Federal agents arrested a notorious Alaska hip-hop artist and meth kingpin at his Maricopa Meadows home last week, said Matthew Tate, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service in Phoenix.
Deputies arrested Rico Gillespie, 37, who goes by the stage name Rico G. the Mayor, on June 11 at his home on Tulip Lane. He is accused of violating a federal probation order after his early release from a federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon, last March. this year, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Gillespie was sentenced to 87 months in prison in 2018 for running a meth ring in Anchorage and was originally scheduled to be released in December 2025.
Gillespie sold methamphetamine in Anchorage on three separate occasions in 2017, according to court documents. In May of that year, Gillespie’s home and car were searched by law enforcement officers. During the search, police found methamphetamine, heroin, and fentanyl packaged for sale and three digital scales inside Gillespie’s home. In Gillespie’s car prior to the search, officers found a loaded handgun in the compartment under the driver’s seat.
Gillespie posted many videos online, posing as a local hip-hop performer, with lyrics and videos depicting a glamorous lifestyle funded by drug trafficking and other illegal activities.
Before sentencing, Judge Sharon Gleeson noted that Gillespie was particularly troubled by the fact that he was selling drugs from the same home as young children. She was also concerned that Gillespie was a “commercial” drug dealer and did not appear to be addicted to the drugs he was selling in the community. At the sentencing hearing, records showed Gillespie was last seen employed in 2014.
According to public records, Gillespie was first seen in Maricopa in 2005. However, his criminal career took him all over the country.
He also faces 36 other criminal charges in Maricopa, Mesa, Scottsdale, Anchorage, La Crosse, Wis., and Prince George’s County, Md., including drug charges, assault, domestic violence, theft, assault, and DUI. I am doing it.
In Maricopa City Court, he pleaded guilty in 2013 to driving on a revoked license and failing to appear.
