Monmouth County-Wide Cocaine Ring Dismantled; Aberdeen Man Convicted

ABERDEEN, NJ — A man from the Cliffwood section of Aberdeen was convicted Monday of running a cocaine/crack cocaine distribution ring that operated throughout Monmouth County, said U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger.

The man is Damion Helmes, 42, of Cliffwood.

The towns he and others primarily operated in included Cliffwood, Keansburg, Matawan, Keyport, Red Bank, Long Branch, Neptune and Asbury Park, as well as in Brick, said federal prosecutors.

In August 2019, Helmes and 19 other people were criminally charged after an extensive investigation into the cocaine ring by the FBI’s Jersey Shore Gang and Criminal Organization Task Force.

Nearly all of those 20 people lived in Monmouth County; their names and arrests were first announced in this Patch news article announcing the take-down of the ring in 2019. They were all arrested early in the morning in August of 2019, many of them arrested at their homes locally in Monmouth County.

All the arrests were done by agents working out of the FBI's Red Bank field office.

Helmes is the last of the 20 defendants to be convicted. He was convicted Monday of multiple counts of conspiracy of distribute cocaine. He was found not guilty of prior two weapons charges.

He has not been sentenced yet, but is facing up to 40 years in prison.

FBI agents infiltrated and monitored the ring between April 2019 and August 2019, but they say it existed prior to that. They say Helmes obtained regular supplies of cocaine from Derrick Hayes, 37, of Neptune and Dequan Copeland, 40, of Red Bank. Helmes then cooked portions of that cocaine into crack cocaine, and then re-sold the cocaine and crack cocaine for profit to other sub-dealers and end users throughout Monmouth County.

U.S. Attorney Sellinger credited the FBI plus police departments in Bradley Beach, Brick, Howell, Toms River, Union Beach, Middletown, Holmdel, Long Branch, Highlands, Keansburg and Marlboro police departments, and the Monmouth County Sheriff's Office.