former girlfriend of drug kingpin Alton "Ace Capone" Coles

01:21 Coles "used the women in his life as tools of his trade." 0 Comments

Asya Richardson, through her lawyer, claims she was unaware that the man she knew as a music company impresario used drug money for the down payment on the house just outside Mullica Hill they bought in the summer of 2005.former girlfriend of drug kingpin Alton "Ace Capone" Coles, wants her money-laundering conviction, linked to the couple's purchase of a luxurious home in South Jersey, overturned.
"Asya Richardson was a naive young woman who fell in love with, and was duped by, Alton Coles, a deceptive, manipulative individual . . . who hid his illegal activities from her and used her as part of his legitimate front to the outside world," Richardson's lawyer, Ellen C. Brotman, argued in a post-trial motion heard today by U.S. District Court Judge R. Barclay Surrick.Brotman has asked the judge either to overturn Richardson's conviction or grant her a new trial. Surrick, after an hour-long hearing, said he would take the issue under advisement. Not surprisingly, federal prosecutors argued that the conviction should stand.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Bresnick said that Richardson, 28, knowingly went along with Coles, helping to launder drug proceeds by negotiating the down payment on the $488,000 house with cash transferred from his bank accounts and by lying about her employment and income records."All the evidence established that she knew Coles was a drug dealer and she knew his money was drug money," Bresnick said, describing the house purchase as a "classic money-laundering case."Coles was arrested at the Gloucester County residence, on Dillon's Lane just outside Mullica Hill, in August 2005 as investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tabacco, Firearms and Explosives launched a series of raids that capped a two-year investigation of his $25 million cocaine network. Coles and Richardson had moved into the property two weeks earlier.Richardson was later charged with money-laundering and conspiracy to commit money-laundering. She is the half-sister of former Philadelphia baseketball star Jerome "Pooh" Richardson, who called her hours before the raid to warn that the "feds were coming."Pooh Richardson testified for the prosecution this year at the trial of a former Philadelphia police detective who was convicted of obstruction of justice for leaking him information about the raid.
Aysa Richardson was convicted along with Coles and four others, including a second Coles girlfriend, in March 2008. Coles, 35, was sentenced to life plus 55 years. Richardson has had her sentence delayed pending the outcome of her post-trial motions. She could be sentenced to 78 months. Whatever the outcome, the motions have offered a look at the twisted relationship between Coles and the women he dated while under investigation.Brotman, in papers filed last year, said Coles "used the women in his life as tools of his trade."