An Atlanta drug trafficker whose previous fentanyl-trafficking convictions were pardoned by former President Joe Biden was arrested Thursday on new charges saying he sold the lethal narcotic again, according to authorities.
On Thursday, Walter Lee Muhammad, 46, appeared in federal court in the Northern District of Georgia on counts of possessing controlled narcotics with intent to distribute, according to federal prosecutors.
Muhammad’s most recent run-in with the law occurred less than two years after then-President Biden commuting his decade-long sentence for a February 2020 federal conviction of possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, according to prosecutors.
“Despite receiving a second chance, this defendant returned to trafficking fentanyl and endangering lives,” Jae W. Chung, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA Atlanta Field Division, stated in a press statement.
Muhammad was one of 1,498 federal convicts whose sentences were reduced by Biden on December 12, 2024, prosecutors say.
According to federal authorities, Muhammad’s most recent allegations originate from DEA investigators capturing him packing multiple bags of suspected drugs into his BMW on August 5 in Atlanta before driving over 330 miles to Greensboro, North Carolina.
According to prosecutors, a traffic stop by a K-9 with the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina assisted investigators in locating the 29 kilograms of suspected cocaine in Muhammad’s vehicle, prompting his arrest.
The following day, DEA investigators searched Muhammad’s Atlanta apartment and uncovered additional narcotics, including seven kilograms of suspected heroin and two kilograms of suspected fentanyl.
The next day, a federal complaint was filed against the drug peddler, charging him with intent to distribute prohibited narcotics, and he was brought before a federal magistrate judge in North Carolina on August 13, according to authorities.
Muhammad is scheduled to appear in the Northern District of Georgia at a later date, according to prosecutors, and is now detained by the US Marshals Service.
Aside from the two most recent trials against him, Muhammad had already been convicted of two narcotics trafficking offenses, according to authorities.
He was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine in August 1999 and conspiracy to distribute marijuana in November 2010, according to federal authorities.
It was unknown who Muhammad’s legal representative was.
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