Former prison officer gets probation in cell phone smuggling case

A former Nevada Department of Corrections officer was sentenced to five years probation Wednesday in a scheme to get smartphones into High Desert State Prison.

Derland Blake, 30, pleaded guilty in September to helping smuggle phones, compact disks, chicken and alcohol into the prison. The contraband ultimately ended up with Ammar Harris, a self-proclaimed pimp who is facing trial in a Strip shooting that killed three people, and another inmate.

Authorities said Harris sent $2,000 to “an associate,” Amy Colon, who wired the money to Charmain Simmons, the mother of fellow inmate Derrick McKnight. Simmons slipped the cash to Reann Gadson, who bought two Verizon Wireless phones and handed them off to Olga Gonzalez, state prosecutors said.

Gadson and Gonzalez then met with Blake, alleged to have smuggled the phones and other items to the inmates on May 9, investigators with the Nevada attorney general’s office said.

Prison officials found two Verizon Wireless phones, chargers and manuals in Harris’ High Desert cell and learned that the phones had been activated five days prior at a Wal-Mart on East Serene Avenue, prosecutors said.

After the phones were found in Harris’ cell, he was moved to Ely State Prison, Nevada’s highest security prison.

Karen Whelan, with the Nevada Attorney General’s Office, called Blake “one of the most troubling defendants in the case” and asked the judge to send Blake to prison for two to five years.

“Derland Blake became more like the inmates and NDOC than he was like his colleagues,” Wheland said. He was “the one critical cog in the machine that made this entire scheme work.”

Blake called the smuggling a “one time mistake that will never happen again.” He said he has since found a new job and is working toward obtaining a business license.

“When you do wrong, you man up,” he said. “You take it on the chin. But then you’ve got to learn from it. If you don’t learn from it, then you’re going to keep making the same mistakes. I learned, and I’m still learning.”

Blake never dealt directly with Harris, according to his attorney, Garrett Ogata.

In handing down the sentence Wednesday, District Judge Kathleen Delaney said Blake made a “monumental bad choice,” while also ordering him to undergo impulse control counseling and have no contact with prison inmates, among other provisions.

Last week, the judge ordered Harris, who pleaded guilty to bribing a public offier, to serve an extra two to five years in prison for his role.

Harris is facing the death penalty if convicted of murder charges in the February 2013 shooting on the Strip that left three people dead. He is accused of shooting reputed pimp Kenneth “Kenny” Clutch Cherry, Jr. as the two drove separate vehicles on the Strip early Feb. 21, 2013.

Cherry then crashed his car into a taxi, which burst into flames, killing the driver, Michael Boldon, and his passenger, Sandra Sutton-Wasmund of Maple Valley, Wash.

Contact reporter David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker