by Alex Lloyd Gross
One male who worked at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center on State Road and another inmate and someone else who was not involved in the prison all entered guilty pleas to smuggling items into the facility.
Items smuggled into prisons are done by working with an employee to bring those things into the building. Officials said that Breyanna Cornish, 30, Jawayne Brown, 40, and Ahmad Nasir, aka Hussain Abdussamad, 44, all of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, entered pleas of guilty this week in connection with a scheme to smuggle contraband — including drugs, phones, chargers, cigarettes, and knives — into the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center (“PICC”) from April through July of 2021.
As detailed in court filings and admitted to by the defendants, Nasir, who was then detained pre-trial at PICC, worked with Brown, who was not incarcerated, Cornish, who was then a PICC correctional officer (“CO”) employed by the Philadelphia Department of Prisons (“PDP”), and several other associates to purchase and assemble contraband. Cornish then smuggled the contraband into PICC, where Nasir sold the contraband to other inmates for a profit. Nasir then instructed associates to pay Cornish for her role smuggling the contraband into the prison and Brown for his work purchasing and assembling the packages.
On July 10, 2021, PDP conducted a search of the cell Nasir shared with another inmate. In a compartment in the ceiling behind a light fixture, officers recovered 19 cellphones, 20 cellphone chargers, one rapid charger, two super glues, two screwdrivers, one roll of tape, three hunting knives, one Ziploc bag containing the synthetic cannabinoid commonly known as K2, one Ziploc bag of tobacco, one alprazolam pill, and at least 110 packets of Suboxone.
Following the search of the cell, officers conducted a search of Nasir and his cellmate. Officers recovered a cellphone from the person of each of them. Text messages and WhatsApp messages extracted from the cell phone recovered from Nasir’s person revealed that from June 19, 2021, to July 6, 2021, CO Cornish, Nasir, and Brown discussed via text specific contraband items to be acquired, the delivery of contraband packages, and payments for the items and to co-conspirators. Nasir simultaneously sent messages to multiple inmates about the purchase and delivery of contraband.
The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced in August. Cornish faces a maximum possible term of 15 years’ imprisonment, Brown a maximum possible term of 25 years’ imprisonment, and Nasir a maximum possible term of 35 years’ imprisonment.