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Jurors in U.S. District Court in Trenton found former Paterson resident Djavon Holland, 37, guilty of possession with the intent to sell the deadly drug, U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger said.
As an ex-con with multiple convictions on his record, Holland, currently of Virginia, could be sentenced to more than a decade in federal prison.
Holland served a majority of an eight-year state prison sentence after he was convicted of assaulting and robbing a 78-year-old Long Island man at the Molly Pitcher Service Area on the New Jersey Turnpike in Cranbury in 2006.
It was during that prison stretch at the Southern State Correctional Facility, near the southernmost tip of New Jersey in Delmont, that Holland advertised himself on InmateConnection.com, a pen-pal site for people seeking online romance with convicts.
“I'm 5'11", 170 pounds, well built Brown skin male with braids, looking for a female to talk to,” Holland wrote. “I'm single, love to travel; I have no kids but one day do wish to have some. Even though I'm incarcerated, as of now I'm far from ignorant; very mature and I'm constantly elevating my personal and mental on a daily basis.”
Holland was released in 2013 and was later busted on drug charges in Delaware in March 2020, records show.
Then, in August 2021, he was arrested for selling to a “confidential source” working with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) following a tip from the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office, Sellinger said.
Undercover county detectives had bought large amounts of MDMA and heroin from Holland, records show. Then the feds got involved.
A government operative bought 40 bricks of heroin from Holland for $3,200 in August 2021, according to a federal complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Trenton.
Holland promised there’d be more and said he used to sell drugs in Delaware “to fund his legitimate businesses,” the complaint filed by the ATF says.
“On several occasions, Holland drove to New Jersey and sold fentanyl to ATF’s confidential source,” Sellinger said.
The deals culminated in the sale of two-thirds of a pound of heroin for $15,000, federal authorities said.
A grand jury in Trenton indicted Holland on multiple drug-selling charges in November 2021.
Holland took his took his chances with a jury -- rather than take a plea deal from the government – and lost.
A sentencing date has yet to be set.
Sellinger credited special agents of the ATF and detectives with the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office for the investigation leading to the conviction secured by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Megan N. Linares and Jenny Chung of his Criminal Division.
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