Federal prosecutors announced today that a 25-year-old Frederick man has been sentenced to 292 months in prison (that's more than 24 years), followed by five years supervised release, for conspiracy to commit witness tampering and possession of a firearm connected to the death of a man he suspected of cooperating with authorities against him.

According to the guilty plea, from 2004 through July 2005, Steven Stone and co-conspirators David Lee, Jesse Dorsz, 28, Eric Campbell, 20, obtained cocaine, marijuana and ecstasy from sources in New York and Maryland, which they distributed in and around frederick. They called themselves B-6, which stood for "Bottom of Sixth Street" in Frederick. Prosecutors said Stone was arrested several times with drugs and guns, and law enforcement recovered a radio frequency detector that allowed Stone to detect undercover law enforcement agents wearing recording devices (!).

In the spring of 2005, Stone and others began to suspect that Lee was providing information about their crimes to authorities. Campbell and other conspirators learned in the summer of 2005 that Lee had been served with two grand jury subpoenas, which prosecutors said reinforced their concern.