Hip hop talent agent James “Jimmy Henchman” Rosemond was arrested by DEA agents and charged today with heading a cocaine trafficking ring that operated on both the West and East coasts, authorities said.
Rosemond, who was a wanted fugitive, was hunted down by US Marshals and agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration after a long investigation, officials said.
Rosemond, owner of Czar Entertainment, is expected to be arraigned later this afternoon in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Rosemond, 46, who manages singers Brandy and Akon, was accused this past May of being involved in a cocaine distribution ring.
The hip-hop mogul spotted the agents at about noon as he walked out of the W Hotel in Union Square, sources said.
Once on the street, Rosemond walked north and tried to outrun the agents until he was finally arrested on 21st Street and Park Avenue South.
The US Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn charged Rosemond in a complaint today with orchestrating the delivery of multiple kilos of cocaine from Los Angeles to the New York City metropolitan area.
Millions of dollars in drug proceeds went from New York back to California, the complaint charged.
Rosemond is expected to be arraigned this afternoon in Brooklyn federal court.
The DEA probe was aided by two informants who were high-ranking members of Rosemond’s organization, the feds said.
Hundreds of kilos of cocaine was shipped to New York — sometimes encased in plastic that was covered with mustard in an effort to throw off drug-sniffing dogs.
The gang used commercial shipping companies to send some of the coke, but later devised a more ingenious scheme, the feds charge.
Rosemond began to ship cocaine inside “road cases,” large containers normally used to carry music equipment.
Using his Czar Entertainment business as a cover, Rosemond shipped cocaine east and money back west in these “road cases,” disguising them as legitimate music equipment cargo and utilizing freight transporters, the feds said.
Federal agents found nearly $800,000 in one such case inside a New York recording studio this last winter, the feds say.
To evade law enforcement, Rosemond avoided using cell phones and used pay phones instead, officials said.
He also used encrypted e-mail programs to send messages via a BlackBerry and the gang used a car with a hidden compartment to transport contraband.
Last week, a man serving life in prison claimed that he shot rapper Tupac Shakur in 1994 during the bloody East-West war that then defined hip-hop culture.
In a statement posted on AllHipHop.com, Dexter Isaac apologized for the infamous near-fatal attack and claimed he shot Tupac at the direction of Rosemond.
“I want to apologize to his family [Tupac Shakur] and for the mistake I did for that sucker [Jimmy Henchman],” said Isaac’s statement, written from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
Within hours of the statement, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said, “NYPD detectives plan to interview the prisoner.”
Isaac, 46, said he was paid $2,500 for the attempted hit on Nov. 30, 1994, at Quad Studios in Manhattan.
Isaac is in prison for the murder-for-hire of a Brooklyn cabby.
Rosemond’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, criticized Isaac last week, calling him “a convicted killer who was brought back by the US attorney solely to cooperate against Jimmy Rosemond, and wouldn’t you know it, he spins this tale.”
Tupac — who was born in East Harlem but made his career in Northern California — survived the attack, only to be shot dead on Sept. 13, 1996, in Las Vegas.
The East-West hip-hop war reached its climax when Brooklyn native Christopher Wallace — The Notorious B.I.G. — was fatally shot in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997.
Both murders are unsolved
Additional reporting by Jamie Schram and David K. Li