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Harris, who made headlines in North Jersey when jurors in Hackensack found him not guilty in 2013 of sexually assaulting a teenager in his Lodi home, was convicted two years later of participating in a ring that trafficked heroin and cocaine from New York City to the Rochester, NY area from 2006 to 2008.
He was sentenced to eight to 10 years and was paroled after four, according to The Shade Room, which said Smith, 41, was recently released “into the arms of his wife,” Yandy Smith-Harris.
The saga was a story line on “Love & Hip Hop: New York.”
Yandy was among those in a Hackensack courtroom who applauded when Harris was acquitted on Feb. 8, 2013 of child sex charges.
He had testified during the brief trial that he “never had a relationship” with his accuser, who also took the stand.
“That’s the truth – never, never – I never committed none of them acts to that girl in my life,” he told jurors.
Harris and his then-girlfriend were living in Lodi with her two pre-teen boys and a baby son of his from another woman when his accuser, then 15, moved up from North Carolina in the summer of 2009.
Harris said he stayed there at the time in order to protect a $50,000 down payment on the house after discovering his name wasn’t on the deed.
“I told [the girlfriend] we need to either sell the house or you need to give me my down payment out,” Harris testified. “My stuff was in boxes in the hallway for months.”
At that point, he said, he and his accuser were just friends – including when she leased an apartment on Prospect Street in Hackensack and gave him a key in order to help him out.
“The reality of celebrity life is, unfortunately, you sometimes walk around with a target on your back,” defense attorney Emil Lisboa told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “You don’t know if your friends are your friends or are just trying to get something out of you.”
Harris was returned after the verdict to the Bergen County Jail, where federal marshals had been holding him on a detainer steaming from the drug trial.
An indictment out of U.S. District Court in Rochester had accused him and two other men of trafficking $2.5 million worth of heroin and cocaine.
Harris already had a drug conviction on his record that led to federal prison time and probation following a 2001 arrest.
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Federal drug rap for former ‘Love & Hip Hop’ star Mendeecees Harris before teen sex trial
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