoing FBI investigation and compromised an undercover confidential informant,” said G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in a news release.
Freeman previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
He admitted to providing information to Burnett about an ongoing federal criminal investigation. Freeman learned of this information while serving as a narcotics detective and participating in the investigation of Burnett, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum of 40 years.
Freeman is scheduled to be sentenced on July 31.
