Former Anne Arundel Sheriff Worker Tipped Off Drug Dealer: Court

ANNAPOLIS, MD — A former Anne Arundel County Sheriff’s Department worker will spend time in prison for tipping off the accused leader of a drug-trafficking group suspected in several murders that he was about to be indicted. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Chanel Holland, 36, of Glen Burnie, to a year and a day in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for obstructing an official proceeding.

Authorities say Holland gave information about law enforcement activity, including sealed indictments and investigative information, to Traymont Wiley (also known as “Whamp”) the target of a drug trafficking investigation. At the time, Holland worked as the human resource administrator in the Anne Arundel County Sheriff’s Department.

“Chanel Holland betrayed the trust of the citizens of Maryland and of the law enforcement officers who fight every day to keep our streets safe from drug dealers and other criminals who endanger our communities,” said United States Attorney Robert K. Hur in a news release. “In doing so, she not only broke the law, but also put lives at risk. This federal prosecution and sentence to federal prison time holds her accountable for those actions.”

According to Holland’s plea agreement, as a result of an investigation into a violent drug trafficking organization, on June 8, 2018, sealed indictments were returned for 10 people, including Wiley, who was believed to be the leader of the organization. The group operated in Anne Arundel County and elsewhere, and was believed to be associated with several murders in the county. Sealed arrest warrants and search warrants for several locations were also authorized.

On June 11, 2018, law enforcement intercepted a conversation between Traymont Wiley and another individual on the wiretap that was authorized as part of the investigation. Wiley said that he had been told that he was going to be arrested on drug and gang-related charges. His call led to a flurry of conversations monitored on the intercepted lines between targets of the investigation. Those calls revealed that the person who tipped Wiley off about the sealed criminal charges was a woman named “Chanel.”

The conversations revealed that the targets were reading portions of the sealed indictment out loud, including the names of other co-defendants named in the sealed indictment. Wiley also read his charges, using the exact legal wording of the crimes as stated in the sealed indictment, prosecutors said.

On June 12, 2018, an attorney hired by one of the co-defendants made a motion to the court citing the specific court case number on the sealed indictment and requesting the court to unseal and quash a pending sealed arrest warrant. All of this occurred before the indictment and arrest warrants were unsealed, and before the execution of the sealed search warrants.

An audit of Maryland Judiciary Secure Case Search showed that Holland’s Secure Case Search account was the only one to conduct a search of all four names heard during the intercepted calls. Use of Secure Case Search is restricted to law enforcement personnel.

Holland’s duties as human resource administrator did not include running searches for individuals through Secure Case Search. Her cell phone records showed that she had 96 contacts (message and voice) with Wiley on June 11, 2018. Surveillance video at the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court showed that on June 11 Holland had entered and exited the administration offices where her Secure Case Search account was accessed from her computer.

On June 20, a search warrant was executed at Holland’s residence and her phone was seized. A search of the phone messages showed that Holland had been providing information to Wiley and others for several months, beginning as early as April 2018. On June 11, Holland sent a photograph of the sealed indictment to Wiley’s phone and said, “Here’s a list of your charges.”

Holland then had a series of phone calls with Wiley’s phone in which she provided additional information about the sealed warrants and the nature of the charges. Holland attempted to find out if a source had given information to law enforcement which led to the charges against Wiley and others, and she gave information about suspected cooperating sources to Wiley and others, including photos of the sources and information about the status of their court cases, according to the plea agreement.

Holland admitted that she did not want Wiley and his co-conspirators to get any additional charges, so she alerted them about the outstanding warrants and indictment. She admitted her actions were likely to affect the federal grand jury proceeding.