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An Atlanta drug trafficker whose prior fentanyl-trafficking charges were pardoned by former President Joe Biden was arrested on new charges alleging he once again slang the deadly opiate Thursday, prosecutors said.
Walter Lee Muhammad, 46, appeared in federal court on possession with the intent to distribute controlled substances charges in the Northern District of Georgia on Thursday, federal prosecutors said.
Muhammad’s most recent run-in with the law comes less than two years after then-President Biden commuted his decade-long sentence for a February 2020 federal conviction of possession to distribute fentanyl, according to prosecutors.
“Despite receiving a second chance, this defendant returned to trafficking fentanyl and putting lives at risk,” Jae W. Chung, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA Atlanta Field Division, said in a press release.
Muhammad was one of 1,498 federal prisoners whose sentences were commuted by Biden on December 12, 2024, according to prosecutors.
Feds said that Muhammad’s most recent charges stem from DEA agents catching him loading multiple bags of suspected drugs into his BMW on Aug. 5 in Atlanta, before he drove his vehicle over 330 miles away to Greensboro, North Carolina.
A traffic stop by a K-9 with the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office in the Tar Heel state helped lead authorities to the 29 kilograms of suspected cocaine in Muhammad’s vehicle, swiftly leading to his arrest, according to prosecutors.
The next day, DEA agents searched Muhammad’s Atlanta apartment, where they discovered even more narcotics – including seven kilos of suspected heroin and two kilos of suspected fentanyl.
A federal complaint was filed against the drug peddler the next day, charging him with the intent to distribute controlled substances, and he was hauled in front of a federal magistrate judge in North Carolina on August 13, according to prosecutors.
Muhammad is expected to appear in the Northern District of Georgia at a later date, prosecutors said, and he is currently being held by the US Marshals Service.
Beside the two most recent cases made against him, Muhammad was convicted of two drug trafficking charges on two other occasions, prosecutors said.
He was found guilty of conspiracy to distribute cocaine in August 1999 and conspiracy to distribute marijuana in November 2010, feds said.
It was unclear who Muhammad’s legal representative is.
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