Second Former BOP Guard Sentenced in Smuggling Scheme at Brooklyn Lockup
Former federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) guard Quandelle Joseph, 34, was sentenced on July 30, 2024, to 30 months in federal prison for a brazen smuggling scheme at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. Former fellow guard Jeremy Monk, 36, was earlier sentenced for his role in the scheme on December 6, 2023, to a year of probation.
As PLN reported, Monk resigned in April 2022, three days after taking a $10,000 bribe to smuggle marijuana into the lockup and leaving it in a staff bathroom for unnamed detainees to retrieve; he later pleaded guilty in March 2023. [See: PLN, May 2023, p.63.] Joseph also resigned and eventually pleaded guilty in January 2024 to sneaking drugs, cigarettes and cellphones on multiple occasions to at least three detainees, beginning shortly after he was hired in May 2020. They then distributed the contraband inside the jail. Joseph also confessed to warning one detainee about an upcoming cell search in January 2021 in a text that read: “Tighten up search comin (sic) clean phones out call logs n text n try to stash it.”
As PLN also reported, Joseph initially charged $8,000 for his smuggling services but eventually raised his fee to $12,000, according to his plea and interviews with detainees. Investigators first learned of Joseph’s activities in December 2020 when staff searched the cell of a racketeering suspect after smelling marijuana. During the search, a cellphone was found, and on it was a video showing Joseph delivering a bedroll—though at the time he was supposed to be working elsewhere in the jail; that search resulted in the detainee’s confession that he was trafficking contraband with the help of Joseph and Monk. [See: PLN, June 2023, p.63.]
In addition to his prison term, Joseph was ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay a $100 special assessment; the federal court for the Eastern District of New York imposed no fine because of his “inability to pay.” See: United States v. Joseph, USDC (E.D.N.Y.), Case No. 1:23-cr-00306. The same Court ordered Monk to serve three months of his probation on home confinement and then complete 50 hours of community service; he was also charged a $100 special assessment. See: United States v. Monk, USDC (E.D.N.Y.), Case No. 1:22-cr-00442.