{"id":253853,"date":"2025-09-25T15:08:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T15:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/253853\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T15:08:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T15:08:13","slug":"head-of-jacksonville-pot-ring-pleads-to-1-ton-conspiracy-i-95-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/253853\/","title":{"rendered":"Head of Jacksonville pot ring pleads to 1-ton+ conspiracy, I-95 shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

The head of a Jacksonville marijuana ring<\/a> that shot a rival on Interstate 95<\/a> and tapped an ex-cop for information has pleaded guilty to drug and gun charges including conspiring to traffic more than a ton of pot.<\/p>\n

Nathaniel Hatcher III, 29, faces at least 20 years in prison \u2015 and maybe the rest of his life \u2015 for running the ring that operated out of Airbnb homes<\/a>, distributing pot that was loaded into suitcases reaching Jacksonville on commercial airline flights from California.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d Hatcher told family members gathered in federal court for a Sept. 24 change-of-plea hearing where he admitted four of the 12 counts he faced under an updated January indictment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jailed since February 2024, Hatcher is one of at least 10 people charged in connection with what the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office labeled \u201ca major drug trafficking organization\u201d during a 2024 news conference<\/a> about the I-95 shooting.<\/p>\n

More: <\/strong>Jacksonville pot ring used former cop to ID target of I-95 shooting, says plea agreement<\/a><\/p>\n

Only a few of those defendants, including one just arrested Sept. 22<\/a>, still haven\u2019t pleaded guilty.<\/p>\n

Hatcher signed a plea agreement<\/a> acknowledging being part of a drug-dealing conspiracy as early as 2016 and describing steps he and others had taken competing in a market built on cash but with no legal protection.<\/p>\n

Hatcher collected about $2.2 million in proceeds, according to his plea agreement.<\/p>\n

By comparison, a judge in 2024 ordered a woman prosecutors called the pot ring\u2019s \u201cmanager and supervisor\u201d<\/a> to forfeit $1.75 million, although both she and Hatcher had court-appointed attorneys because both lacked money to pay for their own counsel.<\/p>\n

The pot ring rented houses for short-term use as bases to inventory, sort by quality and set prices for marijuana shipments that a court document said Hatcher told members to limit to 24 pounds per suitcase to stay unnoticed.<\/p>\n

A home on San Marco\u2019s River Road was used for \u201cdistributing and storing marijuana, collecting drug proceeds and congregating, generally,\u201d said a criminal complaint<\/a> filed July 18 as a basis for charging the newest defendant, 23-year-old Christian Guyton.<\/p>\n

Events at that home started a chain of events that led to the I-95 shooting and increased scrutiny on Hatcher\u2019s organization.<\/p>\n

According to Guyton\u2019s complaint, the home was used in September 2023 as a place for Hatcher to buy a one-pound pot \u201csample\u201d from another drug trafficker who was trying to set up a bigger deal and didn\u2019t realize the address was being covertly watched by Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office detectives tracking Guyton for a separate investigation.<\/p>\n

After watching the exchange of the one-pound parcel, police stopped the trafficker\u2019s car just down the street, found cocaine on the driver and arrested him, leaving the car with the driver\u2019s companions at his request.<\/p>\n

Next, Hatcher and members of his ring met with the jailed trafficker\u2019s people to buy $44,000 worth of pot but were instead given a worthless suitcase of bedsheets and wanted payback, court records showed.<\/p>\n

Hatcher\u2019s plea agreement said he reached out to a former Jacksonville police officer to learn who had been in the car when the trafficker was arrested.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe disclosure was made without authorization and in violation of department policy and state law,\u201d said the agreement, which didn\u2019t identify the officer but noted that he later pleaded guilty to a charge involving unauthorized access to police records.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe disclosure was made without authorization and in violation of department policy and state law,\u201d said the agreement, which didn\u2019t name the officer but noted that he was later convicted of a charge involving unauthorized access to police records.<\/p>\n

After getting people\u2019s names from the officer, Hatcher went to the Duval County Courthouse in October 2023, on a day someone from the rival trafficking group had a court date and followed his targets out of the building to the same car that police had stopped weeks earlier near River Road. Hatcher and another ring member followed in one car while two others followed in a separate car onto I-95 headed south into St. Johns County.<\/p>\n

On the interstate, drivers in the two cars from Hatcher\u2019s ring boxed in their target while members leaned out of the cars with guns and began shooting, wounding the rival trafficker, the plea agreement said.<\/p>\n

For that, Hatcher pleaded guilty to federal charges involving a drive-by shooting and firing a gun during a crime of violence.<\/p>\n

Hatcher had already pleaded to the drug-trafficking conspiracy and a money-laundering conspiracy count, but discharging a gun guaranteed his punishment would be worse.<\/p>\n

Conspiring to traffic 1,000 kilograms of pot \u2013 about 2,200 pounds \u2013 carries a sentence between 10 years and life in prison, and shooting a gun in a crime of violence carries the same punishment.<\/p>\n

But to emphasize the punishment for shooting crimes, federal law requires the time for the shooting charge be serve in addition to any other crimes, so Hatcher faces mandatory minimum sentences of 20 years with the possibility of back-to-back lifetime sentences, plus a potential for up to 45 years for the remaining counts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The head of a Jacksonville marijuana ring that shot a rival on Interstate 95 and tapped an ex-cop…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":253854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[124671,567,7285,691,17053,5229,931,28036,3059,356,4219,11313,9807,2693,8578,6279,10000,134028,68200,1230,2488,5375,3188,723,2487,77689,124675,7310,32138,8142,3228,2936,10001,4630,425,728,3344,451,50,450,457,28035,28038,153,68197,68199,3677,10622,14638,645,2490,79180,6003,1439,134029,646,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,8572,8576],"class_list":{"0":"post-253853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-124671","9":"tag-abuse","10":"tag-accident","11":"tag-ai","12":"tag-airbnb","13":"tag-america","14":"tag-and","15":"tag-bargains","16":"tag-county","17":"tag-courts","18":"tag-crime","19":"tag-crime-u0026-justice","20":"tag-dealing","21":"tag-disaster","22":"tag-disaster-accident-and-tragedy","23":"tag-district","24":"tag-drug","25":"tag-drug-dealing-and-trafficking","26":"tag-drug-laws-u0026-policy","27":"tag-drugs","28":"tag-enabled","29":"tag-enforcement","30":"tag-fl","31":"tag-florida","32":"tag-highlights","33":"tag-interstate","34":"tag-interstate-95","35":"tag-jacksonville","36":"tag-johns","37":"tag-justice","38":"tag-law","39":"tag-law-enforcement","40":"tag-laws","41":"tag-legal","42":"tag-local","43":"tag-local-news","44":"tag-marijuana","45":"tag-negative","46":"tag-news","47":"tag-overall","48":"tag-overall-negative","49":"tag-plea","50":"tag-plea-bargains","51":"tag-policy","52":"tag-recreational","53":"tag-recreational-drugs","54":"tag-shootings","55":"tag-st","56":"tag-st-johns-county","57":"tag-story","58":"tag-story-highlights-ai-enabled","59":"tag-trafficking","60":"tag-tragedy","61":"tag-u-s","62":"tag-u-s-district-courts","63":"tag-u0026","64":"tag-united-states","65":"tag-united-states-of-america","66":"tag-unitedstates","67":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","68":"tag-us","69":"tag-usa","70":"tag-violence","71":"tag-violence-u0026-abuse"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}