Tim "Gotti" Baukman (left) and Alton "Ace Capone" Coles in "New Jack City: The Next Generation." In 2005, ATF agents and police were building a case against Coles, a hip-hop promoter who they believed ran a huge drug operation. When they tapped his cell phone, they found he made or received an average of 280 calls a day.
Ace Capone: Second of two parts
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Tapped Out
With surveillance and arrests, authorities close in.
At a modest bi-level home on Burdens Hill Road in the small town of Quinton, N.J., they came through the front door looking for James Morris, suspected of being a major cocaine supplier for the Coles network. He was asleep in the master bedroom. Also in the house were two young children and their mother, Thais Thompson.
Cash was stashed everywhere.
It was on the floor and in a purse in the master bedroom where Morris had been sleeping, in a dresser drawer and in a bag in the closet of another bedroom, in the pockets of a pair of men's jeans in the living room, in a New York & Co. shopping bag in the attic, in two duffle bags and a Gap shopping bag stashed behind a loveseat in the basement, and in a suitcase in the storage shed behind the home.
Agents also found an electronic money counter, a 9mm Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol, and bullets.
According to an ATF report, as agents left, Morris noted that "it's not illegal to have a money-counting machine." He also wanted to know how he could get his money back.
A final count of the cash seized in the house that day: $559,396.21.
In all, authorities grabbed more than $800,000 during the raids. This included $114,780 found bundled in rubber bands in a floor safe in a home just outside Woodstown, N.J., where another one of Coles' girlfriends lived.
They also seized an arsenal of weapons - 31 handguns, rifles and shotguns and nearly 500 rounds of ammunition.
The biggest cache was found in an apartment in the 300 block of East Essex Avenue in Lansdowne that was rented by Baukman. It included:
A Ruger rifle.
A Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun.
A 9mm High Point rifle.
A 9mm Intratec semiautomatic handgun with its serial number obliterated.
A 9mm Leinad semiautomatic handgun and a magazine loaded with 32 live rounds of ammo.
A .22-caliber Stogeger Arms semiautomatic handgun loaded with 11 live rounds.
A .357 Magnum Dan Wesson revolver loaded with six live rounds.
A 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun.
A .22-caliber Magnum Davis Industries handgun.
A 9mm Feg semiautomatic handgun.
483 additional live rounds of ammunition.
