Cocaine dealer set to plead in prison drug ring probe

The man at the center of a drug ring investigation that left a Pittsburgh FBI agent dead in 2008 is set to admit his guilt in a new drug ring that operated inside the U.S. prison system.

Inmate Robert Korbe, 50, of Indiana Township, is one of several high-profile defendants in a case brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in 2019 that dismantled a farreaching narcotics operation inside various prisons and outside in Western Pennsylvania communities, all orchestrated by a Moon convict, according to federal agents.

Korbe, whose wife shot and killed Pittsburgh FBI agent Sam Hicks, is set to plead guilty in June before U.S. District Judge R. Nicholas Ranjan. He is charged with conspiring to distribute drugs and conspiracy to launder drug money.

Korbe’s prior case is infamous. His cocaine operation led to a

raid on his house in 2008. As agents burst in, his wife, Christina Korbe, shot Hicks. Husband and wife both went to prison. Robert Korbe, who had been incarcerated at Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto in Cambria County, was due for release in 2030, but the new case will undoubtedly add more time.

Federal agents say the prison drug ring sneaked narcotics into the prisons by saturating bogus court documents and greeting cards with synthetic cannabinoids.

From there, inmates cut up the paper into small pieces for distribution among other inmates, who swallowed or smoked it. The inmates paid for the paper with money from their prison accounts. Agents monitoring those accounts discovered that funds were being transferred from customer accounts to the accounts of inmate dealers and then to conspirators on the outside.

The ring had also sold large amounts of drugs outside of prison walls since 2017, dealing heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, painkillers and suboxone.

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the IRS, the ringleader was drug dealer Noah Landfried, formerly of Moon but more recently the Strip District, whose conduit into the prison system was his brother, Ross.

Prosecutors say another key player on the outside was Michel Cercone, of Sewickley, a former real estate agent who, according to wiretaps, worked closely with Noah Landfried in preparing the paper to be sent into the prisons and also sold drugs in Western Pennsylvania.