'It Was All About the Money': Former Church Choir Boy Gets 20 Years for RICO Violations

Caption: Terrence Steele, 37, of Chicago, got a 20-year prison for his role in an alleged drug ring and for violating the state’s RICO law.

A former church choir boy was sentenced to 20 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections for violating Illinois’s Street Gang and Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Law.

Terrence Steele, 37, of the 1600 block of North Parkside in Chicago, was found guilty by a jury on Nov. 14 of RICO charges and heroin possession and sales. His was the first guilty verdict and sentencing in DuPage County returned under the law that took effect in 2014.

Prosecutors said that Steele was a key figure in an alleged drug ring that operated in DuPage and Cook County. He was one of 31 people charged after a six-month-long investigation.

According to the charges, on Aug. 27, 2013, investigators from 17 DuPage County police departments, the DuPage Metropolitan Enforcement Group, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Illinois State Police fanned out throughout Cook and DuPage Counties and arrested 31 people on various drug trafficking and RICO violation charges.

At his height, Steele was making $2,000 a day selling heroin. During his sentencing last Friday, Steele’s relatives called him a role model who sang in the church choir as a boy,the Chicago Tribune reported.

Steele is the highest ranking member of the alleged drug ring to be convicted and sentenced. The man said to be the leader, Andres Garcia, is currently awaiting trial,according to the Chicago Tribune.

“For Mr. Steele, it was all about the money,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said in a written statement. “He didn’t care about the pain and heartache he was dispensing gram by gram throughout DuPage County. He didn’t care about the lives, families and communities he was poisoning. All he cared about was enriching his life at the expense of others.”

Under the state RICO law, individuals facing specific charges, such as controlled substance trafficking, face stiffer penalties if it can be proven that their individual illegal activities were part of larger criminal conspiracy involving others and conducted over a period of time.

Judge Robert Kleeman called the alleged drug ring a “big money operation” before handing down the sentence, the Tribune said.

Steele has a prior conviction for a reckless homicide stemming from a 2001 hit and run of six-year-old girl, for which he served a four year prison sentence, reports said.