By John Annese
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Video obtained by the Daily News shows a group of inmates in the MDC Brooklyn federal jail trying to climb a gymnasium wall for nearly 20 minutes in a clumsy attempt to pull a rope packed with contraband through a window.
The video, submitted earlier this month to a Brooklyn Federal Court judge in the sentencing of hip-hop podcaster and convicted killer “Taxstone,” shows the lengths detainees go to in the troubled federal lockup to get their hands on drugs, cigarettes, weapons and cellphone equipment.
Taxstone, real name Daryl Campbell, was the mastermind of the June 30, 2024, smuggling scheme. Federal prosecutors want to add 33 months of prison time to the 35-year state court sentence he’s already serving for manslaughter for fatally shooting rival rapper Troy Ave.’s bodyguard.
The June 30, 2024 scheme to “fish” for contraband from the fourth-floor rec room — using a line inside the jail dangling from a window, hooked to a 50-foot rope thrown from the street below — ended with all of the participants, both behind bars and on the outside, facing federal charges. All have pleaded guilty to the scheme, which is described in an array of court filings.
Taxstone used a cellphone behind bars in the weeks leading up to the caper, sending off audio recordings with detailed instructions describing the layout in front of the jail, the length of rope to use, and how to tape sandwich bags packed with contraband onto it.
“We gonna throw the line out from that gate, so you just run right in the gate and you hook it to the line ’cause there’s a hook on the end of the line we got right now. You just going to hook it and just dip back out. Sturdy,” he said in an April 19, 2024, audio recording sent to an accomplice’s phone.
“Yeah, so I’ma tell y’all when to drive up. We gonna have the line out already, and I’ma just tell you drive right up, so you can get right out the car and do it,” he said in another recording that same day.
Things didn’t go as planned when it came time to execute, though the video shows Taxstone’s accomplices had plenty of time to pull it off.
The caper started at about 1:45 p.m., when a man Taxstone had been communicating with, Carl Kelly, pulled up to the Sunset Park jail and hurled a long rope to a fourth-floor window.
Three of Taxstone’s cohorts on the inside, Jonathan Guerrero, Ian Diez and Abel Mora, can be seen on the jail surveillance video rolling a food cart to the corner of the room and stacking chairs on it, then rolling it to another corner near a basketball hoop.
Guerrero scales the impromptu tower toward a window, while Diez spots him from below and Mora paces back and forth, occasionally dribbling and shooting a basketball while he acts as lookout.
For the next six minutes, Guerrero clings to the window, trying to pull in a “line” hanging from the window without success. He tries to climb back down and falls to the floor, knocking the tower over.
The trio rebuild the tower and Guerrero goes up again, pulling the line for about four minutes more before the group takes down the tower, wheels the cart away from the window and walks away.
Just two minutes later, they make another go at it, rebuilding the tower so accomplice Mayovanex Rodriguez can climb the wobbly structure. He also tumbles from the window, twice, before the group abandons their plan, scrambling to scatter the pieces of their tower before correction officers arrive.
Correction officers soon learned that the line the inmates used was attached to the rope Kelly threw to the window. The rope from outside was wrapped in duct tape, packed with pieces of paper covered in synthetic cannabis, more than 100 strips of buprenorphine, about 27 bags of marijuana, wrapping paper, more than 400 cigarettes, two lighters, a scalpel and a cellphone charging cord and plug.
Smuggling — sometimes by rope, sometimes with the help of corrupt jail guards — has long been a problem at the troubled federal jail, which has been plagued by violence, horrific conditions and severe staffing shortages for years.
Taxstone’s scheme came during a particularly turbulent year at the infamous federal jail, which saw a brutal, caught-on video stabbing and two murders in 2024.
Kelly, Diez and Rodriguez await sentencing, while Mora got more than 11 years behind bars for the smuggling and two gang-related shootings. Guerrero was sentenced to 2½ years in federal prison.
Taxstone, who pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy to possess contraband in prison, is scheduled to be sentenced April 29.
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